Im thinking of changing my daily driver for Win 10 to SteamOS. Any reason not to?
Pop! OS might be a good option. It’s Ubuntu-based and is pretty easy to get running. I switched from Windows 10 earlier this year and it’s been mostly fine. A couple points to ask yourself before experimenting with Linux:
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Is your data backed up? Will it be okay if you lose all of your computer’s data? I backed up all the important documents just in case I made a mistake.
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Do you need Windows specifically for anything important? For example, do you use your computer for work? Stuff like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud either doesn’t or can’t run on Linux. However, there are tons of FOSS alternatives to replace Office and Adobe software.
I really like Pop! OS because it’s a nice bridge distro from Windows to Linux. It’s possible that I’ll switch to a more “advanced” distro like Arch in the future, but it’s nice just not having to worry about Windows 10 or having to upgrade to 11.
Keep in mind though, I still keep an install of Windows 10 on my machine in case I need to switch back for work software.
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I’d say CachyOS there is a learning curve but if you know these windows terms: registry, batch, sfc /scannow … then you already have enough technological know how to get started with rolling release.
My advice for gaming on Linux is to have a seperate hard drive where you store things you care about (including games) so you are able to wipe everything in case something goes wrong.
SteamOS is not designed for general computing, so if you use your machine for anything outside of gaming, a desktop distro would be a better fit. (If I were to do this as a first step away from Windows, I would probably choose Linux Mint and switch to the KDE Plasma desktop environment after installing the OS.)
You could then install Steam and get all the gaming goodness without giving up productivity apps. Maybe use Steam’s Big Picture Mode if you really want a console-like interface.
My understanding is that SteamOS, while having a desktop mode, is a stripped down OS lacking some basic functionality that you might expect from a desktop OS. Functionality that is also found in other distros with similar intentions like Bazzite.
Though this understanding was based more on a bit of older information, and I am not certain on the current state.
SteamOS, at this point, is not officially supported outside of select hardware (Basically, Steam Deck and other handelds), so while it is prominent and talked about - it may not be the best choice for home PC usage.
As @chortle_tortle@mander.xyz said already: Bazzite is probably the closest equivalent, it also has gaming optimisation, but a more fully-fledged Desktop experience along with it. There are other gaming focused distros (e.g. Garuda, PikaOS) as well, but if you are prone to choice anxiety, just go with Bazzite - and check the others out if you get sucked down the “I want to tinker more with my system and try out more, different Linux flavours” pipeline later.
Unfortunately, seems bazzite may not survive. A proposed fedora change would make it so the main maintainer would basically need to shut the project down.
That’s actually addressed in this video - he interviews the main maintainer in the last segment. The issue was Fedora announcing they want to retract support for 32 bit libraries eventually, and that sparking fear in the community, because some apps like the Steam client would be affected. As it looks as per the interview, to quote the maintainer: “Bazzite is not going anywhere”. The Fedora maintainers took comments to heart (in fact, their announcement was to get feedback from the community), and critical libraries for certain applications will remain maintained, until apps like Steam and OBS and such can switch to 64-bit architectures.
But don’t feel bad for thinking otherwise - in the interview, the Bazzite maintainer laments how many outlets used the announcement to fearmonger, so that was a widespread sentiment. Sensationalism, anxiety and outrage tactics to get clicks, basically.
Oh boy, this is gonna be floating around for a long time.
The founder did an interview on Gardiner Bryant’s youtube channel either yesterday or the day before where he clarified that statement. The short version is not to worry about that possibility any time soon.
The article, in lieu of the video:
Thank you
Better kernel = better performance I guess?
There’s more to it than that, but that’s a pretty big factor.
The other two main things:
Windows is full of bloat/malware garbage that spies on you and does shit you don’t need, and it gets harder and harder every year to figure out how, or even if you can strip this garbage out…
And all of Windows is a jumbled mess of 30+ years of spaghetti code at this point.
New versions of windows are not like … ok, we’re gonna refactor everything, build it all again from the ground up in a more efficient way.
More like a snowball that rolls through snow and mud and sticks and dead leaves.
Miracle it hasn’t collapsed under its own weight at this point, what with so much work being done by temp contractors who have no singular consistent approach to anything, who tend to either not document things at all, or very poorly.
I am forced to work on Windows server and they keep adding an ugly veneer to the legacy UI, its amazing how ugly, cluttered, and lacking basic functionality it is. Something as basic as adding more than 2 DNS servers is impossible without the legacy UI.
Last time I used Windows was 10, and I was able to find 4, 4 different fucking historical UI schemes/frameworks by digging deep enough into arcane settings menus.
I was working at MSFT when 8 released.
Broke every server tool, SQL Manangement Studio, fucking everything, for weeks.
We asked them if there was a way to go back to the 7 UI.
Nope! It’s been removed!
… And a few days later, word of mouth and email chains start spreading an arcane series of override procedures to get back to the Win 7 GUI/Desktop, that is almost entirely still there… and after almost a month, our team finally gets the whole process forwarded to us or our team lead unofficially obtained it or something who fucking knows.
So much for ‘its been removed’.
After a month of so of that, MSFT realizes that a tablet only interface for desktop PCs is fucking stupid, they make the 7 UI/Desktop into an easier toggle, and kablamo, thats Windows 8.1!
We totally planned this the whole time everyone!
I hate MSFT more than most, because I used to work for them, they’re fucking awful.
