Huh. I never even considered the possibility of putting SteamOS on a laptop/desktop... I have a spare engineering laptop sitting around, might try it.
I completely advocate for it. It costs you nothing but time and disk space. You can still run games from other sources with only slight tinkering.
Open source is so beneficial for humanity and for gaming there aren't really downsides for tons and tons of games.
You lose all the spyware from microsoft, the incessant mandatory patching and upgrade notifications and loads of other things that provide no value.
Nothing stops you from being able to dual boot windows or run it in a VM either.
AFAIK, VM gaming is still a pain in the ass. You need to jump through a lot of hoops for any kind of GPU passthrough.
Think they meant run Windows in a VM if you need it
I thought that was still not officially available, only forks or rebuilds of sorts?
They have to publish kernel edits,
As far as I am aware it’s just Arch with gamescope though so you aren’t gaining anything from using SteamOS 3 compared to a typical Linux build
Boots up gaming PC
Windows: "YOU IN DANGER ZONE! NEED WINDOWS 11! BUY NEW PC U SCRUB!!!111"
Load up Steam
Steam: "Hey, I see MS are being assholes - click here to install SteamOS instead"
Reboot PC
Millions of people never run windows again
I'm dreaming but that would be amazing. That would make this the year of the Linux desktop. C'mon GabeN, make it happen!
Are you sure you don't want to create a microsoft ID? Microsoft believes that you should only trust them with all of your data and credentials. They promise they won't hand over your information to the government unless the government serves them a subpoena or has an agreement to access the data that is lawful or they detect something they have been asked to report.
Well you wouldn't mind the government just checking unless you're a criminal.
You forgot the endless pages of trick questions you have to periodically step through to get into Windows. One wrong move and you owe Microsoft money every month.
If Linux had better nvidia support I would swap in a heart beat.
I have been running OpenSUSE with nVidia for 7 years. No issues here.
AMD's RT performance is getting quite close to Nvidia. Each generation gets them closer and closer.
CUDA will always be proprietary but there's a ton of resources being put against alternative solutions.
Using Pop for almost 2 years on nvidia laptop and pc, no problem, whats the issue?
...Ok no problem is a lie, but it wasn't GPU related problems..
Things which are holding this back
- Collaboration with OEMs to provide SteamOS OTTB (Lenovo is an exception)
- Nvidia support. Most gamers use Nvidia GPU unfortunately
- Certain industry-standard software which don't have a Linux port. PSA: Most people don't want to learn alt software. Johnny Mainstream is scared of new softwares. This cannot be changed
- End-users suffer from choice paralysis and Linux offers endless choice. Maybe SteamOS can help.
What we know so far, SteamOS won't be a general purpose OS, so it might not support every random piece of h/w.
We might not have the year of the Linux Desktop, but we can expect 2025-2026 to be the year of the Linux handheld.
SRC: Linux fanboy for the last decade
Nvidia works flawlessly in my system, didn't have to tweak anything.
Choice paralysis is a surprisingly big issue.
I'm waiting for the parts for my new gaming PC build to arrive, and the amount of time I've spent choosing a distro has been asinine.
But I did make the choice to leave both the NVIDIA and Windows eco systems on my desktop after seeing most my games run fine on the steam deck ( along with disliking windows 11, and NVIDIA ending gamestream support)
As the saying goes, you have to use arch or you have a small penis
Hey! Some of us manage both.
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