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.
Desktop mode on the Steam Deck is using KDE Plasma. You can use that on the vast majority of Linux distros.
Here is a few the spring to mind:
- Bazzite - A good place to start, their project goal is to basically be SteamOS like experience you can put on any machine.
- Fedora Workstation with KDE - Bazzite is based off of this project, it’s a more general experiance, lots of people enjoy it.
- Kubuntu - Ubuntu is very popular distro, this is their KDE version.
- OpenSuse Tumbleweed - For folks who want the most up to date software possible.
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.
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.
I am trying to dance around Linux distro concepts that are probably not super beginner friendly, so my descriptions might have been obtuse, but yes you can generally do anything on any distro.
Bazzite is a immutable distro, which gives you certian advantages, but makes it harder to accommodate some use cases. In general, if the software you want is on https://flathub.org/ you are golden.
By Adobe, I mean Photoshop, Illustrator, Substance, etc, which on Windows need to be installed with the Adobe Cloud app. Flathub only seems to have Acrobat.
I don’t believe those products have native Linux versions. You would need to run them from a compatibility layer. To be honest nothing on my desktop has needed that so not too familiar with the best way to do that.
Software support is basically identical across any Linux distro. It’s not really a concern when choosing a distro to use. Of course some are easier to install stuff on than others.
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
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.
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, …
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.
If you haven’t looked at Garuda yet, it’s the system I switched to after Bazzite. It’s Arch based and user friendly.
Alright, y’all, I really appreciate all the feedback, I believe I understand the gist of most of it. Bazzite is sounding really nice, I just have one big concern: Can I put Adobe on it, so I can dropkick Windows out of my life? I did find this.
Adobe and Linux isn’t a thing unfortunately
I’ve been liking MX Linux.
