How many actual PC handhelds are there?
The link in the article that promises "plenty" of handheld examples talks about Steam deck, Asus, and... the switch. And that's it. And obviously the switch is not a PC handheld, so... ?
There’s quite a few. Steam deck and Asus, as you mentioned, but there’s also AyaNeo, GPD, OneXPlayer, Aokzoe, Lenovo, etc. And many of these brands have several different models, if you’re counting individual products.
And, most importantly, money bags to subsidise the hell out of it. Let's not kid ourselves here, the damn low price is one of the main reasons why people buy the SD rather than the ~2x more expensive alternatives.
Not sure what you mean -- they all run Linux. The images just have the video hardware configs baked in with a preconfigured user and start script. You would be amazed at how easy that is to do, all things considered. I have a few kiosk configurations I created for the two Home Assistant panels I have in my house.
Anecdotally, I have an Aya Neo. I know a few people with a few of the others brands. There’s a decently sized Aya Neo Discord that I’m part of, and I would assume the other brands have something similar. There’s definitely use of non-Steam handhelds, or there wouldn’t be a growing market for them.
I personally love it, and yes it can with a dock similar to the Switch’s. It’s ran every game I’ve thrown at it, and I’ve an original 2021 version. There’s a few quirks, like the joysticks will sometimes just decide to not do a random direction, but recalibrating is easy. Obviously the resolution quality isn’t as stellar as if you were running a pc meant output to a monitor, but on the built in screen everything is crispy. It’s decently heavy though, so my baby wrists get tired after a while. But yeah it’s great, playing whatever wherever is pretty ace.