Steam Deck

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Desktop Linux distros similar to Steam OS? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

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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, and I use it more docked as a PC than for gaming. 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?

Edit: I should probably add that I'm an artist and designer, and play around with Blender and 3D modeling stuff, and maybe even some game dev at some point. So Adobe support, and GPU Blender support would be superfantastic.

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[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

If immutable sounds good, I'd recommend going with Bazzite still. If you want more freedom to customize your system and install software from outside of the discover store, I'd recommend KDE Neon.