Steam Deck

Welcome to the world of Linux. Check out Fedora Kinoite. Here's how they're similar:

✅ It's immutable -- core OS files are read only. Just like the SteamDeck, this is more stable and secure. Updates happen all at once and the entire system can be rolled back to a working configuration ("snapshot") if it all goes south.

✅ Applications are containerized and installed via a software store. Flatpak via Flathub is my personal preference, here.

✅ It uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment. In Linux there are a handful of DEs to choose from. The SD uses KDE and so does Kinoite. This is probably where you'll see most similarities (that Windows '95 feel).

✅ Fedora's community, like the SD, is large. Got a problem? There's probably someone on the forums who had the same issue and can provide a solution.

I've been running it exclusively for two years now. As a self proclaimed distro-hopper, that's really remarkable.

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/

If you want to get started with Linux, I'd recommended Mint. It's very easy to install and will run on just about anything. The Cinnamon desktop is pretty similar to Windows and you'll feel right at home. Install Steam and start playing your games, it's that simple. There are of course plenty of other excellent options but for ease of getting started, I don't think anything beats Mint.

I vouch for Kubuntu. It uses KDE Plasma, which is the exact same UI as SreamOS desktop mode. It's based on Ubuntu, which is a very popular distro, so there's a lot of support and apps that are packaged for it

For some reason CachyOS hasn't been mentioned. Like others said basically any distro can do what you're describing, and this one is also one of those "with gaming in mind" distros. Didn't mean you can't do anything else on them, but anything making should "just work". They also have a dedicated image/installer for "handheld" PCs like the steam deck that come preconfigured for that interface combination (but don't use this special image on a normal PC/desktop).

Like SteamOS, it's based on Arch, but unlike SteamOS or Bazzite it isn't immutable. That's a matter of preference. Being a rolling release means frequent and direct updates of new releases of any kind (kernel, software, everything, ...). KDE is the default install option, like on the steam deck, but of course basically all other options are also available is you want (additionally or instead of kde).

The closest thing to SteamOS is ChimeraOS. Though it sounds like you're mostly referring to Plasma, which is the desktop environment (DE) AKA the graphical user interface (GUI), and can be installed with just about any distro. ChimeraOS looks like it only comes with GNOME, which I personally prefer anyway.

It is very friendly until you need to do something other than very basic things, at which point you'd better be prepared to become very familiar with the terminal.

Bazzite is the new hotness though, and it's what I use, because it comes with a variety of customizations out of the box, and the ujust commands can greatly simplify a lot of common tasks that are otherwise far more complicated. Only downside of that is that it mostly only supports flatpaks and appimages, .deb and .rpm are the most common package formats and those have to be installed in containers, which comes with all the fun complications of containerization and sandboxing.

You might give GNOME a try though if you want to play around with something different. I much prefer it from an aesthetic perspective. Plasma is essentially made to look like Windows and GNOME more resembles MacOS.

Be aware that when using these distros that some games will recognize your device as a Steam Deck and apply some fucked up graphics tweaks that severely limit performance. You can undo them with a simple launch argument but it's super frustrating until you figure that out. Protondb is your friend there.

Alright, y'all, I really appreciate all the feedback, I believe I understand the gist of most of it. Bazzite is sounding really nice, I just have one big concern: Can I put Adobe on it, so I can dropkick Windows out of my life? I did find this.

~~Heads up if you're eyeing Fedora or its progeny like Bazzite, Nobara: https://news.itsfoss.com/fedora-32-bit-support/~~

Proposal withdrawn according to @dinckelman@lemmy.world 👍

Fedora.

I just put steam in big picture mode in an workspace in hyprland and it works wonders. Same thing basically as my deck.

One thing to be aware of in Linux is the fragmentation of where packages can be installed from.

Default package manager? Differs across distro-bases: rpm, apt, pacman, apk and more. Cross-distro? Flatpak, snap, appImage. Install on "wrong" distro? Distrobox and others.

Oftentimes one package is packed up for multiple managers and you'll see a giant list of red and green in their github showing where you can and can't find it, but it's still worth being aware of it.

There are frontends that unify a handful of these but I wish there was a better option. Also inb4 standards.xkcd

With that said, getting started in Linux I recommend immutable images, only because you can't tweak it so hard it borks. And afaik updates will always "just work". I quite liked bazzite for that.

I generally think the most important thing when you're not yet very experienced with Linux is to just pick a distro that is relatively popular, since these are usually very googleable.

My personal favorite is probably still Fedora. Pick Fedora Workstation Gnome if you want something that has the most online support and Fedora KDE if you want something with a similar workflow as Windows.

I also generally think that using a normal Linux Distro is a better choice if you don't want to do only gaming and nothing else, since Steam OS actually makes some things a lot more difficult (you cannot easily install many programs due to its immutable nature, it only has AMD GPU support, doesn't include even basic things like print functionality, the installation process is not the easiest, ...) These things will be pretty big hurdles to overcome for a newcomer. The only real thing that is probably easier on Steam OS is that Steam is already pre-installed, but considering that you can literally install Steam on Fedora without using the terminal probably less than 10 mouse clicks, I wouldn't consider this a very big advantage.

If you do end up going for a normal distro (like Fedora), I would btw highly recommend installing Steam not as a flatpak but as a "normal" application. This is not very difficult and will provide a much more stable experience than if you just use the Flatpak (which may be the first thing you come across in the software store). There are short tutorials available for: Fedora, Ubuntu, ...

I've been liking MX Linux.