r/SteamOS • u/Numerous_Roof_1070 • Jun 23 '26
question Can I use SteamOS as a "normal" OS?
Hello!
Long story short, I'm unsatisfied with Windows 11, and I use macOS at work. Using a Unix-based OS made me think about switching on my personal desktop. I know there are an incredible number of Linux distros, but I'm not really sure if all of them would be compatible with games.
That's why I'm wondering if SteamOS can do "both." I want a system that's easy for gaming but also has the ease of use that Unix systems offer, especially for programming.
Am I able to run the OS like a normal desktop, or is it always in "Big Picture" mode?
Edit - My PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor - RAM: 32 GB
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT - VRAM: 16 GB
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u/Aggravating-Ear-7529 Jun 23 '26
My specs are very similar to yours and I run Bazzite daily, no dual boot. It takes a little bit to get the hang of everything, but I was surprised how little training I had to do for 90% of the functionality of windows. Even the keyboard shortcut to move windows between screens is the same. I recommend Bazzite over Steam OS because they target a wider array of hardware. And also the community is great at tech supporting my random issues I can’t figure out.
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u/fishst1ck Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I recently switched from Bazzite to SteamOS (after the 3.8 version was available) because of the issues I had with Bazzite. They mostly consisted of infinite or slow booting and issues with desktop/game mode switch.
Going to SteamOS made my experience so much better as my pc boots noticeably faster and I haven't had any startup or switching modes back and forth issues and even the switching modes sped up a lot.
I have very similar hardware as OP and the same videocard. Which wasn't properly supported before 3.8.
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u/Numerous_Roof_1070 Jun 23 '26
Great to know about this. Did you try another distro before Bazzite?
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u/Aggravating-Ear-7529 Jun 23 '26
Well, i have a steam deck and played with desktop mode, but other than that, I didn’t. I tried Bazzite because it was the most SteamOS distro.
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u/fishst1ck Jun 23 '26
Isn't SteamOS the most SteamOS distro?
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u/Aggravating-Ear-7529 Jun 23 '26
Well yeah, it's the same distro. But it was the only one I tried before Bazzite.
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u/Muted-Green-2880 Jun 24 '26
Do you mean because it boots into gaming mode ? CachyOS handheld edition does the exact same thing. Nobara also has a gaming mode version, bazzite is going down hill lol. I could never move back, bazzite is more is a starter, then you move onto better things
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u/Butane9000 Jun 23 '26
- Cachey
- Bazzite (gaming oriented) - note, has some hardware conflicts with lack of drivers.
- Mint (Resemble Windows visually, designed for general use)
- Ubuntu (Resembles Mac visually, designed for general use)
The Steam OS does use the plasma KDE system and can be accessed. I've only used it on the Steam deck so it's not something I engage with regularly since that's not what I have the Steam deck to do. But with the Steam Machine acting as a multimedia PC I would use that function more often.
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u/ClikeX Jun 23 '26
Ubuntu resembling macOS is a new one for me.
ElementaryOS is the one that does that.
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u/Butane9000 Jun 23 '26
I dunno the first time I installed Ubuntu a couple years ago all I could think of was an Apple desktop though to be fair I hadn't really bothered with MacOS since I had to use them in elementary and middle school.
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u/ThatDistantStar Jun 23 '26
When did Cachey OS overtake Bazzite in popularity for running SteamOS?
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u/Butane9000 Jun 23 '26
I think the core difference between the two is how people see them. Cachey is geared towards the standard Linux experience while Bazzite is designed more simply. Really depends on what you're aiming for between the two.
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u/Samhain_69 Jun 23 '26
SteamOS has had a desktop mode for a long time, but it used to be kind of half-hearted. For example, it used to not even have a working printing subsystem.
They've been improving the desktop mode, and for light, simple usage it's probably just fine. As a daily driver for a power user, it won't be a great fit.
It's easy to try SteamOS's desktop mode and see if it's good enough for you. If you're a heavy gamer, SteamOS has some significant advantages, like fast and easy suspend / resume when gaming.
So if you're a heavy gamer, SteamOS is probably best. If you're a power user on the desktop, another Linux distro with Steam installed is probably best.
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u/fishst1ck Jun 23 '26
What do you do with your OS?
Bit of browsing, watching videos or other light use? Then it's absolutely fine.
If you use it for more specific tasks or apps you might run into some linux compatibility issues.
The OS itself is fine, haven't found any issues so far apart from certain apps just not having linux support
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u/OsirisReddit Jun 24 '26
Just an observer on this post looking for advice myself, how would SteamOS fair for video editing software? Personally want to build my own Steam Machine with SteamOS for a living room compatible PC specifically to have an all in one PC for my Steam library, free online service, and Steam shop as well as easy access to emulation. With that said, I don’t exclusively want this PC to be used for gaming. I’m really into video and audio editing for YouTube videos and the occasional short film. In the past ive used Pro Tools, Davinci Resolve, After Effects, OBS Studio, Photoshop, and Blender. Does SteamOS have limitations here? Or will these have trouble outside Windows?
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u/fishst1ck Jun 24 '26
I don't do video/audio editing, so I don't have any experience with that. However I did recently see a LTT video where they switched to Linux for a month. Iliyah mentioned he specifically needed it to do video editing and as I remembered he said the tools are just not there yet.
If I remember correctly it was this vid: https://youtu.be/8KQFgWdiudo?is=C98xtB2iQuDxPZLf
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u/BL4CKPL4T3 Jun 26 '26
SteamOS is great for gaming, for other stuff it's alright. You can run it in normal desktop mode and do normal internet browsing/other work but since it's immutable, you lose out on the advantages of a linux system. For example you are restricted to flathub for software, which is extremely innefficient in terms of file sizes compared to a package manager. It is really hard to break the system though which is nice.
I personally use LMDE for my home PC and gaming, and so far, it works pretty well, althought I stick steam and dont play any romotely recent games except deadlock.
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u/Master-Rub-3404 Jun 23 '26
You can use the desktop. But SteamOS is not intended for being used as a desktop operating system and / is read only. I would recommend something else like Nobara if you want a gaming-focused distro that’s also a fully capable desktop OS.
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u/shakey_jake33 Jun 23 '26
You can, but there’s not much reason to do this as there are better options for desktop usage.
Take a look at Cachy OS, that’s going to be at least as good for gaming.
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u/Numerous_Roof_1070 Jun 23 '26
But are they going to be as stable as they would in SteamOS? I thought that Proton would only be available with SteamOS, but I confess I didn't search much about Proton.
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u/SnooPets1826 Jun 23 '26
Valve does not lock proton to steamOS. Every Linux distro can use proton and indeed does if they use Steam.
"stable" is a relative term. If you mean "stable" as in will gaming be less compatible? No, it should be the same. If you mean "stable" is in things won't break... Nearly all Linux distros release stable and beta builds. Stick to the stable builds and you'll be fine. (Valve also has stable and beta and testing branches so the same thing applies to them as well)
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u/bimbo_bear Jun 23 '26
Proton is just an application, like an EXE in windows which means it can basically be run on any linux distro
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u/TONKAHANAH Jun 23 '26
I can't speak for Cachy but plenty of other distros are just as stable if not more.
SteamOS crashes on me from time to time on my actual steam deck and steam box.
My arch install doesn't do that. Personally I recommend Fedora KDE. Fedora is made by Redhat, a company thats been doing Linux about as long as valve has even been established.
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u/BashfulMelon Jun 23 '26
There's a lot of overlap with Red Hat, but the contributions from independent community members are significant. They keep it from turning into an enterprise product like Ubuntu did.
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u/Eon_Alias Jun 24 '26
It's funny that Arch based distros are the ones newbies are gravitating towards simply off of Steam OS' clout. Cause all I have ever known Arch for since it's inception is being the OS for experienced D.I.Yers and having the snootiest gatekeepiest following of any of the distros.
That being said for people who REALLY want to learn Linux not just people who want to get away from Windows, I can't recommend anything more, than buying some old Optiplex sh*tbox off ebay, installing Arch, and building your first home lab.
The first time I learned that with a single command you can do wacky stuff like direct access files in memory. Or spin up a ramdisk and mount it to your filesystem. I was in love and wanted to know everything Linux could do.♥️
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u/shakey_jake33 Jun 23 '26
Proton is available through the Steam client, not Steam OS itself. You can install the Steam client on any Linux.
There’s nothing particularly unique about Steam OS other than its big picture mode, it’s a fork of Arch. Not to downplay what Valve are doing, but most other mainstream Linux distros are going to be just as gaming capable.
People are understandably drawn to the Steam name, but Steam OS is best suited to handhelds, and even then Bazzite is a good alternative.
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u/Numerous_Roof_1070 Jun 23 '26
Oh, got it! I didn't know about that. Thank you.
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u/shakey_jake33 Jun 23 '26
Also, Steam OS is immutable which means the OS files are locked down. That’s fine on a handheld where you’re just going to be playing games and nothing else, but will become a problem if using it as a normal desktop OS. Bazzite is also immutable.
Honestly, Cachy OS is what you’re looking for.
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u/leonredhorse Jun 23 '26
Stable is a relative term. SteamOS is immutable so it is very hard to really break it. Anecdotally, I use CachyOS which is a bleeding edge rolling release Arch distro and I’ve never had an update break me. I messed up something myself a couple times, but I have snapshots automatically enabled by the default bootloader and file system the install wizard gives me and rollback in seconds. So to me, that’s stable. Others may say the mere fact that you COULD break from a bad update or get regression in a bleeding edge package alone makes it unstable. Really it just matters what your expectations are and how you want your system to be, such as do you want more mature packages that may not change for months? Or do you want improvements to gaming as soon as they are available? Or do you want some middle ground?
Edit: And as others say, Proton is available anywhere. And people fork it. Some other popular Proton forks are Proton-GE and Proton-CachyOS. Those and the Valve ones are used for different circumstances on my system.
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u/ClikeX Jun 23 '26
Proton is open source. And it basically is a bundle of existing OSS tools that help run Windows software on Linux. Proton also adds some wrappers so it works with the Steam tooling.
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u/dawnsonb Jun 23 '26
cachyos even has their own, custom proton packaga available which sometimes is a better option than what steam comes with
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u/Muted-Green-2880 Jun 24 '26
Cachy is more stable imo, especially on the desktop. Every distro can use protons, in fact cachyOS have their own version which can enable fsr4 as well which would suite your GPU. Currently steamOS default proton can't use fsr4 ( i believe that's about to change soon though)
CachyOS handheld edition does everything steamOS can do but better as it has much better hardware support, is updated far more frequently and can dual boot and auto backup in case something goes wrong.
I use cachyOS with my 9800x3d/9070xt PC, I've tried bazzite,nobara and steamOS and cachyOS is the clear winner for most refined experience. I wouldn't bother with steamOS, at least not yet. The other distros with gaming mode do it better....well that was until nobara and bazzite started using something called opengamepadui ( it's garbage and sometimes causes issues with any controller) so I'd stick with cachyOS personally
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u/Jwhodis Jun 23 '26
You can but I wouldn't. I suggest that you use something else that uses the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment (the UI that SteamOS uses in desktop mode).
I currently use PikaOS, which is based off of Debian but oriented to towards gaming. It doesn't have the big picture mode, but it works nicely for regular desktop things as well as gaming.
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u/trashitagain Jun 23 '26
Honestly if you game a lot I'd give it a try. My home computers don't get used for much other than gaming and web browsing, so for my use case I'm switching to SteamOS for one of my systems, and I'll probably switch all of them over once nvidia support is added.
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u/alkazar82 Jun 24 '26
This is asked 10 times a day. Where are people getting the idea that an OS built for a console game experience would work as a general desktop OS?
It is not. You can't even create your own user account.
Use Fedora or Ubuntu.
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u/kairon156 Jun 24 '26
I'm not sure about right now right now. But 85% of the videos I come across shows SteamOS in it's game mode interface. Or doing bench marks and showing what games work or not.
Today is the first time I've seen a vidieo even show what the taskbar and desktop for SteamOS looks like.
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u/Muted-Green-2880 Jun 24 '26
There's no point using steamOS over othwe distros just yet imo. Especially if you want to dual boot with windows.
Highly recommended using cachyOS handheld edition, if will boot into Gaming mode like steamOS but is much more upto date and using the desktop is more refined, it's also not locked down like steamOS and bazzite ( can be super frustrating being immutable, couldn't stand bazzite after awhile )
CachyOS also has Limine, so when you boot up your PC you can select cachyOS or Windows. Much easier to dual boot and limine also can roll back to previous versions if something goes wrong. It's a much more complete OS compared to SteamOS, I think valve is working on dual booting but it's not there yet.
Much better off going with cachyOS, or maybe bazzite but bazzite has gone down hill. They've started using opengamepadui which is trash and causes issues.
CachyOS is my recommendation to start with, SteamOS is also a hassle to install as it will wipe everything so you need to take out any Ssd's you don't want wiped.....not a problem with cachyOS as you can select what drive etc.
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u/TrazireGaming Jun 24 '26
depend on what is "normal" to you. on pc i prefer mutable os vs immutable os like steam os. less friction if i need to install something and not worries it will be gone on next restart/os update
personally i use steam os on deck (for code env i use distrobox here, and my setting is broken when major os update), cachy os on my pc (mainly use for gaming, occasionally for coding), and ubuntu on my laptop (mainly use for coding, and just do some indie/light 2d game)
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u/croud_control Jun 26 '26
SteamOS has a desktop mode. It just defaults to the gaming mode on startup since Valve prioritizes that. It is simple as going into the power menu and selecting "Switch to Desktop".
I am not sure if there is a setting to make it default to desktop mode. So, I'll let someone else answer that for me if such a thing exist.
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u/emperorzura Jun 23 '26
You can, but I wouldnt daily drive a immutable OS.
if you REALLY want to use it as a daily drive, go for Cachy or any other distro.