• RogueBanana
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    7 months ago

    As someone who doesn’t have or tried steamos, is there a reason to choose it over existing distros? Is anyone here running it on their pc?

    • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      7 months ago

      It provides an alternative UI environment built and optimized for gaming. It has a separate windows manager, a complete ui, and a set of menus to simplify customization of whatever is needed for gaming and power saving.

      And quick access to steam store.

      It is extremely convenient if you like a console-like experience, but, if you are a tinker gamer, it has anyway a lot of nice additional features.

      It is inconvenient as general purpose desktop os, because on update you basically lose packages not installed as flatpack

      • XTornado@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        And it is somehow moddable, like people created plugins for the UI. I hope someone ends up adding alternative stores directly there and not just steam. But in any case you can install the respective apps and so on.

    • S410@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      SteamOS is an OS for gaming consoles. It’s specifically tailored for gaming and it has controller-friendly UI.

      You can game on regular distros, but you need to install and open Steam, download games, and, then, launch them, before you can grab the controller.

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        You could also launch directly to big picture mode for a “console” PC

        • S410@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          It’s a little more than that.

          SteamOS also uses an immutable filesystem and the system updates as a whole. Because of that, there is no risk of something updating separately and breaking compatibility.
          It’s fairly common for things to update on regular linux distros and break e.g. anticheat support in Proton or some other thing.

          Another thing SteamOS does, at least on the Steam Desk, is actually using two partitions. The updates are always installed to the inactive one, so there’s always one image that’s known to work. Even if an update fails, the device will simply boot into the intact OS image. Regular distros usually don’t have much in terms of fail-safes, so if things break, they have to be fixed manually.

          Basically, SteamOS is trying to be as reliable and “hands-off” of an OS as possible to provide best console-like experience.

    • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Mainly that it’s specifically calibrated for running games on Linux. I’ve tried the Steam Deck and it works pretty damn well out the box, compared to any other distros, so a PC version would be cool.

    • Jinxyface@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Mostly just Valve specific software implements to make the experience better. SteamOS has a really good suspend/resume sleep feature where you can just power off the Deck during a game like any other console, then when you hit the power button again it just lights back up to where you were in the game.

      Not sure if that’s in any other distro

        • Jinxyface@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          The Steam deck is very quick though. I just paused Like a Dragon Gaiden and it took about 2 seconds to go to sleep, left it sitting on the table for an hour or so while I did some errands. Picked it back up and hit thepower button and I was back on the pause menu in about another 2 seconds.

          Steam Deck “sleep” is more like locking your phone than it is like putting a Windows PC to sleep

    • The_Walkening [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      What I really appreciate is that it’s geared toward handhelds, but has a decent desktop experience and is powerful enough to be a nice mobile media/piracy box with a remote and a USB-C breakout dongle. You don’t even need to change the read-only filesystem if you use WireGuard VPN (this might take some legwork to generate the .conf files you need, depends on VPN provider) and a streaming/torrenting program that comes in flatpak.

      EDIT: Also forgot, you can add a custom shortcut to your Steam Library and have (some) programs launch from the SteamOS frontend rather than desktop.

    • Chump [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      Aside from native proton, being able to do everything (easily) from the controller. It’s amazing how often you still need a mouse, or just the windows key, in windows :(

    • 520@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      On a generic PC? No.

      On a Steam Deck, it has useful hardware related features that are easy to access, like global frame rate limiting and seamless sleep/resume