Game compatibility and overall performance will be mostly the same regardless of which Linux distro you choose.

Yes some gaming focused distros add a few small extra tweaks bit in the grand scheme of things it’s largely the same.

I wouldn’t suggest using SteamOS outside of steam hardware het as its not built for general purpose computers. Futhermore, I wouldn’t suggest using Bazzite (the steamos-like distro for general purpose computers) unless you were installing it on a gaming focused pc or htpc.

There’s really no reason to use it on a general purpose desktop. It’s designed to basically make a PC into a console. You do still have full access to the (mostly) normal Linux system behind it, but it’s not something I’d use unless I was setting it up for someone who didn’t want to deal with any of the behind the scenes stuff.

CachyOS, Nobara, and Bazzite all should get you the same level of gaming support with more flexibility as a normal OS, and they can all run Steam Big Picture which is basically the SteamOS UI.

If you want to JUST game, SteamOS is great, like for a handheld, a living room gaming PC, etc.

If you want to do software dev, look elsewhere like Nobara, CachyOS, etc.

I have a Steam Deck and it works brilliantly for me.

Not much suitable for software development in normal classic way, all ur building tools u will have to run in distrobox or similar ways, u can disable read only file systems but it loose all point it basically just arch linux

SteamOS is an immutable Arch. Valves aim is to reduce support costs by ensuring everyone has the same build and to only support a hardware subset (AMD APUs) so it’s less general purpose than a regular Linux distro intentionally. A steam deck is just a PC though and it is usable for non gaming tasks the same way a gaming focussed immutable system like Bazzite is. I even did development on a Chromebook for a month or more years ago as a challenge. It’s possible. It wasn’t ideal. The further you get from steam hardware and use case the more hoops you will need to jump through.

Games generally run more or less the same on any Linux system if they have the same kernel , steam runtime, mesa and proton in my experience. CachyOS might get a few more FPS until the patches they use get more widely distributed. Some compositors will get a little more performance than others.

Some games have detection for Steam deck that works around bugs they haven’t bothered fixing for proton users in general. I have one game I had to set an environment variable so it would behave like on steam deck.

I think SteamOS on a mini amd apu system hooked up to a tv as a gaming system would make a lot of sense. Running it on a regular desktop for non gaming taks is more of a novelty thing. It’s less practical than using a more general distro.

As others have said, Bazzite is probably a better choice as steamos is pretty much targeting the steam deck. But if you want there is also the HoloISO project that tries to make SteamOS work better on other hardware.

Most of my games run fine on Linux Mint, but not all of them.

You’re not changing much when you’re changing distros, you may have slightly newer or older packages but we’re all running essentially the same Linux Kernel, Proton versions, etc.

You’d probably have less of a headache by trying to diagnose the games that don’t work than swapping OSs blindly and hoping that works.

If you were to swap, I’d look at something Arch-based. This way you’ll have access to the newest versions of everything (for good or ill).

bazzite is probably the better choice.

you can most likely get all of the same benefits from your existing install, though. just need the right configuration.

SteamOS isn’t really avaliable 😅 they said they were gonna do it, but they never did.

Bazzite is basically steamOS for normal pcs- but I would try something like endevaros or other arch distros if u wanna aim for steam.

SteamOS is arch based.

Finally the discussion I searched for. I bought a steam deck killed steamOS the first day and went full bazzite. But since I used CachyOS on other hardware, I believe it is maybe better. So what? SteamOS, Bazzite or CachyOS?

I also heard Valve say “it’s just a PC”, does that mean it’s suitable for software development too?

Yes, I used my Steam Deck for software development briefly. But don’t use the flatpak versions of the IDEs, use the tarballs instead. The flatpak sandbox will cause weird issues when the IDE is trying to access resources outside its sandbox. Also keep everything -as much as possible- in your home directory as intended by SteamOS, don’t try to unlock the read-only filesystem, even though you can, you will lose everything when SteamOS updates.

You want to install SteamOS on your desktop PC? Because thats not officially supported. You can still do it, but you might get unlucky with hardware compatibility. Its primarily intended for use with custom hardware like handhelds or for dedicated gaming machines that you would put in your living room.

If you just want a desktop OS that can be used for productivity, but also goes well with gaming, i would choose something else.

Popular choices are CachyOS or Bazzite if you want to have very up to date software, but personally im just running good old debian even if it does not have the absolute latest drivers.

Unless something is badly configured, there shouldnt be a major difference between any of these distros game performance wise, so its more about what you like in terms of UX and UI.

It’s optimized for gaming and you can install a lot of standard Linux apps. But it only works on specific hardware like the Deck and Legion at the moment, the Frame and Machine should be running their versions. A lot of things that come in a standard Distro for PCs have been removed that you might take for granted. I like to think of it as a balance between PC and game console, remember when you could side load Linux onto a PS3, sort of like that.

I use my Deck in desktop mode and connect it to my TV for web browsing, Steamlink to my tower and occasionally use the Libre apps, but I wouldn’t recommend using it as your daily PC. It doesn’t exactly feel like a fully fleshed out PC, hard to put a finger on it until you use it.

at the end of the day, steamos is still linux which runs steam, just (AFAIK, and on steamdeck) immutable, which is probably not something you want on desktop (or you do, I’m not here to tell you how to computer).

Just the default steam/valve vendor decorations don’t make games run any better, imo.

I’d just keep to a regular distro for a general use pc.

edit: but, yea, I’ve seen people run eg. video editors etc on steamdeck, so it does work as a regular pc too, if you really want to.