Fedora Kinoite
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.
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I agree, really anything with KDE Plasma will feel basically the same because the Steam Deck's desktop is basically stock kde.
really anything with KDE Plasma
Op might like the stability broihght by immutability
I used to work with a guy who would wear what liked like a band touring tee shirt, but the "band" was "Grants March to the Sea" and the locations were every town he razed to the ground.
If you haven't looked at Garuda yet, it's the system I switched to after Bazzite. It's Arch based and user friendly.
I generally think the most important thing when you're not yet very experienced with Linux is to just pick a distro that is relatively popular, since these are usually very googleable.
My personal favorite is probably still Fedora. Pick Fedora Workstation Gnome if you want something that has the most online support and Fedora KDE if you want something with a similar workflow as Windows.
I also generally think that using a normal Linux Distro is a better choice if you don't want to do only gaming and nothing else, since Steam OS actually makes some things a lot more difficult (you cannot easily install many programs due to its immutable nature, it only has AMD GPU support, doesn't include even basic things like print functionality, the installation process is not the easiest, ...) These things will be pretty big hurdles to overcome for a newcomer. The only real thing that is probably easier on Steam OS is that Steam is already pre-installed, but considering that you can literally install Steam on Fedora without using the terminal probably less than 10 mouse clicks, I wouldn't consider this a very big advantage.
If you do end up going for a normal distro (like Fedora), I would btw highly recommend installing Steam not as a flatpak but as a "normal" application. This is not very difficult and will provide a much more stable experience than if you just use the Flatpak (which may be the first thing you come across in the software store). There are short tutorials available for: Fedora, Ubuntu, ...
Cool, that is very helpful, and yes one main reason for this is I can't install Adobe, and Blender3D has no GPU rendering support. I have yet to come across the lack of printing, lol. But what I like is just everyday usability, and also the lack of bullshit from Microsoft, Apple, and also Android that gives me literal anxiety at this point. I dont know, it just feels like the zen garden of the computer world for some reason, but yeah more support would be grand, as well as playing Cyberpunk with mods and 60fps ultra.
This and Kubuntu are sounding good, and probably better than Bazzite for everyday and art stuff.
don't do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software... among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don't.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Note you should probably switch to recommending aurora because it's identical with some tweaks for beginners, for example on stock fedora twitch doesn't work because redhat is an american company that respects patents that aren't enforced elsewhere and you have to manually install an ffmpeg version that's a whole annoying process. It's essentially identical.
One thing to be aware of in Linux is the fragmentation of where packages can be installed from.
Default package manager? Differs across distro-bases: rpm, apt, pacman, apk and more. Cross-distro? Flatpak, snap, appImage. Install on "wrong" distro? Distrobox and others.
Oftentimes one package is packed up for multiple managers and you'll see a giant list of red and green in their github showing where you can and can't find it, but it's still worth being aware of it.
There are frontends that unify a handful of these but I wish there was a better option. Also inb4 standards.xkcd
With that said, getting started in Linux I recommend immutable images, only because you can't tweak it so hard it borks. And afaik updates will always "just work". I quite liked bazzite for that.
I just put steam in big picture mode in an workspace in hyprland and it works wonders. Same thing basically as my deck.
Fedora, specifically KDE version. It will feel like the steamdeck desktop (because it is) will get quick updates and is painless to manage.
The first bug I have seen in two years is the screen lock bug just recently. But I imagine it will get sorted soon and isn't a showstopper.
I've been liking MX Linux.