Desktop Linux distros similar to Steam OS?
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The proposal has been dropped
The proposal has been dropped
That was fast! Will update, suh.
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The proposal has been dropped
That was fast! Will update, suh.
Unsurprisingly so. The feedback has been overwhelmingly negative.
That being said, it's still a matter of time until it happens
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To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. I've used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I'd say it's essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]For some reason CachyOS hasn't been mentioned. Like others said basically any distro can do what you're describing, and this one is also one of those "with gaming in mind" distros. Didn't mean you can't do anything else on them, but anything making should "just work".
They also have a dedicated image/installer for "handheld" PCs like the steam deck that come preconfigured for that interface combination (but don't use this special image on a normal PC/desktop).Like SteamOS, it's based on Arch, but unlike SteamOS or Bazzite it isn't immutable. That's a matter of preference. Being a rolling release means frequent and direct updates of new releases of any kind (kernel, software, everything, ...). KDE is the default install option, like on the steam deck, but of course basically all other options are also available is you want (additionally or instead of kde).
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To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. I've used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I'd say it's essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]One thing to be aware of in Linux is the fragmentation of where packages can be installed from.
Default package manager? Differs across distro-bases: rpm, apt, pacman, apk and more. Cross-distro? Flatpak, snap, appImage. Install on "wrong" distro? Distrobox and others.
Oftentimes one package is packed up for multiple managers and you'll see a giant list of red and green in their github showing where you can and can't find it, but it's still worth being aware of it.
There are frontends that unify a handful of these but I wish there was a better option. Also inb4 standards.xkcd
With that said, getting started in Linux I recommend immutable images, only because you can't tweak it so hard it borks. And afaik updates will always "just work". I quite liked bazzite for that.
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To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. I've used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I'd say it's essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.
If you want to get started with Linux, I'd recommended Mint. It's very easy to install and will run on just about anything. The Cinnamon desktop is pretty similar to Windows and you'll feel right at home. Install Steam and start playing your games, it's that simple. There are of course plenty of other excellent options but for ease of getting started, I don't think anything beats Mint.
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If you want to get started with Linux, I'd recommended Mint. It's very easy to install and will run on just about anything. The Cinnamon desktop is pretty similar to Windows and you'll feel right at home. Install Steam and start playing your games, it's that simple. There are of course plenty of other excellent options but for ease of getting started, I don't think anything beats Mint.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
there is not one thing that is easier about the setup process on mint and since bazzite offers a nvidia image it's actually easier.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
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To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. I've used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I'd say it's essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
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I had seen Bazzite, and yes it does sound exactly like what I asked, but then on their website, every single feature/selling point is about games or performance. I don't see one word about general usability, or applications, support, or anything, and I'm not sure who builds a PC used solely for gaming.
I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff. Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be fantastic.
The distro's marketing is gaming focused but the truth is there is not anything bad about their overall desktop experience. There is no difference between distros for blender and adobe support.
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Welcome to the world of Linux. Check out Fedora Kinoite. Here's how they're similar:
It's immutable -- core OS files are read only. Just like the SteamDeck, this is more stable and secure. Updates happen all at once and the entire system can be rolled back to a working configuration ("snapshot") if it all goes south. Applications are containerized and installed via a software store. Flatpak via Flathub is my personal preference, here. It uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment. In Linux there are a handful of DEs to choose from. The SD uses KDE and so does Kinoite. This is probably where you'll see most similarities (that Windows '95 feel). Fedora's community, like the SD, is large. Got a problem? There's probably someone on the forums who had the same issue and can provide a solution.I've been running it exclusively for two years now. As a self proclaimed distro-hopper, that's really remarkable.
No reason to choose fedora kinoite when aurora and bazzite exist, they just add some nice qol, for example, on stock kinoite ffmpeg has the shit patents that make twitch not work.
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Lol, I will choose to trust this reply isn't an elaborate AI ploy. I'll definitely consider that, and you've already taught me a couple things
Note that bazzite/aurora is fedora kinoite with some stuff preinstalled like a thing that makes twitch.tv work out of the box, they're essentially straight upgrades.
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I vouch for Kubuntu. It uses KDE Plasma, which is the exact same UI as SreamOS desktop mode. It's based on Ubuntu, which is a very popular distro, so there's a lot of support and apps that are packaged for it
don't do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software... among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don't.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
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I generally think the most important thing when you're not yet very experienced with Linux is to just pick a distro that is relatively popular, since these are usually very googleable.
My personal favorite is probably still Fedora. Pick Fedora Workstation Gnome if you want something that has the most online support and Fedora KDE if you want something with a similar workflow as Windows.
I also generally think that using a normal Linux Distro is a better choice if you don't want to do only gaming and nothing else, since Steam OS actually makes some things a lot more difficult (you cannot easily install many programs due to its immutable nature, it only has AMD GPU support, doesn't include even basic things like print functionality, the installation process is not the easiest, ...) These things will be pretty big hurdles to overcome for a newcomer. The only real thing that is probably easier on Steam OS is that Steam is already pre-installed, but considering that you can literally install Steam on Fedora without using the terminal probably less than 10 mouse clicks, I wouldn't consider this a very big advantage.
If you do end up going for a normal distro (like Fedora), I would btw highly recommend installing Steam not as a flatpak but as a "normal" application. This is not very difficult and will provide a much more stable experience than if you just use the Flatpak (which may be the first thing you come across in the software store). There are short tutorials available for: Fedora, Ubuntu, ...
Note you should probably switch to recommending aurora because it's identical with some tweaks for beginners, for example on stock fedora twitch doesn't work because redhat is an american company that respects patents that aren't enforced elsewhere and you have to manually install an ffmpeg version that's a whole annoying process. It's essentially identical.
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Cool, that is very helpful, and yes one main reason for this is I can't install Adobe, and Blender3D has no GPU rendering support. I have yet to come across the lack of printing, lol. But what I like is just everyday usability, and also the lack of bullshit from Microsoft, Apple, and also Android that gives me literal anxiety at this point. I dont know, it just feels like the zen garden of the computer world for some reason, but yeah more support would be grand, as well as playing Cyberpunk with mods and 60fps ultra.
This and Kubuntu are sounding good, and probably better than Bazzite for everyday and art stuff.
don't do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software... among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don't.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
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I had seen Bazzite, and yes it does sound exactly like what I asked, but then on their website, every single feature/selling point is about games or performance. I don't see one word about general usability, or applications, support, or anything, and I'm not sure who builds a PC used solely for gaming.
I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff. Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be fantastic.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]While Bazzite is gaming focused, it will still be a great non-gaming distro. The main things gaming distros do is include some optimizations, prioritize faster software updates, bundle in some programs like Steam, and usually try to be more new user friendly. There's also Fedora Silverblue, which is like the parent of Bazzite. It's more developer focused though, and may not be as new user friendly as Bazzite.
But as others have said, your biggest request is having the same desktop environment as SteamOS, which is the KDE desktop. This is available on nearly every Linux distro, so you can get that experience with any of them. KDE even has it's own official distro in the form of KDE Neon, which could honestly be a good choice for you if that's your main requirement. It's based on Ubuntu, which makes it easy to find help if you have an issue.
The biggest thing left to understand is that SteamOS and Bazzite are immutable distros, which means the system files are locked down. This makes those systems hard to break, and very reliable. However it can make installing some kinds of software harder. More tradition desktops like KDE Neon/Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora(non-silverblue) are not immutable. They will give your more options for installing software/etc, but there's a higher chance of breaking something if you start messing with system files.
If immutable sounds good, I'd recommend going with Bazzite still. If you want more freedom to customize your system and install software from outside of the discover store, I'd recommend KDE Neon.
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No reason to choose fedora kinoite when aurora and bazzite exist, they just add some nice qol, for example, on stock kinoite ffmpeg has the shit patents that make twitch not work.
Nice. I'll check those out.
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I realize I sound AI AF.
At least you didn't use the em dash (—)
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A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
there is not one thing that is easier about the setup process on mint and since bazzite offers a nvidia image it's actually easier.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Well i haven't tried Bazzite, but you're selling it really well. I agree that Mint is a bit behind in Wayland support and they should get on with it. On the other hand, none if those things are really very relevant for day to day use. As long as you stick to the software center and update manager in Mint, you won't have any trouble installing software or applying updates.
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Well i haven't tried Bazzite, but you're selling it really well. I agree that Mint is a bit behind in Wayland support and they should get on with it. On the other hand, none if those things are really very relevant for day to day use. As long as you stick to the software center and update manager in Mint, you won't have any trouble installing software or applying updates.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]sure, day to day it might not matter if you don't do anything weird, but when it does matter... it matters a lot
and you're not gaining anything by sacrificing these additions.
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At least you didn't use the em dash (—)
I like the em dash and am very upset that AI has stolen it.
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To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. I've used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I'd say it's essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.
I've been liking MX Linux.
