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.
The types of games I tend to play, I don’t think a slight performance hit will really matter. Definitely going to have a look into Bazzite this weekend ;)
Practically speaking, we are at a turning point regarding Nvidia on Linux. Things were bad before but they have improved significantly. Newer drivers from Nvidia are partially open-source and they seem good so far.
As long as your GPU isn’t too old, it should be fine. Bur you should verify before commiting.
Thanks ! Had a check (I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile card) looks like I’m good and all supported. Going to finally make the switch tomorrow, wish me luck :)
I’ll be honest, I stay up to date on gens because I can through work. Reality is, games seem to have plateaud a good few years ago and we’re upgrading due to shonky development / crap and lazy optimisation most of the time.
I play primarily metroidvania’s and older games 95% of the time and if it wasn’t for work I would probably still be rocking my 1080ti :)
I’ve had some issues with NV cards, but those were prior to the newer open-source driver architecture which should be available for Turing cards and beyond:
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.
Thanks for the reply and good to know !
The types of games I tend to play, I don’t think a slight performance hit will really matter. Definitely going to have a look into Bazzite this weekend ;)
Practically speaking, we are at a turning point regarding Nvidia on Linux. Things were bad before but they have improved significantly. Newer drivers from Nvidia are partially open-source and they seem good so far.
As long as your GPU isn’t too old, it should be fine. Bur you should verify before commiting.
Thanks ! Had a check (I have a 4070ti desktop card and 3070ti mobile card) looks like I’m good and all supported. Going to finally make the switch tomorrow, wish me luck :)
I’m running a 2080 ti and while it’s def aging and showing it now, it’s been great so far.
The 2080ti is great card!
I’ll be honest, I stay up to date on gens because I can through work. Reality is, games seem to have plateaud a good few years ago and we’re upgrading due to shonky development / crap and lazy optimisation most of the time.
I play primarily metroidvania’s and older games 95% of the time and if it wasn’t for work I would probably still be rocking my 1080ti :)
Anyhow, rant over and thanks for the feedback !
I’ve had some issues with NV cards, but those were prior to the newer open-source driver architecture which should be available for Turing cards and beyond:
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
I’ve actually got a laptop with a 2070 so I’ll try that out myself and see if it resolves some of the issues I know I had with the proprietary drivers
Bazzite comes with Nvidia support out of the box.
Awesome, thanks for this…. Will 100% look into it this weekend ;)
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.