Seen a few times bazzite has been mentioned, but just have seen another user say they have OpenSUSE installed.
I’m not sure what the benefits of these options are, especially non-steamOS ISOs?
I think its mostly because its possible.
Some people do this sort of thing for fun. Personally, I’d rather spend my time playing games but that’s why I’m not Hackerman™.
I saw a video recently where a Steam Deck was repurposed as a robotics controller and monitor unit for prototypes. Having an off-the-shelf highly customizations controller for $350 is a steal for this industry, but they’re not using it for games.
(Video for reference: https://youtu.be/1KEtxTQUzxY)
I’ve seen videos where they used it as a drone controller in Ukraine. Truly a marvellous machine.
Mine is just running stock, but depending on what you’re trying to do with it I could imagine that a few things might not be palatable to some.
- The read only by default file system
- It kinda nukes everything on the system on update
- So much of how it handles the Linux side user profiles depends on there only being the default user
Thank you. Reading through responses this seems to answer it, I could imagine once you’re modifyinf foundational OS binaries you don’t want to have a SteamOS update nuke it.
Main reasons are for better software support and the option to use different desktop environments. For a gaming focused device I think SteamOS is great, but if I was docking my deck and using it as a development environment I would definitely want a less locked-down linux OS.
The appeal of Bazzite is that you still get all the benefits of SteamOS, but you also have more options for software and desktop environment. Other linux distros like OpenSUSE would have a even less restricted OS, although you would be making tradeoffs for some of the other nice things about SteamOS.
As I wasn’t using my desktop much I sold it and the deck’s desktop mode is my main computer now. In that perspective I really prefer bazzite’s gnome and more permissive package management.
Same. The Deck is my main computer and Bazzite is a much better OS than the default. I only wish I could boot straight to Desktop Mode, because I rarely have time to play games anymore.
One thing that Steam/Valve has done with the Steam Deck is lock down the ISO by default, and provide no tools to modify your image persistently. That is of course on purpose, because that works for 99% of users, but the 1% of users may wanna use something where they can, for instance, overlay packages and keep them with updates, or apply extra gaming-focused tweaks that may be more of a hassle to maintain on SteamOS.
For instance, I use Fedora Silverblue daily on my Desktop, and even though it is immutable just like the Deck, it offers me tools to modify my image as I see fit and have the same modifications be applied to future updates too.
Why not? 😏
