Dual-booting Steam OS and Win10 on a desktop PC

[shin monk]

Do any of you have experience using Steam OS on a desktop PC that also has Windows installed? I'd like to be able to boot into either OS on startup, but the readme for installing Steam OS states that it "erases all contents on target computer"- I'd assume they mean that it'll completely overwrite an existing drive, but can I have Steam OS installed on its own dedicated hard drive without any trouble?

[Zyro]

The current version of SteamOS used on Steam Deck has not yet been published, and the published one is hopelessly outdated. I'd propose to install some general purpose distribution. You could still make Steam start by default (probably also in fullscreen/BPM).

[shin monk]

I think I'll give Mint a shot then; I'm only really going to use this for occasional gaming or if I need to use Linux-specific software.

[HighBall]

Valve devs have said that any distro will do. The SteamUI that boots is handled by Valve's Gamescope compositor. I've not tried it, you probably could just make your distro start Gamescope with steam big picture and you'll have the Steam Deck experience. For sure you can just have your Desktop Environment start Steam BigPicture automatically and that will work great too. You might consider some of the Linux gaming specific distros that have popped up due to the Steam Deck's success. Nobara and Bazzite are going for that SteamOS 3.x experience. There are some distros that are more focused around retro gaming if you are more into that as well.

[DonMcK]

Would suggest using separate drive for Mint, disconnecting the Win 10 drive and installing from USB, then reconnecting the Win 10 drive afterwards. Allows OS selection to be done with F12 key at boot rather than using GRUB menu, avoid losing access if GRUB gets corrupted.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Originally posted by HighBall:

Valve devs have said that any distro will do. The SteamUI that boots is handled by Valve's Gamescope compositor. I've not tried it, you probably could just make your distro start Gamescope with steam big picture and you'll have the Steam Deck experience. For sure you can just have your Desktop Environment start Steam BigPicture automatically and that will work great too. You might consider some of the Linux gaming specific distros that have popped up due to the Steam Deck's success. Nobara and Bazzite are going for that SteamOS 3.x experience. There are some distros that are more focused around retro gaming if you are more into that as well.

I can confirm that Starting Steam in big picture mode with Gamescope works quite well on Arch. I dunno whether there would be anything stopping you from doing some auto-login stuff directly into gamescope just like you descripted.

Though it should be mentioned that doing this will require some basic Linux knowledge to figure out auto-login, creating a custom .desktop entry which some DM could read to boot gamescope. Regularely logging into the TTY to update the system and whatnot. Good if you know some linux trickery. Not really recommendable for newbies.

[waydfine]

Originally posted by Felix:

Originally posted by HighBall:

Valve devs have said that any distro will do. The SteamUI that boots is handled by Valve's Gamescope compositor. I've not tried it, you probably could just make your distro start Gamescope with steam big picture and you'll have the Steam Deck experience. For sure you can just have your Desktop Environment start Steam BigPicture automatically and that will work great too. You might consider some of the Linux gaming specific distros that have popped up due to the Steam Deck's success. Nobara and Bazzite are going for that SteamOS 3.x experience. There are some distros that are more focused around retro gaming if you are more into that as well.

I can confirm that Starting Steam in big picture mode with Gamescope works quite well on Arch. I dunno whether there would be anything stopping you from doing some auto-login stuff directly into gamescope just like you descripted.

Though it should be mentioned that doing this will require some basic Linux knowledge to figure out auto-login, creating a custom .desktop entry which some DM could read to boot gamescope. Regularely logging into the TTY to update the system and whatnot. Good if you know some linux trickery. Not really recommendable for newbies.

yer