To be fair - that's less on the steam deck and more on PC gaming forever having the hardware platform shift under it's feet; the situation you describe isn't "steam deck" - it's "pc gaming". You're old enough (I think?) to have had to struggle with IRQ settings and sound cards and needing to find the magic combination that worked...
Let me ask you this - are you seeing this problem with deck-verified games? The only difference here between this and, say, the switch is you're being allowed outside of the curated section into the jungle.
Ooohhh......
So - this just released: https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html
I wonder how outlandish it would be getting it running on the steam deck. In particular the "download on demand" version. Gotta admit, a handheld with every major DOS release on demand might be fun...
