I want to get some experience with Linux before win 10 goes end of support. I won’t be using this machine for work. Gaming primarily but also 3d printing and possibly some light piracy. Is there any reason not to install steam os?
Thanks in advance kind and wise nerds in my phone.
I went with Bazzite. It’s built on Fedora and intended to be installed on both Deck and desktop.
It’s been working out well so far!
Running Ryzen 3000 and RTX 4000 hardware.
Question, changing the OS on the deck, do you still get all the updates to steam and everything? Like, I’m a fairly surface level Linux user, with a steam deck. I run silverblue on one laptop, vanilla os on another. I don’t do a lot of tinkering in general. I hate kde on the deck. I prefer gnome as a rule, but kde on desktop is okay. On the deck it’s a pain in the ass. Gnome seems so much more suited to a smaller screen with touch controls. If I switched to something else, could I just get the benefit of having gnome without losing the set it and forget it benefits of steam os?
Question, changing the OS on the deck, do you still get all the updates to steam and everything?
Yes, I think so. I haven’t used SteamOS, but it seems like it gives you Steam, and exactly the right drivers for the Steam Deck? Steam is packaged for basically every distro, and you get the same experience everywhere, including “big picture mode” if you opt into that. Bazzite is designed with the Steam Deck in mind so it should have the right drivers.
From quick reading, SteamOS 3.0 is only really available for the Steam Deck. As such, I would not recommend it for a desktop user. Earlier versions of SteamOS are no longer supported. Don’t take this as gospel, as I may be mistaken.
Still, I would personally suggest looking in to a more desktop oriented OS for now.
Highly recommend Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Fedora for your main desktop distro when coming from Windows. They have an extremely wide user base, huge list of easily installed and compatible software (like, search for it in the built in software center app and one click download and install it, instead of having to use the command line or build from source), and will definitely be the easiest to triage issues in/find answers online for.
One big consideration is driver support. Yes you should be able to set up all drivers you need on basically any Linux distro, but the three above basically are designed to do it for you, including the proprietary drivers needed for certain web content with annoying DRM, and for NVidia graphics cards. There is an open source driver for NVidia, but my understanding is that the proprietary one has way better compatibility and performance (this is purely hearsay, as I have an AMD card, so I’m not speaking from experience).
Others have mentioned the things about SteamOS being made for the one specific handheld, which is true. It boots straight into the gaming handheld mode by default, so if you wanted to see the desktop you’d have to load that, then go to the menu and select “switch to desktop mode” every time you boot.
Plus you can just get that exact same gaming mode UI on any desktop with steam installed by going into the menu and selecting it or hitting the home/Xbox/PlayStation button on a connected controller when steam is open.
There is an open source driver for NVidia, but my understanding is that the proprietary one has way better compatibility and performance (this is purely hearsay, as I have an AMD card, so I’m not speaking from experience).
Driver quality depends on the day of the week. This week its stable but that stupid bug where the KDE tool bar and background flicker through apps is back again.
Go for Bazzite, it’s freaking easy and there’s no way you can brick it.