this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Steam Deck
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Because of how good Proton has become, I'm considering dropping Windows and switching to Arch for gaming at my next upgrade.
Two players developing improvements to Steam OS and Proton can only make things better.
I was thinking of using Bazzite. I use Arch for my work install and have been using Arch for personal use since 2015 with Windows dual boot for gaming. Bazzite/UBlue has really surprised me and if I didn't have an Nvidia GPU I think I would've already migrated completely away from Windows with Bazzite. Container based OSes with immutable root are the future IMO.
Bazzite is great, I've used it for a good while and it's never let me down. Have it on my deck right now, in fact!
I'm tempted to switch to my deck to Bazzite, but I also have everything set up exactly how I want it right now and it seems like a huge pain to set everything up again.
I also know that anytime valve announces a new deck feature update I'll immediately want to check it out.
Totally fair. On the updates, it's a fedora based rolling release of sorts so you get kernel updates way earlier and steam updates just as regularly as vanilla on top, pretty sure it follows the preview branch by default. I remember back when I installed it I had the new color vibrancy slider months before 3.5 hit and the new mesa with smaller shader cache sizes and whatnot too.
Oo, this is the first I've heard of Bazzite. I'll have to go check it out!
Lmk if you happen to need any help with it, I'm no expert but would love to lend a hand!
If I may ask, what was your motivation to run Bazzite on your deck? I'm familiar with why you'd use it on your PC (ended up having to turn back from it on my PC, as I couldn't figure out how to disable the upscaling the desktop had), or maybe a HTPC, but I haven't seen anyone mention why they install it on their deck so I am a bit interested now after seeing multiple people mention it.
Honestly, the short answer is because I think it's cool and because I can haha.
The long answer is because several features I appreciate would be either impossible or extremely painful to pull off on the stock OS. In no particular order, off the top of my head:
For a more practical example on why I appreciate the more recent packages, I remember getting that new mesa release with considerably smaller shader caches months ago, I'm not even sure vanilla Steam OS already has it.
With all that said, it really does mostly boil down to my just feeling like tinkering a little anyway. There are cool advantages but they're pretty niche at the end of the day, I'm just the kind of nerd who loves experimenting. Hell, I'm considering test driving NixOS for the heck of it.
Plenty fair enough, thanks! That does remind me that I do need to look into Nix{OS} again, SteamOS does have built in support for Nix (or at least, I see there's a
/nixfolder by default now). Had some issues with daily driving NixOS on my desktop a while back ago, but I suppose that doesn't mean I can't use it as a package manager!Ah, it seems they've added Nix on 3.5, that's quite nice! At the very least I love using Home Manager to basically setup everything CLI and more. Overengineered dotfiles with extra bells and whistles, if you will!
My past experiences with actually daily driving NixOS hadn't been too great either so I hear you there. I don't use it on my desktop rn because my setup is regrettably too tied to Windows atm but I sure love the thing.
If you want to switch I really recommend looking up what apps you need and if there's a cross-platform alternative try using it before switching OS. It makes it so much easier if you're used to the applications.
I made the switch around a year ago and only have a handful of games that don't work.
I've played with Linux for the last 15-20 years, so I knew what I was getting into, but also things are in a way better state now than they used to be.
Good call :3
Not a PC gamer myself but if you're new to Linux arch is prolly a bad idea
I took a class regarding Linux administration, and I've dabbled here and there, but most importantly, I spun up a VM to practice the initial installation process.
The wiki is super helpful, but it's a bit spaghettified at times. 😅
Though now I'm wondering if I might prefer NixOS. I have Bazzite on a laptop and my Deck, and I like its atomic behavior a lot, but Nix is kind of a unique take on atomic distros.
Cool :3