Any particular reason you would want SteamOS on a desktop over any other distro? It’s pretty much designed for console use, I would not recommend it elsewhere.
Because you want the console experience? A PC can be hooked to a TV as easily as a console, but it’s way more fiddly way more often without appropriate software support.
Ooc, does big picture mode on a Linux distro satisfy such a requirement? I’m not sure if you have have a system start into this mode on Linux, I’m fairly sure it can be done on Windows.
I’m also not sure if BPM on Linux has the same level of integration with power management controls and HUD etc, but I’d imagine it’s mostly there?
You can boot to it, and disable lock screen, but it feels OK but meaningfully worse on Linux, and awful on Windows.
It’s worth it for a dual purpose machine, but for a dedicated gaming system a purpose built OS has value.
This is what I’ve done for years. It just auto starts after OS launch in big picture and I grab my controller. Occasionally I have my wireless keyboard for something but it works fine.
I don’t own a steam deck they’re not available from valve here in Australia. So I’m sure I’m missing out on some polish. But I’ve never seen it so I don’t miss it.
People come over, sit on the couch, grab a controller, steam is loaded, they play game. The OS and then steam is out of the way in a flash. After all I’m after the game not the launcher.
Valve gaming polish, I primarily use my home PC for gaming and I feel like a distro Valve makes would be best suited and supported for that.
Steam Deck works just fine in desktop mode with mouse and keyboard.
Bazzite is basically exactly this already. If you have an AMD gpu you can boot straight into steam. The desktop mode uses KDE like the Steam Deck and the package manager makes it much easier to layer in additional system packages which is kind of a pain on the Deck. Plus there are some additional gaming specific tweaks popularized by tools like cryoutility included by default.
