The line between a Linux user and a Linux power user is a bit gray, and a bit wide. Most people who install Linux already have more computer literacy than average, and the platform has long encouraged experimentation and construction in a way macOS and Windows generally aren’t designed for. Traditional Linux distributions often ask more of their users as well, requiring at least a passing familiarity with the terminal and the operating system’s internals especially once something inevitably breaks.
In recent years, however, a different design philosophy has been gaining ground. Immutable Linux distributions like Fedora Silverblue, openSUSE MicroOS, and NixOS dramatically reduce the chances an installation behaves erratically by making direct changes to the underlying system either impossible or irrelevant.
SteamOS fits squarely into this category as well. While it’s best known for its console-like gaming mode it also includes a fully featured Linux desktop, which is a major part of its appeal and the reason I bought a Steam Deck in the first place. For someone coming from Windows or macOS, this desktop provides a familiar, fully functional environment: web browsing, media playback, and other basic tools all work out of the box.
As a Linux power user encountering an immutable desktop for the first time, though, that desktop mode wasn’t quite what I expected. It handles these everyday tasks exceptionally well, but performing the home sysadmin chores that are second nature to me on a Debian system takes a very different mindset and a bit of effort.
Support the vast majority of titles with minimal friction right out of the box.
I don’t want to have do dick around and tweak shit when I want to relax with a video game; I’ve got plenty of other Linux boxes for tinkering. I want to be able to slap an OS on a PC and have it be Steam Deck But Bigger.
These days you can do that on fucking arch (from the point of “have a usable DE with internet access” onwards ofc, which is the point most distros get you out of the box). Install steam, check the setting to show windows games with proton, and it just works. At most need GEProton sometimes but I doubt that’s different on SteamOS.
No doubt SteamOS is the most optimized for that experience but there really isn’t a lot of friction for gaming on steam in general these days.
You just described Bazzite. You can literally install the KDE version, same as you’d find on a Deck, and get right to gaming. No tinkering required. Steam is installed by default, Bluetooth works as expected, USB controllers work when plugged in.
The only time you might “tinker” with gaming is when you want to install, say, an emulator or Heroic from the Discovery store (flatpak) to play your non-Steam games, all of which is optional.
SteamOS isn’t going to offer significant benefit, except it might get Valve-specific fixes before they upstream the patches. If you’re waiting around, expecting SteamOS to be some shift in the distro landscape, I think you’re going to be disappointed.
Playing games from outside Steam is less tinkering in Bazzite than SteamOS because Bazzite supports those out of the box. I don’t have a Bazzite install in front of me right now but IIRC it comes with Lutris preinstalled. On SteamOS that’s an additional installation step.
It’s been a hot minute since I installed Bazzite, but it might even come with Heroic preinstalled. I think it did come with Lutris by default, as you say.
Can confirm, ships with Lutris.
Bazzite steam mode is functionally identical to steam os, and in my experience I haven’t had to fuck around with any game. Got Spiderman, GTA 5 and Cyberpunk working (as well as they can considering the hardware) working by just downloading them.
Its pretty much steam os but based on fedora immutable. I like it a lot, especially in desktop mode where the KDE version is more current.
Noodle probably only knows Linux from fiddle distros and now thinks that SteamOS is the only one that works out of the box which is just not true. There are plenty of mainstream options like Bazzite.
Very true, and tbh i havent bothered to attempt gaming on anything other than the steam deck.
At worst you need to install Steam on other distributions and then compatibility is no different than on SteamOS (on equal hardware, of course) because Steam runs its games inside standardized containers since some time.
Thats really encouraging and with the Steam VR headset betting on flatpak as one of its main avenues actually super exciting considering its an arm box.
Hopefully the maintainers of RetroDECK compile an ARM version until then: https://github.com/RetroDECK/RetroDECK/issues/1195
I’ve been a Linux hacker for a quarter of a century.
Games run via Steam Linux Runtime which is the same across all Linux installations of Steam.
If you need to “tweak shit”, you have not fully compatible hardware (NVidia or so), something SteamOS won’t solve because it’s just a regular Linux distribution.
You already can. The SteamOS recovery image is explicitly for other systems as well since quite some time. People use it on the Framework Desktop, for example, even though the devices list does not feature that PC.
Don’t expect ever formal support for any hardware where Valve cannot control the drivers. They’ve been fucked by proprietary platform holders in the past, they don’t want to repeat this again. So either your hardware is fully supported by upstream kernel/Mesa drivers (which SteamOS already ships because it’s just another Linux distribution with absolutely not magic dust) or SteamOS will likely never work on those.