Valve have released SteamOS 3.7.0 Preview, which they noted has the beginnings of support for non-Steam Deck handhelds! So we're closing in on the previously announced Beta for more handhelds. Although this release is still just for Steam Deck.
I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.
If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.
Bazzite works wonderfully even for non techy types. On mobile at least, NV drivers are working well but there is a performance penalty. Surprisingly, when the windows drivers are CPU limited, the linux one is actually performs better but, generally, there is a performance penalty on linux. AMD GPUs have parity except for Raytracing, at least from what I’ve seen, RADV performs below the proprietary driver on Windows.
I’m not personally running Bazzite, but before I switched to an AMD card, Nvidia worked just fine for me. Bazzite being more streamlined and gaming-specific, I can only imagine it would do perfectly well running Nvidia.
I think that if you’re looking for a Linux distribution that is as polished as the Steam Deck, then SteamOS on desktop might not be the right play. SteamOS will probably (rightfully) be developed solely for handheld, low-power devices, and won’t work unless you’re using the specific APUs that they’ll include drivers for.
If that sort of streamlined experience interests you, Bazzite has very similar goals to SteamOS (good OOTB gaming experience, safe updates etc.), except that they also target wide hardware compatibility. Other gaming distros exist, but I’m probably just not aware of them.
Thanks for this!
Out of interest, how is the driver support for Nvidia cards? This is the thing that has always put me off bailing on Windows for games.
Bazzite works wonderfully even for non techy types. On mobile at least, NV drivers are working well but there is a performance penalty. Surprisingly, when the windows drivers are CPU limited, the linux one is actually performs better but, generally, there is a performance penalty on linux. AMD GPUs have parity except for Raytracing, at least from what I’ve seen, RADV performs below the proprietary driver on Windows.
I’m not personally running Bazzite, but before I switched to an AMD card, Nvidia worked just fine for me. Bazzite being more streamlined and gaming-specific, I can only imagine it would do perfectly well running Nvidia.
Bazzite comes with Nvidia support out of the box.