When does Valve plan to release Steam Deck OS for PC users?

[Waifu4Life]

I know some hacked versions are out there, but I'd like to try an official release one day (not the old version that they had with their Steam machines).

Cheers

[WarPigeon]

While we're waiting for a Steam OS3 release, what distro do people recommend for a gaming laptop? I'm a Linux newbie, so something user-friendly would be nice. So far I've seen Manjaro and Nobara mentioned in this thread, but does anyone here have some more input?

Edit: I should note that by "gaming" laptop I mean a laptop that will be used to play games, not something tricked out with the latest graphics card, etc. The person using this laptop would mainly be using it for some older, not graphically intensive games, and some creative software like blender, etc.

[WarnerCK]

Publicado originalmente por WarPigeon:

While we're waiting for a Steam OS3 release, what distro do people recommend for a gaming laptop? I'm a Linux newbie, so something user-friendly would be nice. So far I've seen Manjaro and Nobara mentioned in this thread, but does anyone here have some more input?

Neither of those. You should stay far away from niche distros.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/the-best-linux-distribution-for-gaming-in-2023/

If you want the same KDE Plasma desktop environment as the Deck's desktop mode you should choose Kubuntu over the Gnome-based Ubuntu.

https://kubuntu.org/

[Mr.Gold]

Publicado originalmente por WarnerCK:

Publicado originalmente por WarPigeon:

While we're waiting for a Steam OS3 release, what distro do people recommend for a gaming laptop? I'm a Linux newbie, so something user-friendly would be nice. So far I've seen Manjaro and Nobara mentioned in this thread, but does anyone here have some more input?

Neither of those. You should stay far away from niche distros.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/12/the-best-linux-distribution-for-gaming-in-2023/

If you want the same KDE Plasma desktop environment as the Deck's desktop mode you should choose Kubuntu over the Gnome-based Ubuntu.

https://kubuntu.org/

I honestly recomend someyhing like Mint to start with. It is very windows like and you can get used to a linux environment

[MisoForever]

They need to make it stable first before doing that

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por Isadoraisacat:

They need to make it stable first before doing that

Built on top of Arch. Arch isn't a great enterprise distro. Brazzile OS use Fedora to side step the issue with rolling release distros.

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite

[retro_Ed]

I am running ChimeraOS in my minipc
ChimeraOS is 99% = SteamOS 3.xx and it is great for AMD users.

Default UI is Big Picture gamemode but it also have an option to run normal desktop mode.

Best part is Gamescope which is not used on normal desktop Linux distros.

[WarPigeon]

Thanks for all the answers. I've seen Kubuntu and Mint recommended in other places, too, so I'll check them out.

Publicado originalmente por retro_Ed:

I am running ChimeraOS in my minipc
ChimeraOS is 99% = SteamOS 3.xx and it is great for AMD users.

Default UI is Big Picture gamemode but it also have an option to run normal desktop mode.

Best part is Gamescope which is not used on normal desktop Linux distros.

Out of curiosity, what is Gamescope?

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por WarPigeon:

Thanks for all the answers. I've seen Kubuntu and Mint recommended in other places, too, so I'll check them out.

Publicado originalmente por retro_Ed:

I am running ChimeraOS in my minipc
ChimeraOS is 99% = SteamOS 3.xx and it is great for AMD users.

Default UI is Big Picture gamemode but it also have an option to run normal desktop mode.

Best part is Gamescope which is not used on normal desktop Linux distros.

Out of curiosity, what is Gamescope?

Gamescope is a compositor use for games. The project is built on top of wlroots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager

https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki/Getting-started

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope

Compositor is an important piece of display technology because it controls how your applications syncs to an external display. The software talks to the graphic driver and say here is my buffer and present it to the user.

Valve is interested in compositors because you can add post processing layers like FSR anti aliasing directly to the whole screen.

[WarnerCK]

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

Gamescope is a compositor use for games. The project is built on top of wlroots.

Gamescope isn't built on wlroots. It developed out of steamcompmgr (for the Steam Machines) and predates wlroots. wlroots can run Wayland applications and gamescope can't.

There are Wayland compositors based on wlroots but gamescope isn't one of them.

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por WarnerCK:

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

Gamescope is a compositor use for games. The project is built on top of wlroots.

Gamescope isn't built on wlroots. It developed out of steamcompmgr and predates wlroots. wlroots can run Wayland applications and gamescope can't.

There are Wayland compositors based on wlroots but gamescope isn't one of them.

gamescope is built on top of wlroots.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/tree/master/subprojects

It is listed in the subprojects. wlroots is pretty much the largest wayland compositor library built from scratch. Nvidia cannot ignore it because wlroots runs games.

[deaddoof]

steamcompmgr references wlroots

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/blob/master/src/steamcompmgr.hpp#L4

Valve like any developers are too lazy to build an entire project from scratch. They want a q/a community. wlroots q/a community is quite healthy.

[WarPigeon]

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

Publicado originalmente por WarPigeon:

Thanks for all the answers. I've seen Kubuntu and Mint recommended in other places, too, so I'll check them out.



Out of curiosity, what is Gamescope?

Gamescope is a compositor use for games. The project is built on top of wlroots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager

https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/wiki/Getting-started

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope

Compositor is an important piece of display technology because it controls how your applications syncs to an external display. The software talks to the graphic driver and say here is my buffer and present it to the user.

Valve is interested in compositors because you can add post processing layers like FSR anti aliasing directly to the whole screen.

hm, sounds interesting, but it also sounds like it is beyond my ability to use effectively

[WarnerCK]

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

gamescope is built on top of wlroots.

No, it isn't.

There's a talk here that explains the relationship.

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por WarPigeon:

hm, sounds interesting, but it also sounds like it is beyond my ability to use effectively

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope#keyboard-shortcuts

Gamescope like any piece of software is an application.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope#keyboard-shortcuts

Here are keyboard shortcuts and launch options. Get use to cli and gamescope is pretty easy to launch. You may not need it because Gamescope is just meant to get the desktop environment like gnome or KDE out of the way.

[deaddoof]

Publicado originalmente por WarnerCK:

Publicado originalmente por deaddoof:

gamescope is built on top of wlroots.

No, it isn't.

There's a talk here that explains the relationship.

As I thought, they ripped out the huge part of the output. Valve investment in Linux because they believe existing ecosystem in all major OS do not have enough innovation in these low level display pipeline.

I wonder how much they rip out.

https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/gamescope/-/blob/debian/latest/src/wlserver.cpp

The lead dev of wlroot still contributes.