1y ago

Bazzite as an alternative to SteamOS?

Hey folks. I have been playing with my steam deck oled 1 TB version for a few weeks now and I absolutely love it. Very nice device on the go. The thing is I would like to use the device as a backup workstation for some quick important work on the go when I don't have my laptop handy.

I would like to ask if Bazzite is a viable option for this. I know the deck is primarily a game console, but I want to use this beautiful thing to the best of my ability.

But what do you guys think if I replace the Steam OS with Bazzite? Should I just use Tails OS on a flash drive and then use Tails OS for work? Or is the Steam deck not yet ready to be used as a laptop backup?

Thanks in advance and I'd love to hear what you all think.

21 comments

I'd say SteamOS is a viable emergency laptop replacement as is. You can already use most office software in desktop mode.
- The only problem that I had is that Steam OS doesn't offer any full disk encryption. But I think I could just solve that with a cryptomator container. Even if an attacker gets access to the deck then they should not be able to decrypt the container.
  
  Yeah, trouble with Bazzite at the moment is that you need a keyboard to decrypt it on boot for now. I'm waiting for the ability to enter my passphrase with the touchscreen.
I have Bazzite running on a desktop PC, and I love it. It's pretty solid so I can only assume it'd be just as good on the Steam Deck.
However, I have been using the Steam Deck for work purposes for a while. I mostly have HTML5 web apps I access through Firefox, but there's a few office type apps I've installed via Flatpak that work great too. Remote desktop apps as well. I have a USB-C dock, so I just plug the deck in and have dual monitor, mouse, keyboard, and wired Ethernet for working in Desktop mode.
The only sticky thing I've had is I had to install my VPN software via AUR and had to setup an install script to clean up/reinstall it every time the deck updates. A minor inconvenience and I just forgo updates if they pop up at a bad time until I know I won't need the VPN right away.
My next trial for the Deck as a work device is to get a lapdock and see how it works with that, too.
- Do you know if they every fixed the issues with M&K controls on games in Desktop mode? There are a few games I play a lot that just don't work well with a controller for me, so this was a killer for my use case.
  
  I never really had issues with m&k so they probably did! What were the issues? The main game I played was New World and GW2, and that worked pretty awesome. I was even able to add some gamescope arguments to the startup to get FSR working for New World and have the performance be surprisingly good. I also had little issues with Pillars of Eternity once it was set up to play via M&K.
- Not abad option. I'm thinking on just replacing Steam OS with Bazzite and use the deck as my primary gaming device en backup workstation. But I would need to see if it is viable. If not maybe just using tails and booting every time I want to do something work related would be better.
  
  FWIW, I use Bazzite on a laptop and my Deck. On the Deck, it feels basically like the original SteamOS for gaming. I had to choose the "basic graphics install" version, but it was incredibly easy to set up (I recommend a dock with M+Kb). Plus, I don't have to worry about a bad update; if something breaks, rpm-ostree rollback fixes it. You're never without a functional device because of the OS.
  Bazzite isn't without some compatibility issues, though. Some of the Decky plugins don't work correctly or at all: Free Loader doesn't send toast alerts automatically, for example, and Terminal Emulator doesn't work at all. My guess is they're looking for a different file structure or can't access/modify certain things they normally would, since the OS is immutable. But some work perfectly, like the SteamGridDB plugin, and the core gaming capability feels identical.
  Additionally, since it's a community project, there's sometimes bugs not found in SteamOS, but since the core of the OS is based on the official Fedora Kinoite (or Silverblue for Gnome), the main functions are pretty solid. Also, the devs are often very quick about fixing things and are very active.
  Where it's at in development, it feels mature but it will probably feel like a perfect 1:1 replacement in a couple more years.
  ETA: As a replacement "laptop," desktop mode feels like any other Linux Distro and identical to if you installed Bazzite on a laptop.
- I'm still getting used to the layered/atomic nature, so maybe this is a silly question, but couldn't you just use a toolbox or distrobox to maintain a containerized version of your VPN across upgrades?
  
  Ther s probably a good chance at that, yup. But I'm so still new to the atomic nature of these distros. This is something I'm hoping to tinker with on the PC Bazzite install, and I'm curious how doable it is in the stock SteamOS.
FWIW I've been daily driving Bazzite on the deck for several months and it's been smooth sailing, no complaints here. You'd think it's stock if I just handed it to you with no context. I did it mostly because I could tbh, but I love the extra functionality!
That all said, last I checked it wasn't fully functional on the OLED model. Not sure that's changed.
- Yeah. That hasn't changed. So I would need to wait till the problems with the oled model are resolved. In the main time I'm just going to use Tails OS for work related things.

21 comments