Technology

The only machine you wanna be using SteamOS on is the Steam Deck. Use a standard Linux distribution like Ubuntu if you're gonna do it on any other machine. The reason being that the version of SteamOS for generic PCs is horribly outdated, and the one on the Deck is very much built exclusively for the Deck's hardware.

Gaming mostly works out of the box with almost all games on Steam on Linux (SteamOS is not special in this regard) but there is an important caveat; be careful of games that use anticheat software - some work but others do not or may trigger bans. Check ProtonDB for your specific games to see if there are issues.

I use KDE Neon as my daily driver (LTS Ubuntu + latest KDE, which is the desktop environment the Steam Deck uses).

I haven't had many issues. For context:

• I have to remote in to my work computer from home. I do that with Parsec, which I have via a Flatpak. Parsec has no issues and works identically to Windows.

• I also have to use a specific VPN. This VPN requires a separate program on Windows, but in KDE it's baked into the OS.

• Zoom is also a Flatpak. It has a few bugs that don't exist on Windows - namely Zoom likes to steal window focus whenever the host joins or someone shares their screen.

• I also installed Flatpak Steam. I had to use Flatseal to give it more access than it had by default, but that was easy enough. You can go through your OS package manager but since KDE Neon is built on Ubuntu LTS those packages don't get updated frequently.

• Most games run fine. Performance is usually a little worse than Windows, but I can still generally hit 60 - just with more dips than Windows has. Satisfactory and Jedi Survivor are the only games where I have seen noticeable issues compared to Windows. Baldur's Gate runs fine.

• Some games are borked. These are usually games that rely on anti-cheat or intrusive DRM.

• Running Windows programs can be tricky. Wine isn't intuitive to use. I usually use Bottles, but sometimes Bottles doesn't get the job done and I have to fall back to Lutris. Lutris is hard to use but generally pulls through. These are all Flatpaks.

I maintain a Windows installation on an old 2 TB NTFS hard drive. Linux gets my 4 TB SSD, but I've symlinked my documents folders to the NTFS drive so I can share things on Windows and Linux.

Sometimes I need to boot into Windows. Generally this is if I'm having issues connecting to my work computer on Parsec (these issues happened on Windows as well), in which case I need to fall back to RDP to go check on my work computer. My employer blocks me doing that from Linux, so I do it from Windows instead.

Otherwise, I usually boot into Windows to play Satisfactory, because it doesn't run well on Proton. Satisfactory's Vulkan renderer seems to implode on Proton as well for some reason; it causes flickering on X and crashes Wayland entirely. The DX12 renderer works but it just isn't as fast as it is on native Windows.

That said, I rarely boot into Windows. Maybe once every 2-3 months? But not beyond that.

SteamOS is mainly for the Steam Deck not regular PC or laptop. For a gaming distro I would recommend one of PopOS, Manjaro or Garuda.

I suggest grabbing the live image for each of them, booting it, and seeing how it feels without committing to anything. I usually test to see if everything works out of the box on the live mode — music, video, network shares, wifi, any peripherals you might have like headphones, fancy mouse or keyboard etc.

I use a steam deck for about 2/3 of my gaming and I rarely have issues with games. That said, I mostly play indie games, but there is so much of my library that is supported that I'm never going to run out of things to play. Proton has really done wonders for gaming on Linux. Are you wanting to play multiplayer games or brand new releases? Or are you more of the patient gamer type?

I wouldn't run steamos on a full desktop, but you can still get a lot of the benefits just by using steam on Linux. Definitely recommend trying it out.