I genuinely can’t wait for the day I can finally drop Windows altogether and boot directly in to steam os on my gaming pc’s / laptops and handhelds.
Windows becomes more of a bloated mess every update. Literally the only thing I use it for these days is launch games.
Bring it on Steam !
thats what i do already. what is missing for you on linux still? is it anticheat?
I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.
If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.
Thanks for this!
Out of interest, how is the driver support for Nvidia cards? This is the thing that has always put me off bailing on Windows for games.
Practically speaking, we are at a turning point regarding Nvidia on Linux. Things were bad before but they have improved significantly. Newer drivers from Nvidia are partially open-source and they seem good so far.
As long as your GPU isn’t too old, it should be fine. Bur you should verify before commiting.
I’ve had some issues with NV cards, but those were prior to the newer open-source driver architecture which should be available for Turing cards and beyond:
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
I’ve actually got a laptop with a 2070 so I’ll try that out myself and see if it resolves some of the issues I know I had with the proprietary drivers
You can… currently.
I’m running bazzite on both my handheld and my PC…
Other than a mild annoyance at having to manually changing the resolution on my PC to get remote play to work properly, it’s been great.
You can still drop windows and boot to KDE (the desktop is based on it for the steam deck) :)
Honest question: what’s stopping you currently? For me, I kept Windows around purely for playing certain VR games that didn’t run well on Linux. The last Windows update fucked up my video config, so I reluctantly decided to try SteamVR on Linux again.
I’ll admit my hopes weren’t particular high given me last shot at it but holy shit pretty much every VR game I tried worked as well as they had in Windows (Angry Birds develop a weird controller jitter after about 30 minutes but I’ve had that in Windows too).
The only extra steps I had to do to get stuff working was install “SteamVR experimental” and one of the Linux utilities to set my GPU to always run in performance mode when gaming (not necessary for everything but jealous with some).
For non-VR, most AAA titles also work great. The main issue I’ve seen is certain DRM for non-Steam multiplayer games can be a bit finicky, but that’s getting better too and it’s been awhile since I’ve run afoul of those.
Looks like nothing at all…. I know when I looked back a year or so ago people deterred me due to Nvidia drivers not being well supported.
Had a read up on Bazzite last night and it looks just the ticket ! :)
Thanks for the reply (and thanks to everyone that responded). Going to install on my desktop, laptop and handhelds as of tomorrow :)
I yes, I should have mentioned the distro+hardware on this system is Mint with an AMD CPU and 6900XT GPU. AMD drivers are pretty well supported in Linux. I also run some Debian systems which do well, though I’ve not tried VR on them
There can be some issues with Nvidia cards due to proprietary drivers but I’ve heard they’re now supporting a FOSS driver in newer cards so as long as you’ve got one of those you should be good.
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
Hopefully it’ll get big enough they peripheral makes will finally make Linux native apps for their stuff. It’s one of the biggest hurdles to me moving completely to Linux
