Now if Valve can just give us an up-to-date version of SteamOS for desktops…!
Probably have to wait till they have the official general version of steam os out first.
Depending on what the next product is, development might speed up.
Imo the largest thing holding back a desktop (or consolized) steam os is that a majority of the console space wants to be able to play multiplayer games, and the most popular ones have anti-cheat, which imo is the biggest hurdle valve must beat if they want the device to actually sell.
vr on linux needs to have better support as well, right now its just a huge yikes
its also sort of two faced as AMD’s encoders specifically for wireless vr gameplay is typically less performant in terms of latency and quality compared to Nvidias. Given though valve does wired headsets, it’s less of a problem as being wired fixes both problems, but still not be ideal for those using a quest on an AMD based linux system.
The big anti-cheat tools (BattleEye and EAC) are already compatible. The only remaining problems are a small number of developers that intentionally announced that they will be proactively blocking linux… like Bungie.
Not saying that its all in valves hands, but its a problem valve and the said companies need to discuss in the back room in order to get the ball rolling, regardless.
Valve won’t directly support your desktop. I recommend trying out Universal Blue distributions like Bazzite-nvidia or ChimeraOS if you’re on AMD graphics. This has worked well enough for me (Nvidia drivers still suck on most Linux distros).
I’m on Debian + GNOME right now, which works fine for me, but I plan on trying out Pop! OS in the next couple weeks. I’ve put off a long time because it’s downstream of Ubuntu and I’m no longer a fan of Canonical’s direction.
Why? Just install Steam and set it to run Big Picture Mode and you’re done. I personally don’t want a locked-down OS by Valve as my daily driver…
SteamOS is locked down?
Not really, you can run
sudo steamos-readonly disableto make it writeable, but that’s not really advised.The way you’re supposed to install software is through the Discover store, which puts it in the writeable portion of the filesystem (only system files are read-only). That’s a bit of a different way of the system than most desktop Linux distributions.
Also, you get whatever updates Valve supplies, whereas desktop Linux distributions will generally provide more packages and often more frequent updates. So your selection of system packages (the stuff that would go in that read-only filesystem) would be more limited than with a regular desktop distribution. Valve is probably only going to supply drivers for their products and whatnot, so you’re going to be stuck with whatever Valve chooses to support.
But there’s really nothing special about SteamOS. All of the important stuff is either packaged with Steam on desktop or submitted upstream (e.g. kernel and driver improvements), so you’ll be getting that with any reasonably up-to-date distro. Save yourself the headache and just pick a mainstream distro and auto start Big Picture Mode on boot. Then you can use it for whatever you want and not be limited by whatever Valve wants to support.
Didn’t Pornhub see a non-insignificant rise in Linux as well? I wonder how much the steam deck accounted for that as well 😅
That seems… awkward. It’s hard enough to hold with one hand, but also trying to navigate at the same time is going to be tricky.
Removed by mod
I guess you’d get intimate with your Deck.
One of my paradoxes, im anticapitalist and I’m greeting valve for their work on steamdeck (not an owner) and proton.
That’s participate to democratize the use of Linux as a daily OS a lot.Being anti capitalist and being in favor of capitalist companies injecting ressources into projects that benefit everyone is compatible imo. Especially when that company does not ask for anything in return and makes the work open source
What we hope is for them to continue this approach that is helping both them (detaching from Windows, where they see Microsoft Store as a threat) and the users. Even if in the future there is a chance they might either back down or do less than liked actions, their positive contribution will remain.
There are lots of great corporations out there. Most of them are just overshadowed by the biggest and most abusive ones in the headlines.
Yeah they did a great job to promote an alternative to windows. They are behind Proton.
You can be anticapitalist and still agree with certain companies. Especially when those companies are private, and are not beholden to corrupt shareholders. Private companies are significantly more capable of having and sticking to their morals.
Public shareholders are no more corrupt nor less moral than private shareholders, but all of their incentives and information end up being based on more short-term results. Valve is every bit as driven by money as any other company, but they’re thinking long-term, and they believe that there’s more money to be made long-term by treating customers better than their competitors do. That means they release open hardware that isn’t locked down, unlike what their competitors do. They want to mitigate business risk by decoupling PC gaming from a dependency on Microsoft, and all sorts of very capitalist entities mutually benefit from a healthy, usable Linux ecosystem that they can each make work for their own needs.
Whether or not public shareholders are more or less moral than private shareholders is not really quantifiable, and neither of us can say with certainty that it is true. I certainly agree that that public shareholders often focus on short term results, but it’s not true all the time. There are public companies that think long term and private companies that think very short term.
There are, but the incentives put in place by public companies tend to favor short-term results when they’re releasing quarterly earnings, something that some big investors have pushed back against for that very reason. Public investors may not be more corrupt either, but they may be less knowledgeable about the harm they’re doing when they make changes to the product to get more revenue, like that infamous investor call where someone suggested charging $1 to make Mario jump higher. Microtransactions are clearly a business model that customers are willing to pay for, so it makes sense that person would raise the question, but I doubt that guy plays Mario games in his spare time, because no one who does would suggest that.
They also go down the hole faster once someone with looser ethics takes control.
It’s the paradox of the benevolent dictator, sure they can provide fantastic and quick service to their subjects… but as soon as the ruler is no longer benevolent, it’s just a dictatorship.
Yay, linux use was around 1% the beginning of 2023, now it’s so close to 2%, I hope we see an exponential growth by the end of this year.
I just switched my aging gaming rig to Linux over the Xmas break. One more grain of sand to add to the pile!
Welcome to the linux community.
Only 5-6 years until Linux is at 100% at this rate…
In 8 years Linux will be around 500%
a year and a bit spent on the steam deck makes me wonder if daily driving linux would be all that hard. i’ve tried before but was always bounced off by the stupidest little things, like not being able to find wi-fi drivers or whatever. but nowadays i’m starting to think all that is worth it to be off windows
Wi-Fi drivers? Most should be supplied by the kernel. Do you have obscure Wi-Fi hardware?
Laptops with Realtek wifi often sucks monkey balls. I swapped mine for an Intel one to get rid of dropped packets.
