Steam Hardware

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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Follow the rules of Sopuli
Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
No piracy, there are other communities for that.
Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
Have fun.

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founded 4 years ago

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129

[Deck] A Linux Power User Puts SteamOS To Work (hackaday.com)

submitted 1 day ago by IcedRaktajino@startrek.website to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The line between a Linux user and a Linux power user is a bit gray, and a bit wide. Most people who install Linux already have more computer literacy than average, and the platform has long encouraged experimentation and construction in a way macOS and Windows generally aren’t designed for. Traditional Linux distributions often ask more of their users as well, requiring at least a passing familiarity with the terminal and the operating system’s internals especially once something inevitably breaks.

In recent years, however, a different design philosophy has been gaining ground. Immutable Linux distributions like Fedora Silverblue, openSUSE MicroOS, and NixOS dramatically reduce the chances an installation behaves erratically by making direct changes to the underlying system either impossible or irrelevant.

SteamOS fits squarely into this category as well. While it’s best known for its console-like gaming mode it also includes a fully featured Linux desktop, which is a major part of its appeal and the reason I bought a Steam Deck in the first place. For someone coming from Windows or macOS, this desktop provides a familiar, fully functional environment: web browsing, media playback, and other basic tools all work out of the box.

As a Linux power user encountering an immutable desktop for the first time, though, that desktop mode wasn’t quite what I expected. It handles these everyday tasks exceptionally well, but performing the home sysadmin chores that are second nature to me on a Debian system takes a very different mindset and a bit of effort.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Support the vast majority of titles with minimal friction right out of the box.

Games run via Steam Linux Runtime which is the same across all Linux installations of Steam.

I don’t want to have do dick around and tweak shit when I want to relax with a video game

If you need to "tweak shit", you have not fully compatible hardware (NVidia or so), something SteamOS won't solve because it's just a regular Linux distribution.

I want to be able to slap an OS on a PC and have it be Steam Deck But Bigger.

You already can. The SteamOS recovery image is explicitly for other systems as well since quite some time. People use it on the Framework Desktop, for example, even though the devices list does not feature that PC.

Don't expect ever formal support for any hardware where Valve cannot control the drivers. They've been fucked by proprietary platform holders in the past, they don't want to repeat this again. So either your hardware is fully supported by upstream kernel/Mesa drivers (which SteamOS already ships because it's just another Linux distribution with absolutely not magic dust) or SteamOS will likely never work on those.