The Linux coders turning the ROG Ally and other handhelds into Steam Deck clones

I bet some of the things in the Ally need new drivers that aren't in the Kernel yet.

There are firmware fixes and such that need to be implemented, so yes, coders.

Yup, as a software dev myself, I doubt anyone is really putting any development effort into it. Maybe a little config to map the controller properly or something, but it's close enough hardware-wise that there really shouldn't be much work involved.