The Steam Deck has revolutionized the gaming handheld market. With the Linux-based immutable SteamOS, Valve has fostered an active community developing mods and alternative systems for this platform. Other manufacturers distribute Windows-based mobile consoles. However, time and time again it has been shown that they lag behind Linux in terms of software support.
But how easy is it to bring a Linux distribution, say openSUSE, to the Steam Deck?
In this talk, a prototype based on openSUSE’s open technologies and infrastructure will be presented, which is already (almost) fully functional on the Steam Deck and many other devices.
Bazzite, but whatever… Variety is good.
Setting up a WM and installing a ton of software you might need on Bazzite is a long and painful process. The best way seems to be to just create a custom Ublue image, and I’ve been trying to do that and have failed miserably on multiple occasions.
And on top of all that, there are a bunch of useless configurations, like the shell, and whatever they did with ld, breaking my Neovim in the process, which I’d prefer not to have.
While it is very good for a Steam Deck OS, it still has issues like every other distro out there.
Yeah, but as someone who had both bazzite and Opensuse MicroOS (Kalpa), it is even more of a long and painful process on that platform lol.
Immutable OS’s are literally for people who specifically don’t want to tinker. Everything via flatpack except a few system-level apps layered on the base image.
(Also they are for people who don’t need document digital signing as Firefox and libre office can’t access the modules via flatpak)
If people want specific apps and don’t want to build them or use user space apps then it definitely isn’t their best option. Just a different option.
I have very much enjoyed never even having to think about updating my system for months
I don’t tinker anymore. No time.
BUT
I have a very specific setup with COSMIC, Hyprland, and specific apps I use. That’s just my chosen way of using my computer.
If I could get all this properly working on Bazzite, I’d have been there already.