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Very frustrated with Windows in general. I just discovered they are throttling my computer with Efficiency Mode on processes like Brave, Bruno, Cursor, etc.

It's like that Auto Shutoff they added to cars. Helps no one, and nobody wanted it. (Thanks Obama https://www.newsweek.com/automatic-start-stop-technology-new...)

I would be on Linux today if Steam OS came out properly for desktop. I'm ready to dip.

3 comments

You don't need SteamOS.

Just install Steam on any distribution (I use Fedora) and it all just works like SteamOS - Proton use is transparent.

For me, for gaming, the full-screen console-like experience is part of the appeal. SteamOS has full-screen Steam, but it doesn't boot into it. Plus, Gamescope has some nice performance measuring/management tricks that regular Steam doesn't provide.

If you just want Steam on an OS then installing Steam will do fine, but it's no "real" SteamOS experience.

Another part of the appeal is how stable the updates are thanks to update mechanism (and locking users out of the system config by default so they can't break their Linux installs with outdated scripts from askubuntu.com).

I run a similar setup for steam on linux. Overall I'm very happy with it in that it plays some old games I like to play from time to time (dota2, portal2, oxygen not included). Some games are still windows/macos only unfortunately, afaiu it's up to the game owners which platforms they serve. Shout out to the wine and lutris projects which both help make gaming on linux better since a loong time.

> Just install Steam on any distribution (I use Fedora) and it all just works like SteamOS - Proton use is transparent.

Absolutely! And if you really feel you need a truly SteamOS-like experience, there's entire distros (like Bazzite for example) devoted to replicating that as closely as possible for desktop PC users.

> It's like that Auto Shutoff they added to cars. Helps no one, and nobody wanted it

I don't get the hatred. It's very useful in countries where keeping the engine running at a red light or at a railway crossing is illegal. It also saves a ton of gas and emissions.

SteamOS will probably work if you're on an all-AMD machine (maybe not the latest GPU revisions because of driver lag), but SteamOS-likes like Bazzite will work fine on a lot of commodity hardware. I'd recommend trying the KDE flavour to get the most SteamOS-like experience, unless you prefer Gnome over KDE (like I do personally but tastes differ).

You don't need Steam OS, any major Linux distro will suffice, as the customizations are not really on OS level, but on the Steam application level. And also, you don't strictly need Steam either, because the Heroic launcher can also do the "just select a Proton / Wine version and run Win application" functionality.

Also, Win 10 LTSC is still supported until like 2032 or so. I love it because it's more bare, and LTSCs don't get functional updates. Just install, point the thing toward an activation server / massgrave it, and you are good to go for many years.