Submitted 15 hours ago by RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world to steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
To be clear, this question is for general PC use, and not only gaming.
Desktop mode on my Deck has easily become my favorite PC experience in a very long long time. I’ve used Windows and Apple my entire life before now, so I have zero experience with Linux, other than the Steam Deck, but the OS is incrediby friendly to newcomers, and I’d say it’s essentially a modern and polished version of Windows 95.
So what would you recommend as a similar experience for desktop?
Desktop mode on the Steam Deck is using [KDE Plasma](KDE Plasma). You can use that on the vast majority of Linux distros.
Here is a few the spring to mind:
I had seen Bazzite, and yes it does sound exactly like what I asked, but then on their website, every single feature/selling point is about games or performance. I don’t see one word about general usability, or applications, support, or anything, and I’m not sure who builds a PC used solely for gaming.
I am trying to dance around Linux distro concepts that are probably not super beginner friendly, so my descriptions might have been obtuse, but yes you can generally do anything on any distro.
Bazzite is a immutable distro, which gives you certian advantages, but makes it harder to accommodate some use cases. In general, if the software you want is on flathub.org you are golden.
While Bazzite is gaming focused, it will still be a great non-gaming distro. The main things gaming distros do is include some optimizations, prioritize faster software updates, bundle in some programs like Steam, and usually try to be more new user friendly. There’s also Fedora Silverblue, which is like the parent of Bazzite. It’s more developer focused though, and may not be as new user friendly as Bazzite.
But as others have said, your biggest request is having the same desktop environment as SteamOS, which is the KDE desktop. This is available on nearly every Linux distro, so you can get that experience with any of them. KDE even has it’s own official distro in the form of KDE Neon, which could honestly be a good choice for you if that’s your main requirement. It’s based on Ubuntu, which makes it easy to find help if you have an issue.
The biggest thing left to understand is that SteamOS and Bazzite are immutable distros, which means the system files are locked down. This makes those systems hard to break, and very reliable. However it can make installing some kinds of software harder. More tradition desktops like KDE Neon/Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora(non-silverblue) are not immutable. They will give your more options for installing software/etc, but there’s a higher chance of breaking something if you start messing with system files.
The distro’s marketing is gaming focused but the truth is there is not anything bad about their overall desktop experience. There is no difference between distros for blender and adobe support.
The same folks who made Bazzite also have Aurora and Bluefin. Those are general purpose distros with the same ideas as Bazzite, just less gaming stuff bundled in. The difference between the two is just the desktop environment (gnome for bluefin, kde for aurora).
But even though Bazzite is focused on gaming, it is still a pretty good distro for general use too. The same stuff that enables windows games to run on it also help run any windows program just as well, so it might be a good pick if you use any software that only runs on windows.
Apologies, I don’t understand. Is any modern Linux distro lacking “general usability” or applications? Anyway, for Bazzite, there’s a bunch of ways to install software. (Though I haven’t used it myself.) I’m also not sure what you’re looking for when you’re saying “support”. Good documentation? A helpful community? Continued active development?
Just because there’s a strong focus on gaming doesn’t mean the distro would suddenly do bad at everything else, especially… general home/office use. Linux is good with that across the board. I hope I didn’t misunderstand. Please explain.
Relevant post I made:
A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I’ve been liking MX Linux.
Bazzite, I guess.
Fedora.
Welcome to the world of Linux. Check out Fedora Kinoite. Here’s how they’re similar:
✅ It’s immutable – core OS files are read only. Just like the SteamDeck, this is more stable and secure. Updates happen all at once and the entire system can be rolled back to a working configuration (“snapshot”) if it all goes south. ✅ Applications are containerized and installed via a software store. Flatpak via Flathub is my personal preference, here. ✅ It uses the KDE desktop environment. In Linux there are a handful of DEs to choose from. The SD uses KDE and so does Kinoite. This is probably where you’ll see most similarities (that Windows '95 feel). ✅ Fedora’s community, like the SD, is large. Got a problem? There’s probably someone on the forums who had the same issue and can provide a solution.
I’ve been running it exclusively for two years now. As a self proclaimed distro-hopper, that’s really remarkable.
No reason to choose fedora kinoite when aurora and bazzite exist, they just add some nice qol, for example, on stock kinoite ffmpeg has the shit patents that make twitch not work.
Nice. I’ll check those out.
I realize I sound AI AF.
At least you didn’t use the em dash (—)
Lol, I will choose to trust this reply isn’t an elaborate AI ploy.
If you want to get started with Linux, I’d recommended Mint. It’s very easy to install and will run on just about anything. The Cinnamon desktop is pretty similar to Windows and you’ll feel right at home. Install Steam and start playing your games, it’s that simple. There are of course plenty of other excellent options but for ease of getting started, I don’t think anything beats Mint.
A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Well i haven’t tried Bazzite, but you’re selling it really well. I agree that Mint is a bit behind in Wayland support and they should get on with it. On the other hand, none if those things are really very relevant for day to day use. As long as you stick to the software center and update manager in Mint, you won’t have any trouble installing software or applying updates.
For some reason CachyOS hasn’t been mentioned. Like others said basically any distro can do what you’re describing, and this one is also one of those “with gaming in mind” distros. Didn’t mean you can’t do anything else on them, but anything making should “just work”. They also have a dedicated image/installer for “handheld” PCs like the steam deck that come preconfigured for that interface combination (but don’t use this special image on a normal PC/desktop).
Like SteamOS, it’s based on Arch, but unlike SteamOS or Bazzite it isn’t immutable. That’s a matter of preference. Being a rolling release means frequent and direct updates of new releases of any kind (kernel, software, everything, …).
So being not immutable, are there more options for installing typical Windows software, like Photoshop and illustrator? And would you recommend it to someone who’s not tech illiterate, but also not an IT person, as evidenced by my previous question?
Windows software is always the same (immutable distro or not), as it is run with “wine”. To run Windows programs they are installed in what’s called a prefix, which is basically just a folder containing stuff related to Windows. Things like “program files” and all the other folder structures a Windows program would expect, and will then appear as a drive letter. The prefix is generated inside your home folder (typically) anyway, which is always writable, and one can house multiple windows programs (or just the one if that needs special settings).
Immutability matters more for the actual Linux system and how you install Linux native software. Normally, you install software using a package manager (pacman on Arch, apt for Debian, …), and each package knows what else is needed to run it, and that gets installed as well. Many programs needing the same library means that library will be installed once. For an immutable distro this is basically fixed, and programs get run using “flatpacks” (there are similar solutions with other names, same idea). These are similar to packages from a package manager, but instead everything needed to run a program it’s always contained. That means they are bigger, but this will run on any distro, as it doesn’t have to tell the package manager what else to install. There are other technical details, like flatpacks are somewhat isolated, but nothing critical.
I would suggest finding a YouTube video or article to go into more detail if this matters to you, or if you just want to know more about the differences and reasons for using each of them.
Basic idea: immutable distro has stable base, updates are rarer, but system harder to modify. Regular distro is easier to tinker with, and a rolling release means frequent updates (doesn’t mean you need to install them frequently, btw), but occasionally things do break and might even require a manual fix.
I vouch for Kubuntu. It uses KDE Plasma, which is the exact same UI as SreamOS desktop mode. It’s based on Ubuntu, which is a very popular distro, so there’s a lot of support and apps that are packaged for it
don’t do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software… among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don’t.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Heads up if you’re eyeing Fedora or its progeny like Bazzite, Nobara: news.itsfoss.com/fedora-32-bit-support/
The proposal has been dropped
The proposal has been dropped
That was fast! Will update, suh.
Only thing to be aware of in Linux is the fragmentation of where packages can be installed from.
Default package manager? Differs across distro-bases: rpm, apt, pacman, apk and more. Cross-distro? Flatpak, snap, appImage. Install on “wrong” distro? Distrobox and others.
There are frontends that unify a handful of these but I wish there was a better option. Also inb4 standards.xkcd
I generally think the most important thing when you’re not yet very experienced with Linux is to just pick a distro that is relatively popular, since these are usually very googleable.
My personal favorite is probably still Fedora. Pick Fedora Workstation Gnome if you want something that has the most online support and Fedora KDE if you want something with a similar workflow as Windows.
I also generally think that using a normal Linux Distro is a better choice if you don’t want to do only gaming and nothing else, since Steam OS actually makes some things a lot more difficult (you cannot easily install many programs due to its immutable nature, it only has AMD GPU support, doesn’t include even basic things like print functionality, the installation process is not the easiest, …) These things will be pretty big hurdles to overcome for a newcomer. The only real thing that is probably easier on Steam OS is that Steam is already pre-installed, but considering that you can literally install Steam on Fedora without using the terminal probably less than 10 mouse clicks, I wouldn’t consider this a very big advantage.
If you do end up going for a normal distro (like Fedora), I would btw highly recommend installing Steam not as a flatpak but as a “normal” application. This is not very difficult and will provide a much more stable experience than if you just use the Flatpak (which may be the first thing you come across in the software store). There are short tutorials available for: Fedora, Ubuntu, …
Note you should probably switch to recommending aurora because it’s identical with some tweaks for beginners, for example on stock fedora twitch doesn’t work because redhat is an american company that respects patents that aren’t enforced elsewhere and you have to manually install an ffmpeg version that’s a whole annoying process. It’s essentially identical.
Cool, that is very helpful, and yes one main reason for this is I can’t install Adobe, and Blender3D has no GPU rendering support. I have yet to come across the lack of printing, lol.
This and Kubuntu are sounding good, and probably better than Bazzite for everyday and art stuff.
don’t do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software… among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don’t.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
The closest thing to SteamOS is ChimeraOS. Though it sounds like you’re mostly referring to Plasma, which is also included with Chimera, which is the desktop environment (DE) AKA the graphical user interface (GUI).
It is very friendly until you need to do something other than very basic things, at which point you’d better be prepared to become very familiar with the terminal.
Bazzite is the new hotness though, and it’s what I use, because it comes with a variety of customizations out of the box, and the ujust commands can greatly simplify a lot of common tasks that are otherwise far more complicated. Only downside of that is that it mostly only supports flatpaks and appimages, .deb and .rpm are the most common package formats and those have to be installed in containers, which comes with all the fun complications of containerization and sandboxing.
You might give GNOME a try though if you want to play around with something different. I much prefer it from an aesthetic perspective. Plasma is essentially made to look like Windows and GNOME more resembles MacOS.
I just put steam in big picture mode in an workspace in hyprland and it works wonders. Same thing basically as my deck.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Alright, y’all, I really appreciate all the feedback, I believe I understand the gist of most of it. Bazzite is sounding really nice, I just have one big concern: Can I put Adobe on it, so I can dropkick Windows out of my life? I did find this.