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Anyone using SteamOS on their PC?
- Thread starter TNA
- Start date
I would as well once Nvidia support is implemented, I half heartedly dual boot Bazzite and it works to an extent but not set the drives up for games from my windows install to be used so some don't load correctly. This may be due to the drives but others open and run fine but limited for me. I run it on my Legion Go s and it works brilliantly
Been thinking of going all in at the same time as an upgrade from my current machine. But I think my penny pinching ways are holding me back off trying to buy the hardware.
I was looking at getting a 9070XT just a couple months back when OCUk had them around £550 to £600, again in prep for trying SteamOS. But I'm gonna have to hold back off longer with the prices going nuts for the GPUs again recently.
I was looking at getting a 9070XT just a couple months back when OCUk had them around £550 to £600, again in prep for trying SteamOS. But I'm gonna have to hold back off longer with the prices going nuts for the GPUs again recently.
Nvidia need to work much harder on their Linux drivers, they are laughable compared to Windows and the control panel is so basic (much more so than the Windows one which Nvidia recently retired).
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Yea, it's like they've swapped places. Back in the day Nvidia were the ones with great Linux support compared to AMDs (ATI back then) almost zero support. Fast forward to today and it's Nvidia who are lacking
Just a quick update on this, I set a SSD for steam to use on Bazzite and tried Dune awakening and Grave yard keeper 2 and both worked perfectly, I have train sim 7 and big ambitions installing but taking a bit to install as I can't get my usb RJ45 2.5Gb to work. My Creative AE5, Audeze Maxwell and 8 bit do all worked without any intervention required which was impressive.
Not on my main PC but I am on my living room one I build a couple of months ago as a Steam Machine alternative. It was very easy to set up and it's been flawless since, though when you go through certain menus, settings etc it's clear it's intended primarily for Valve hardware as there are various options that don't do anything (fan control etc). The most impressive thing is how easily it handles every game I've tried, I haven't had to tweak settings or anything, games just work. It's also nice not to worry about installing or updating drivers etc.
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As soon as Nvidia support is there I'll bang it on my gaming laptop
I use steamOS on my Lenovo Legion Go 2
I use steamOS on my Lenovo Legion Go 2
I think it's because AMD open sourced their driver pretty much so the community did lots of work for them and of course Valve wants their Steam Deck AMD hardware to work well.
Nvidia love to keep as much as they can proprietary.
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I'm running Steam OS. Gone all-in on Linux this year for my main desktop PCs (although I have used before for years).
The AM4 PC in the lounge is running on Steam OS (3.8.28) & my new-ish AM5 PC in the office is running Fedora 44 KDE.
Definitely been a few learning points; most recently getting Immortals Fenyx Rising to run on Steam OS which was annoying at first (long load times, Ubisoft Connect and Proton GE Latest not working). However a switch to Proton 10.4 and the latest Steam OS and it's running great.
The AM4 PC in the lounge is running on Steam OS (3.8.28) & my new-ish AM5 PC in the office is running Fedora 44 KDE.
Definitely been a few learning points; most recently getting Immortals Fenyx Rising to run on Steam OS which was annoying at first (long load times, Ubisoft Connect and Proton GE Latest not working). However a switch to Proton 10.4 and the latest Steam OS and it's running great.
Maybe this is something I can give a try. I could re-purpose my 5600x mITX current build but put it in a much smaller case.
Are you using a dedicated GPU in your Steam machine?
Yes, it's basically my old PC that I bought in 2022, but with some new bits added after I upgraded to the AM5 PC in June. Originally it was a 5600X, 32GB DDR4 and 6650XT in a Corsair 220T case. So basically the same as Eurogamer's 'test' comparison PC spec when they did their Steam Machine coverage. But after getting that annoyed with some of Sony's recent malarkey I sold the PS5 Pro and used that money to upgrade the 5600X & 6650XT to a 5800X3D & 9060XT 16GB combo. That also freed up a 2TB WD SN850 from the PS5 Pro which I used to upgrade my storage in the AM4 PC.
I have tried adding a second NVMe drive, but gave up because it isn't easy to do like on normal Linux. You can fudge a solution, but it's 'hacky' so in the end I just used an external USB-C drive for storage (which tbf has been more than fast enough). Ideally I would downsize the motherboard to mATX and transplant into a smaller case. That said the PC is tucked away on the sideboard so I can live with it although it's no where near as nice looking as a small form factor PC.
I had used Steam OS before on my Steam Deck and (before it went official OOTB for everyone) on my old Minisforum miniPC (AMD 4800H APU). I think the nice thing about Steam OS is that as long as you have suitable hardware (i.e. anything AMD, not tried Intel) you can freely try it. It's not perfect and there are times I'm occassionally reaching for my Logitech K400r keyboard. I wouldn't currently run it as a desktop OS though. The immutable OS doesn't work for me atm; lack of things like being able to edit the fstab file, or edit my Pipewire (audio) config amongst other things just limit it vs. a fully fledged distro like Fedora, or Arch.
However the great thing about Valve's work on Linux; is most of these solutions like Game mode, Proton etc. are FOSS by design and you can use in any combination you want to.
EDIT: Forgot to add - dual booting - I wouldn't do it, but that's me. I did try it once on separate drives, but I had issues. Particularly with Windows removing the boot loader. You can work around this and try and limit the configuration. But it's full of issues. Ideally if you have a way of separating your Windows and Linux PC's I think that's a far, far easier life. Again Steam OS lends itself quite well to this in that you can have a second PC in the lounge running Steam OS.
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I'm not using SteamOS mainly cause I'd rather just use plain arch if I wanted an arch distro but I am using Fedora 44 with a 9070XT (having newer kernel and mesa really helps performance)
Outside of a few quirks it's been spot on really, and if I want too I can tinker to my hearts content with all sorts of stuff, like right now I'm testing out wineland which is a fork of CachyOS Proton but native Wayland without any launch command, and then I'm using the DXVK fork that helps with latency even more
Do I need too? Not really it works fine 99% of time out box (especially if you using proton ge) but it's cool
Outside of a few quirks it's been spot on really, and if I want too I can tinker to my hearts content with all sorts of stuff, like right now I'm testing out wineland which is a fork of CachyOS Proton but native Wayland without any launch command, and then I'm using the DXVK fork that helps with latency even more
Do I need too? Not really it works fine 99% of time out box (especially if you using proton ge) but it's cool
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I'm not sure what the benefit would be for a standard desktop setup. Maybe as a media pc in the living room connected to a TV. Tbh though I haven't been keeping up to date with steamos news and compatibility outside of Valve hardware.
Was thinking of giving cachy a try, but I'm on arch and comfortable so not sure what I'd gain at this point.
I personally don't think there is any real benefit but I get some people probably want to use it cause of Valve, in terms of compatibility it's fine on AMD setups but I hate fact you don't have a proper installer, it's still the deck installer (or was last time I looked) also another pet peeve is you can't use ventoy nor secure boot with it
Regarding Cachy honestly your not gonna gain any meaningful differences going too it, like personally I'm happy with Fedora but if I wanted to distro hop I'd consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or maybe Slow roll (depends on how delayed it is), I think only thing I'd hate at first is learning zyyper when I know dnf and pacman enough