Right, and I never said it was only Big Picture. What can it do that Linux + Big Picture can’t?
Steam OS is a lot more powerful than big picture
Telorand@reddthat.com 7 months ago
IronSage@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Its a fair take, but the “game mode” where the is is running gamescope allows valve to do some magic that’s not super possible with the current big picture
mykneedoesnthurt@kbin.social 7 months ago
Does it have more oomph? More chutzpah? More mileage? More HP? More pep in its step? More ability to go the distance? More firepower? More brass? More boldness? More flavor?
bioemerl@kbin.social 7 months ago
Yes
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
In what way?
My desktop with endeavour OS and SteamDeck can do all the same things… In fact doing some things is more tricky because it’s limited to installing flatpaks.
bioemerl@kbin.social 7 months ago
That's the advantage. A PC with a layer on top is a PC with a layer on top. It still wants you to have a mouse and keyboard. You still have to update it like a normal desktop PC.
Steam OS is controller and controller only. It's a no bullshit durable system designed to be put on a box and just leave it that way.
You can do the same things, but I'm not putting a norma lLinux box running steam under my TV.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Except SteamOS is also just “a linux box running steam”… The only differences I’m hearing you wanting is immutability, and discrete version updates instead of a bunch of package upgrades. There are several immutable distros, and updates can be made painless in a variety of ways.
The SteamOS UI is big picture mode now. Since some update or other, the old big picture mode from SteamOS 1.0 got updated to the SteamDeck UI for desktop as well.
bioemerl@kbin.social 7 months ago
You can basically count on this as a rule, whenever you're saying something reductive like this, You are probably missing something really critical.
In this case that critical thing you're missing is ease of use and support.
I'm not putting a Linux distro under my couch because I know that almost as a fact that computer will break in some strange way, and I will have to dig that stupid thing out from under my TV, plug it into some stupid monitor keyboard and mouse, and fix it by following a guide on Google, reinstall the operating system to whatever the hot flavor of the month that actually has developer support is, that sort of thing.
But I would happily install steam OS, because I know I would drop steam OS on that box and it would just work for however long valve has a successful hardware line, which at this point I think is going to be a decade given the success of the steam deck.
XyliaSky@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
SteamOS is Steam running Big Picture mode on a modified and limited Linux distribution based on Arch, with not much else going on. There is some weird shit with the compositor, but you can replicate that on any other Linux system.
It’s quite literally nothing special. The only reason to want it on Desktop is to save a few minutes of setup for a machine you intend to only run Steam games.