this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Steam Deck

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SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck (upcoming SteamOS beta for other handhelds) (store.steampowered.com)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (4 children)

we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves

So how does SteamOS distinguish between a “handheld” and a desktop, and what’s the Nvidia support like?

Asking for a friend who has an Nvidia-powered desktop that’s been infected with the Windows virus for over a decade now

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Your friend might want to install Bazzite or Nobara

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Please, there are so many options out there for you that are probably better suited for your needs than SteamOS will eventually be. You must have seen this repeated over and over again. Waiting for SteamOS on desktop makes no sense. Just go ahead and install Linux now. Any distro, switching is easy if you're not happy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you want a distro that is good for gaming on desktop I'd still recommend Nobara for now since it is based on fedora and modified by the person behind the glorious eggroll version of proton.

[–] Mereo 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I prefer Bazzite which is Steam OS like.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nobara can mimic it just as well..?

[–] Mereo 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's not Atomic so not newbie friendly like Steam OS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, I don't find atomic to be newbie friendly. Especially when the majority of guides and how-to's do not assume an atomic style os.

[–] Mereo 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The existing guides have not yet caught up with the paradigm shift of atomic distros.

When I say it's newbie friendly, it's because the base system is read-only (only /etc and /var are writable), and updates are only applied if all transactions are successful.

This paradigm shift requires people to install flatpak applications and command-line applications in distrobox containers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oh, I know. Which can be a pain in the ***. And until the guides and stuff catch up, it's not newbie friendly now is it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

fair enough.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'd agree with the other user. SteamOS is great, but it's very much focused on a console-like experience.

Even in desktop mode, the Plasma desktop is pretty outdated, and software you install will be wiped between updates if it's not a Flatpak (although tbf, Flathub has almost everything these days). I also believe the kernel on SteamOS has some alterations that are great for the deck, but means a bit less hardware compatibility for a general-purpose PC.

E: not sure what's upsetting about this comment.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

Please God please ill never play Fortnite again just give us a SteamOS download.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It will take 5 minutes for my gaming PC to start running this, I'm so pumped

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why would you run this vs a regular distro? Not a criticism, just a genuine question because I'm running Pop OS and wondering if I should think about switching when this releases. From my understanding it might not actually be super well suited to run as a regular desktop OS compared to a regular distro.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My gaming PC is basically a console, I don't use it for literally anything other than gaming. It's plugged in to a TV, and I play it with a controller (yes I'm hyped about steam controller 2). If I used it for anything other than steam I wouldn't put it on there, but it's actually exactly what I'm looking for. I've been waiting for this.

Right now I run Arch and it opens Big Picture mode on boot, but it doesn't always work and Arch is of course Arch, which sucks when something breaks and you're trying to fix it with a controller. I run Arch on my laptop too which I use for everything except gaming, so losing a little functionality that I already don't use on a dedicated device is totally fine with me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks for this, sounds like a perfect use case for SteamOS! I'd love to have a setup like this at some point, maybe the new rumoured valve hardware can help with that too.