Hector Martin

Linux can do all but one of the things I listed, and do it better than the native OS. Of *course* it was designed for this use case. What do you think every Android device runs? What do you think literally *every other* device with the same CPU/SoC runs?

Who said anything about desktop Linux? Linux is a kernel. There are plenty of options for mobile-focused user interfaces. Like, you know, Android. Or anyone can cook up a little launcher shell for Switch-specific software in an evening.

It's useful because Linux can already run a *real* web browser and *real* media players and emulators for basically every platform including Dolphin *today*, on the Switch, with minimal development effort.

And adding the missing bits (porting audio support, writing a joy-con daemon) is orders of magnitude easier than porting all that software to the native OS. You get an entire ecosystem available, for a fixed and small amount of work.

Emulators emulate *consoles*. The front-end UI is trivially replaceable. And people have already written UIs intended for controllers since people use controllers with emulators. Web browsers already support touch mode. And you can just run Android which is meant for touch!