SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck

[SN2716057]

I'm not sure, but we can make one in the Linux forum. I'm sure a few other people would join, too.

And don't worry about being Linux-rusty. When I switched in November, I hadn't used Linux for 10 years. And even then, I used Ubuntu and Mint, and I'm on Bazzite (Fedora spinoff) now. Thanks to the KDE Plasma desktop, Steam, Proton and Wine (and the excellent AMD support), I haven't touched the terminal once.

That's one thing about all the Linux distros, don't like one switch to another. Which I'm gonna do cause Ubuntu is giving me a headache, let's hope Bazzite will be a breeze.

 

[AusWolf]

That's one thing about all the Linux distros, don't like one switch to another. Which I'm gonna do cause Ubuntu is giving me a headache, let's hope Bazzite will be a breeze.

It has been for me so far, so good luck!

Edit: So far, Bazzite has been the only distro that recognised my monitor as Freesync + HDR right from the start without any tinkering. I think this says something.

 

[LittleBro]

This is exactly the main problem of why Linux has not already became much more popular - too many distros.
Devs don't agree on something - they create own fork. Such approach is the worst nightmare of hardware makers.
Yeah, I know some distros share the same base (Debian, Arch, etc.) but still, there are too many of them.

Every day some people are born, some die. And apart from that, every day a new Linux distro is made as well.

Since Valve is directly cooperating with Archlinux devs, this is probably the best way to go if you want to achieve maximum SteamOS support.
But I have seen with my own eyes that even Debian-Ubuntu-based Mint is doing pretty well with Steam games. Proton does it's job.
Anyway, people, if you want to go with Linux, choose something popular backed by good community.

I can assure you that, unlike Windows 12 is going to be final final final final version of Windows 10 (11 and 12 were not suppossed to exist),
there won't be more than 2 major versions of SteamOS. Because when it comes to games and software, GabeN can't count to three and above.

 

[AusWolf]

This is exactly the main problem of why Linux has not already became much more popular - too many distros.
Devs don't agree on something - they create own fork. Such approach is the worst nightmare of hardware makers.
Yeah, I know some distros share the same base (Debian, Arch, etc.) but still, there are too many of them.

Every day some people are born, some die. And apart from that, every day a new Linux distro is made as well.

Since Valve is directly cooperating with Archlinux devs, this is probably the best way to go if you want to achieve maximum SteamOS support.
But I have seen with my own eyes that even Debian-Ubuntu-based Mint is doing pretty well with Steam games. Proton does it's job.
Anyway, people, if you want to go with Linux, choose something popular backed by good community.

I can assure you that, unlike Windows 12 is going to be final final final final version of Windows 10 (11 and 12 were not suppossed to exist),
there won't be more than 2 major versions of SteamOS. Because when it comes to games and software, GabeN can't count to three and above.

Thanks to Proton, the distro you choose doesn't matter too much in terms of game compatibility these days. But I see your point, and I agree.

 

[SN2716057]

This is exactly the main problem of why Linux has not already became much more popular

It probably plays a part but I think the biggest reason would be that the other brands just pay the hardware companies to use their OS.

 

[jak_2456]

I am very excited for this because it means that more gaming devices will be running Linux, which will lead more devs toward developing support for it!

 

[Wasteland]

It has been for me so far, so good luck!

Edit: So far, Bazzite has been the only distro that recognised my monitor as Freesync + HDR right from the start without any tinkering. I think this says something.

Yeah, I did a little reading about Bazzite after you started posting about your experiences. Looks really good. Doesn't carry the caveats that small/niche distros usually do, because it isn't really a distro; rather it's just a customized image of Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. Hypothetically the entire Bazzite team could quit tomorrow and your install would keep trucking along, fully maintained. I think this will become my go-to recommendation for gamers who are Linux-curious.

Bazzite's gaming stuff is evidently packaged in an Arch-based distrobox container, which btw you can install on any distro if you want. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I think the Freesync + HDR thing is due to KDE Wayland. On X11 you typically have to jump through some minor hoops to enable Freesync. But KDE Wayland auto-detects everything. Pretty great. Wayland of course exists in other forms, but the ecosystem is quite fractured. Gnome and KDE seem to have the most mature implementations.

 

[AusWolf]

Now that I think about it, SteamOS has never been exclusive. You can download an installer and install it on anything any time.

 

[wNotyarD]

Now that I think about it, SteamOS has never been exclusive. You can download an installer and install it on anything any time.

I don't remember if Valve ever published a SteamOS image for people to do so, though?

 

[AusWolf]

I don't remember if Valve ever published a SteamOS image for people to do so, though?

It's here.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/download%3Fver%3Dsteamdeck&ved=2ahUKEwjz46zhjeqKAxUzTUEAHT_IJfwQjBB6BAgmEAQ&usg=AOvVaw0GX5sK4oauDoym4SMeT-0r

 

[chrcoluk]

SteamOS may be the sneaky contraption that will slowly replace Windows as the primary gaming OS. Never loose hope

The steam deck (SteamOS) will be helping linux compat no end, in the FF7 modding community, we integrated linux support for the mod manager and also added 16:10 support solely because the steam deck exists.

 

[Timbaloo]

This is exactly the main problem of why Linux has not already became much more popular - too many distros.
Devs don't agree on something - they create own fork. Such approach is the worst nightmare of hardware makers.
Yeah, I know some distros share the same base (Debian, Arch, etc.) but still, there are too many of them.

Hardware is spoken to on a kernel level. I don't see how distro forks cause an issue there. I also don't see how the existence of forks prevent people from switching. In theory, you can choose a distro that is optimised for your needs (eg. easy to install, good initial support for gaming, ...). But I agree with there being too many pointless distro forks.

What is probably causing more issues is the fact that there is not really a unified GUI toolkit, and even if there was one, it would be different from the Windows one (or Max OS X for that matter). Therefore causing significant extra work to get an application looking good and similar on multiple OSes. But this is not an issue for gaming either, since the game engine is its own GUI toolkit so to speak. In fact gaming should be one of the easier types of software to port to Linux, since it basically only requires the game engine itself to be Linux compatible, and games built upon a Linux compatible engine would almost automatically run on both OSs. Since we even have a unified rendering API amongst the OSs (Vulkan), it's really just laziness from the devs preventing Linux binaries.

 

[AusWolf]

Hardware is spoken to on a kernel level. I don't see how distro forks cause an issue there. I also don't see how the existence of forks prevent people from switching. In theory, you can choose a distro that is optimised for your needs (eg. easy to install, good initial support for gaming, ...). But I agree with there being too many pointless distro forks.

It is a problem for one reason: lack of knowledge.

People don't know what the different distros are, or which one they need, or that they're not really that different for most things. It's easy to get lost in the forest.

People also don't know that it's easy to get an experience similar to other OSes thanks to Wine, Proton and the different desktops which are available for various different distros. Even if you somehow manage to figure out which distro you want, you still get confused choosing your desktop.

People also don't know that you don't need special skills to use Linux. You have the same keyboard, the same mouse, the same click functionality, it works with a GUI, and so on. The idea people have about Linux is a bunch of pizza-munching fat geeks who never leave the house typing frivolously in the terminal all day and night.

Speaking of which, people also don't know where to ask for help. Sure, Linux is a community OS, but what is the community? Even I don't know outside of TPU. And if you happen to know, the answers you usually get for your questions begin with "open the terminal and..." even when there are way easier GUI solutions available as well.

This all paints the picture of a quirky OS made only for true nerds in the eyes of common people. Hardcore Linux aficionados don't get this for some reason. They keep insisting that it's easy, which it really is once you got the above figured out.

 

[wNotyarD]

It is a problem for one reason: lack of knowledge.

People don't know what the different distros are, or which one they need, or that they're not really that different for most things. It's easy to get lost in the forest.

People also don't know that it's easy to get an experience similar to other OSes thanks to Wine, Proton and the different desktops which are available for various different distros. Even if you somehow manage to figure out which distro you want, you still get confused choosing your desktop.

People also don't know that you don't need special skills to use Linux. You have the same keyboard, the same mouse, the same click functionality, it works with a GUI, and so on. The idea people have about Linux is a bunch of pizza-munching fat geeks who never leave the house typing frivolously in the terminal all day and night.

Speaking of which, people also don't know where to ask for help. Sure, Linux is a community OS, but what is the community? Even I don't know outside of TPU. And if you happen to know, the answers you usually get for your questions begin with "open the terminal and..." even when there are way easier GUI solutions available as well.

This all paints the picture of a quirky OS made only for true nerds in the eyes of common people. Hardcore Linux aficionados don't get this for some reason. They keep insisting that it's easy, which it really is once you got the above figured out.

Unsavvy people still hear "Linux" and imagine green phosphorus command lines. Modern Linux you can go by without ever using the CLI.

 

[AusWolf]

Unsavvy people still hear "Linux" and imagine green phosphorus command lines. Modern Linux you can go by without ever using the CLI.

And that's why I love it. But unsavvy people class me together with the savvy ones and think that "Terminal" is my favourite game. It couldn't be further from the truth. The only command I know is neofetch, and I'd like to keep it that way.

 

[Wasteland]

If you do find yourself having to use the terminal--and I understand why that's undesirable for a lot of people--I highly recommend tldr. It gives you quick reference for the relevant command with a few simple examples and explanations. This reference is much more helpful for casual users than the man pages, which are fantastically detailed, but their density makes them a chore to wade through.

For example, the man page for "cp" looks like this. By contrast, "tldr cp" outputs the following:

Spoiler: tldr cp

General users, even what you might call "casual power users" (which is basically just a euphemism for "gamers") don't have to use the terminal on Linux these days though. Maybe once in a blue moon. There's usually a GUI solution. The trick is in knowing about the GUI solution, lol.

I use the terminal a fair bit myself, but these days rarely on the machine I'm sitting at--usually I do it when managing a remote machine over ssh. Even for that purpose, you could probably make do with a GUI interface, like Cockpit, most of the time.

Probably 90% of my posts on this forum concerning Linux are made with the aim of informing people about this-or-that GUI solution. The intent isn't to position myself as an expert, or to evangelize about Linux generally, though I do think it's a fantastic (and free!) product. Rather my intent is to simplify some of the pain points I went through. Auswolf is exactly right about Linux advice on the internet. It's mostly terminal copy-pasta, which is fine and good and (usually) accurate/effective, but it can also be intimidating to new users. Also, if you're like me, seeing long terminal commands proffered as solutions will prompt you to figure out what the terminal commands are intended to do before you commit to them. This can add a great deal of overhead to what might already be a frustrating troubleshooting exercise.

On the other hand, there are tasks for which the terminal is undoubtedly the most efficient option.

EDIT: I should add, to bring this rambling back on topic, that GUI tools are easier to find these days, the vast majority of them included as defaults. The amount of progress Linux has made in the last few years, with respect to user-friendliness, cannot be overstated. And that progress owes in large part to the influence of Valve and the Steam Deck.