Collaboration with OEMs to provide SteamOS OTTB (Lenovo is an exception)
Nvidia support. Most gamers use Nvidia GPU unfortunately
Certain industry-standard software which don’t have a Linux port. PSA: Most people don’t want to learn alt software. Johnny Mainstream is scared of new softwares. This cannot be changed
End-users suffer from choice paralysis and Linux offers endless choice. Maybe SteamOS can help.
What we know so far, SteamOS won’t be a general purpose OS, so it might not support every random piece of h/w.
We might not have the year of the Linux Desktop, but we can expect 2025-2026 to be the year of the Linux handheld.
I use an old Nvidia card and I’m using the proprietary drivers. My distro maintainer said they are switching over to the open source version (only supported for 20xx series and above). They said it will cause an issue. I updated my distro like usual. And boom! Can’t boot anymore.
Since I’m more or less tech savvy, I could fix it but it took me few hours of my life to find the solution. I saw on reddit many people were having the same issue. If I constantly checked their Discord before every update, I could have avoided it but it’s impossible for a layman.
A mainstream person won’t be able to search & diagnose the problem. They will just think it’s a Linux problem and give up. This is why it’s impossible for Nvidia users to peacefully live with Linux. I know they are going to release a proper driver for Wayland but I am pretty sure that will take another 2-3 years. But till then, my stance remains the same.
Mine works fine, I knew nothing about linux and all I did was disable secureboot and copy paste some commands into the terminal. Now games that used to crash in windows don’t and games that didn’t run run.
And yes spent tons of time scouting forums, going through dumb windows control panels and messing around in regedit to troubleshoot it without a solution.
There are a few things in your anecdote that are particular to your case and which should be solvable by an installer that focuses on gpu detection; those are the things that valve will focus on.
Choice paralysis is a surprisingly big issue.
I’m waiting for the parts for my new gaming PC build to arrive, and the amount of time I’ve spent choosing a distro has been asinine.
But I did make the choice to leave both the NVIDIA and Windows eco systems on my desktop after seeing most my games run fine on the steam deck ( along with disliking windows 11, and NVIDIA ending gamestream support)
You are aware of the differences (or lack thereof) because you have spent some time. But think from a newbie perspective. They think there are 1000s of completely different OSs.
“Does OpenOffice work on Ubuntu? On Kubuntu? On Arch?”
Surprisingly for a choice that I realize doesn’t really matter, it still ends up burning alot of time researching.
Intially looked at Bazzite, which seemed great other than I wasn’t a fan of it immutability, I’ve had to remove the read-only property from my steam deck a few times.
Then I looked at CatchyOS/Arch, decided to avoid that as I know I’m too lazy to read notes every update, and while I don’t mind tinkering and fixing stuff… I want it to be on my schedule lol.
Avoiding Debian, my server currently runs it, but I remember it giving me headaches installing older JREs on it to run modded minecraft servers.
So I’m going to try OpenSuse, not for any real valid reason other than the last time I tried Linux as my daily driver ( 2004/2005) it was the first distro that worked smoothly without any driver headaches.
Intially looked at Bazzite, which seemed great other than I wasn’t a fan of it immutability, I’ve had to remove the read-only property from my steam deck a few times.
Fwiw, Bazzite handles its ‘immutability’ vastly different.
True, thats part of the reason why I didn’t try it. Bazzite seemed much closer to being truely immutable, vice the “read-only” safety rails SteamOS gives you.
I like to tinker too much to put it on my own machine, but I’ll probably put Bazzite on my son’s gaming machine next time I upgrade it.
Bazzite seemed much closer to being truely immutable
If you meant that it’s even harder to tinker/change/configure etc compared to SteamOS, then I’d like to inform you that this is false. Fedora Atomic, and thus Bazzite, facilitates quite a lot actually. Of course, it’s not as moldable as say Arch or Gentoo. To illustrate this, I won’t bother you with all the things it can do. Because that would take a while. Instead, I’ll only focus on the things it actually can not do. On the top of my head, the following comes to mind:
Rip systemd out and replace it with another init, but I’m unaware if traditional Fedora even facilitates this to begin with. Bazzite’s founder came by and corrected me on this. Even this is probably possible as a custom image.
UKI is something we very much want to do in the future, but it’s a long-term goal
As far as replacing the init system, I think even in traditional Fedora that would be extremely challenging, but it could probably be done as a custom image.
Thank you for chiming in and providing your thoughts!
While we’re at it, I absolutely appreciate your work. Wonderful stuff! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
UKI is something we very much want to do in the future, but it’s a long-term goal
That’s lovely to hear!
As far as replacing the init system, I think even in traditional Fedora that would be extremely challenging, but it could probably be done as a custom image.
Aight. I’ll change the list then. Thank you for enlightening me on this. The feasibility as a custom image is really encouraging; perhaps I’ll give it a go 😜.
Things which are holding this back
What we know so far, SteamOS won’t be a general purpose OS, so it might not support every random piece of h/w.
We might not have the year of the Linux Desktop, but we can expect 2025-2026 to be the year of the Linux handheld.
SRC: Linux fanboy for the last decade
Nvidia works flawlessly in my system, didn’t have to tweak anything.
Right, so since you had that experience, everyone else must also have it?
Previous commenter cited Nvidia support as a problem, I gave my singular experience of it not being a problem.
Not sure what you are on about.
Why did you feel compelled to give your anecdote, if not to undermine the idea that Nvidia support is not good?
Let me tell you about my Nvidia experience.
I use an old Nvidia card and I’m using the proprietary drivers. My distro maintainer said they are switching over to the open source version (only supported for 20xx series and above). They said it will cause an issue. I updated my distro like usual. And boom! Can’t boot anymore.
Since I’m more or less tech savvy, I could fix it but it took me few hours of my life to find the solution. I saw on reddit many people were having the same issue. If I constantly checked their Discord before every update, I could have avoided it but it’s impossible for a layman.
A mainstream person won’t be able to search & diagnose the problem. They will just think it’s a Linux problem and give up. This is why it’s impossible for Nvidia users to peacefully live with Linux. I know they are going to release a proper driver for Wayland but I am pretty sure that will take another 2-3 years. But till then, my stance remains the same.
Mine works fine, I knew nothing about linux and all I did was disable secureboot and copy paste some commands into the terminal. Now games that used to crash in windows don’t and games that didn’t run run. And yes spent tons of time scouting forums, going through dumb windows control panels and messing around in regedit to troubleshoot it without a solution.
There are a few things in your anecdote that are particular to your case and which should be solvable by an installer that focuses on gpu detection; those are the things that valve will focus on.
Choice paralysis is a surprisingly big issue. I’m waiting for the parts for my new gaming PC build to arrive, and the amount of time I’ve spent choosing a distro has been asinine.
But I did make the choice to leave both the NVIDIA and Windows eco systems on my desktop after seeing most my games run fine on the steam deck ( along with disliking windows 11, and NVIDIA ending gamestream support)
As the saying goes, you have to use arch or you have a small penis
Hey! Some of us manage both.
Distro doesn’t really matter too much. Just don’t get some obscure distro that no one has heard of before.
Plus it’s pretty common for newbies to jump around to test out different distros anyway.
Most of the time, the differences you will see are just desktop environment.
After you have used Linux for some time, then you will understand the major differences between the distros other than the way they look.
If you have any questions about Linux feel free to send me a DM. I’m always happy to help.
You are aware of the differences (or lack thereof) because you have spent some time. But think from a newbie perspective. They think there are 1000s of completely different OSs.
“Does OpenOffice work on Ubuntu? On Kubuntu? On Arch?”
We somehow have to stop spreading this message.
Surprisingly for a choice that I realize doesn’t really matter, it still ends up burning alot of time researching.
Intially looked at Bazzite, which seemed great other than I wasn’t a fan of it immutability, I’ve had to remove the read-only property from my steam deck a few times.
Then I looked at CatchyOS/Arch, decided to avoid that as I know I’m too lazy to read notes every update, and while I don’t mind tinkering and fixing stuff… I want it to be on my schedule lol.
Avoiding Debian, my server currently runs it, but I remember it giving me headaches installing older JREs on it to run modded minecraft servers.
So I’m going to try OpenSuse, not for any real valid reason other than the last time I tried Linux as my daily driver ( 2004/2005) it was the first distro that worked smoothly without any driver headaches.
I use CachyOs and it’s been a joy. If you want Debian but gaming optimized check out PikaOS. If you want Bazzite without immutability checkout Nobara.
That’s great. I looked into that one before, but never used it for some reason. I forget why, but it was nothing major.
Fwiw, Bazzite handles its ‘immutability’ vastly different.
True, thats part of the reason why I didn’t try it. Bazzite seemed much closer to being truely immutable, vice the “read-only” safety rails SteamOS gives you. I like to tinker too much to put it on my own machine, but I’ll probably put Bazzite on my son’s gaming machine next time I upgrade it.
If you meant that it’s even harder to tinker/change/configure etc compared to SteamOS, then I’d like to inform you that this is false. Fedora Atomic, and thus Bazzite, facilitates quite a lot actually. Of course, it’s not as moldable as say Arch or Gentoo. To illustrate this, I won’t bother you with all the things it can do. Because that would take a while. Instead, I’ll only focus on the things it actually can not do. On the top of my head, the following comes to mind:
Rip systemd out and replace it with another init, but I’m unaware if traditional Fedora even facilitates this to begin with.Bazzite’s founder came by and corrected me on this. Even this is probably possible as a custom image.UKI is something we very much want to do in the future, but it’s a long-term goal
As far as replacing the init system, I think even in traditional Fedora that would be extremely challenging, but it could probably be done as a custom image.
Thank you for chiming in and providing your thoughts!
While we’re at it, I absolutely appreciate your work. Wonderful stuff! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
That’s lovely to hear!
Aight. I’ll change the list then. Thank you for enlightening me on this. The feasibility as a custom image is really encouraging; perhaps I’ll give it a go 😜.