I’m not completely illiterate on the subject of Linux i used to mess around in highschool with turning old PC parts into functional machines
Echoing everyone else, Bazzite is the established SteamOS-like, and comes with a traditional desktop mode that basically looks like windows and a big screen mode like SteamOS. It’s slightly less plug and play if you have an Nvidia card, but if you’ve gotten as far as installing an OS you should be able to fix any issues fairly easily.
bazzite is probably what you’re looking for
I installed bazzite a few days ago, and I’m already switching OSes again because of this immutable bullshit that means I can’t install any package or run any script. I just want to run the damn Plex media server, and in order to do that, I have to read 200 pages of tutorial according to my Kindle? Got a ton of suggestions and everything I put in Konsole just comes back to “sorry, you can’t install things in Bazzite that way. Go read a textbook and get an associate’s degree in Containers!”
If you’re going to do literally anything other than Facebook and YouTube in Firefox, download games from steam, and play games from steam, it seems like you’re just gonna have a bad time with Bazzite.
I’m this close to just going back to Ubuntu.
You can install packages from fedora’s repositories or loose RPM files by using
rpm-ostree installand they will exist as if they were installed imperatively as they are layered on-top of your operating system image.I can answer any questions that you have. Sorry for being flippant with my first reply.
No worries! I ended up just getting so frustrated with trying to figure it out and just having the console return a web link to a guide that may as well be Babylonian to me, so I’m currently installing CachyOS.
Also it seems like Bazzite hated my multi monitor setup of 1440p 21:9 and a 4k 16:9 display located 10 meters away in a different room. PLM does this weird flickery bullshit and if I try to maximize a window on the ultrawide monitor, it would just left justify a 16:9 window and leave 1/5 of the screen showing only desktop.
Experimentation is good, CachyOS allows for using the AUR for any sort of package you’d need vs. needing to containerize everything on bazzite. The multi-monitor setup and flickering could be a KDE-specific bug.
Unfortunately you still have to read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Plex
The multi-monitor setup and flickering could be a KDE-specific bug.
they can’t make me use GNOME, I’ve been using Plasma for 20 years .Accept your GNOME masters, they know best
But if you have a Nvidia GPU then it’s probably that (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA). I had an Nvidia GPU and that monstrosity would completely fry my display after a suspend that I would have to restart my computer and Nshittia has not fixed it in 4 years.
I think Gnome is really pretty and minimalistic, it feels like a great laptop DE to me. But I kinda treat my desktop like a workstation when I’m not gaming and I really like the KDE Human Interface Guidelines. They just work really nice for my brain, so apps feel a lot more intuitive to use than GTK apps tend to.
Material Design 1 and 2 also really worked nice for my brain, I miss when it was prevalent. Play Music was so much nicer to use and look at than Spotify is.
Oh yeah, it’s all about nshittia for me. Unfortunately I have a 4070Ti and like to use DLSS4 to play games at 4k60 with all the rtx bullshit, my wife has a 1080
I actually did ditch bazzite for cachy because of this. I have since dabbled, though, and it wasn’t as tough as I thought it could be. There’s some stuff to learn about containers and the like, but it’s not too bad…
Having said that, I’m not going back. CachyOS is good enough for me!
I think I’m a bit too
to try and figure out this container stuff from zero knowledge without having the ability to do some stuff kinda wrong and lean heavily on existing scripts and stuff.I’m not a computer science person and I don’t have the mental energy to teach myself this type of stuff given that I have zero foundation. I can copy a script from a website, but I’m absolutely not going to bother with trying to teach myself some arcane junk I’m going to use exactly one time in my life just so I can do something that was a one-click install on Windows.
This shouldn’t be this hard, and it shouldn’t be difficult for developers to understand why nobody wants to do this bullshit. Just let me open a package in a package manager like a normal OS, holy shit.
I ran into a similar issues on the steam machine when I tried it as a desktop PC. It absolutely would work but I’d prefer a more traditional distro over an immutable one like steamos. It’s likely great from a stability stand point, but I wanted more competition over the os.
I understand the frustration but if you’re willing to test it again sometime, Bazzite have really good docs that tell you all of that. Usually you want to use flatpak (using the app store, called Bazaar), if the software you want is not available there then you have other options like appimage, brew, distrobox and rpm-ostree (this is like dnf and apt, but it layers the packages since it’s atomic distro).
Scripts should just run like normal unless they rely on some tool not available by default (brew is usually used to install cli tools) or if it modifies something in a read only directory like /usr.
It seems like a lot but when you get the hang of it, it’s fine.
Oh and the Bazzite Portal app should help with installing the most common stuff.
Is this something I could try setting up in a live usb to start with?
My current install is older than their live usb implementation, so I’m not sure how much is doable in that, but you could also do it on a vm or install it on another usb drive if it is big enough.
yeah my day to day use cases are way beyond the limitations of immutable too. i feel like i get why it’s recommended to new people but seems very easy to run into that wall
I think Bazzite would be perfect for my wife whose Windows install has:
Discord
Firefox
Steam with no games installed
(Pirated) Microsoft Office for work file compatibility
Zoom for work
That’s it, it’s a clean and spotless Windows install other than these five things.
Bazzite is great for a gaming computer and only a gaming computer. If you want a console experience from linux? hell yeah. Anything else? Hell no
Nah disagree, I used it for everything on my pc, I can even use custom firmware, like I do for my 5.4 Bluetooth dongle. They even have a developer image called Bazzite-DX
If you’re going to all the effort of installing extra packages and custom firmware what does bazzite give you that fedora doesn’t?
I mean Bazzite is basically a heavily modified Fedora Atomic image, but for me a lot actually, better out of the box experience, I don’t have to install a bunch of stuff I would already download, OGC kernel, a bunch of gaming first tweaks and tools, easy rollback into multiple previous versions if needed (I had to use this for a while actually), easy access to the previous image if an update goes bad directly on grub, easy tpm2 setup, secure boot support out of the box, easier upgrade from one major version to another (instead of doing an upgrade from fedora 43 to 44, a simple update takes you from bazzite 43 to 44) and great stability on a rolling release model.
And there’s probably more I’m forgetting right now.
That makes a lot of sense. I think it would make a great HTPC.
Is steam’s in-home streaming any good these days? I’m probably still better off just using a 10m HDMI cable connected to my desktop pc, yeah? I wish there was a way to have plasma desktop at the desk and a separate 10ft interface at the TV which are mutually exclusive, like using RDP or something (I know it’s not FOSS, it’s just better than VNC.)
Steam streaming is shite with wayland but sunshine (host) and moonlight (client) work great. Fussy with HDR but fine for mere mortals.
You might be interested in a BC250. It’s what I did after wanting exactly the setup you describe lol. Now I just game on the couch and stream anything CPU and ram heavy.
Stretching a cable halfway across the room makes anything with a weak Bluetooth antenna horrible :( controller dropouts and stuff
BC250
Can you give some recommendations for buying/making this as inexpensively as possible? I don’t have access to a 3d printer.
Ideally I’d like to be able to use my Xbox series controllers with the microsoft dongle, but that stoppex working under Win11. I have the pride design lab controller and an Elite series 2 and neither one will reliably connect or stay connected to the dongle.
Buy board, remove heatsink from board, open heatsink find carefully (look up youtube vids for technique). Apply new thermal compound to the APU and put the heatsink back on. If you have a PSU with the right header use that, else a metalfish 500W is ok. Buy 3 cheap but good quality fans (arctic pN (where N is the diameter in centimeters) are my choice).
Make a cardboard box with good airflow, you can stiffen it with wheatpaste paper mache if you want to go super cheap, or build a fancy wooden one or whatever. Make it so one fan passes air across the box, one pushes air into the fins ( you can fabricate a cardboard bracket, use hot glue to glue it in place whatever) and one replaces the fucking awful metalfish fan (remove from case and mount new removing old)
Design your box so air flows over the back of the board too, so it should be held off the ground by something. You can screw into cardboard stiffened by wheatpaste, so the case can be well designed and literally made of scrap and painted nicely if you like. No need for a printer, that’s just easy if you are bad at arts and crafts.
You’ll need to salvage a latching power button or switch from something as a power button. I use a missile switch from some old tool I scrapped years ago lol.
You can go super fancy mounting coolers and stuff for quiet operation but the basics are make sure you have a PSU, new thermal paste, modify the heat sink to work with fans, and a case with good airflow.
I’ll give it a look
Taking the plunge into Linux might seem scary at first but at this point you couldn’t pay me to use windows.
Windows is so fucking trash.
So far i have had very little friction and already prefer the experience.
Bazzite-DX has docker installed if you need that for anything. I’ve been using DX for a while now and I love it. Once you get used to the idea of how package layering works, its not that hard to get stuff installed that wasn’t part of the base image.
Most modern popular distros are as plug-and-play as the latest version of Windows.
I can guarantee that you don’t need to do registry fuckery just to disable the default browser.
Every windows after 7 has made me want to switch but I’m weak and pirating windows with as much microsoft stripped out was very easy
If you can remove microsoft out of windows you can use Linux, of course there is some learning to do, some little things will be different but is not that complex.
Bazzite is a good recommendation but I do recommend for you to search for any specific peripheral or hardware that you use to see if has any known problems. Like “logitech g305 bazzite”. 99% of the time will just work but the 1% can be annoying to deal with.
search for any specific peripheral or hardware that you use
You mean like this?
It actually works better on steamos than it does on some windows PCs i just like to post it as much as possible
Hmmmmmmmmm I don’t know, the hot glue can behave badly on Linux but give it a try.
I’ll look for a glue driver
it might work on any linux. did you try it?
try bazzite
Ok ty
I have installed SteamOS in a vm just once so far and it’s really not plug and play for non-technical people yet. it’s a very DIY unintuitive thing
I presume from what you’ve written you’re switching from windows (or mac), and there will likely be some differences you will have to learn. But I don’t think it will be too much.
Make sure the stuff you use works in Linux, and if not you will have to find something that does.
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Ty, yeah windows.
I wasn’t sure how much of what you would normally do on your computer you were doing on the steamdeck, if it wasn’t a lot you might not have experienced whatever problems you would otherwise encounter on linux. But I really don’t know.
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Also i just kinda put the steam deck into a dock and swapped it in where my desktop tower was, monitor keyboard mouse etc
I suppose a lot more info is needed for a more personalized suggestion.
I play videogames but mostly older ones because my hardware is old and i don’t care much about newer stuff. I have an AMD cpu and a 1050ti video card. I like that i can use steam to add things like a launcher for windows games and have it mostly work just fine installing and running games through proton.
Other than gaming i like to tinker with physical microcontrollers like a raspberry pi pico (not the ones that run an OS, yet)
It seems like things are going to go swimmingly then.
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