it's that time of the year: https://s.team/y25/gvtdmrd?l=english

like every year i guess it counts my steamOS machines as steam decks, because in reality 90% or more of my playtime was on desktop computers running steamOS.

also no idea why it says 28% of my playtime was with a controller. 99% of my playtime was with a controller, my steamOS devices don't even have a keyboard connected. i'm pretty sure the only game i played with M/KB was upload labs

@quad you can install steamOS on a normal computer now? I've been using bazzite

@hj That's been possible for ages, just not officially supported outside of a couple of handhelds.

Tends to work perfectly okay as long as your hardware is close enough to a Steam Deck. The shitty cube in my bedroom with a Ryzen 4500 and RX 6600 has been running SteamOS for almost two years (since early 2024)

@hj The main problem tends to be the kernel they use and how rarely they update recovery images on their site. The recovery image on their site still only works for hardware relatively similar to a Steam Deck.

For example my proper gaming rig has a 7800X3D and RX 7900 XTX, but wouldn't boot that image (although I think my mobo was the main cause).

Newer recovery images exist which will boot more reliably on more recent hardware, but they're just buried in their package repos and not listed on their website. Currently I believe this one is the newest: https://steamdeck-images.steamos.cloud/steamdeck/20251027.1100/

@hj My bad you probably want a repair-main image, so this is probably the correct one: https://steamdeck-images.steamos.cloud/steamdeck/20251027.1000/

Bit confusing to find this stuff.

@quad so basically no real reason to use it over bazzite for now

@hj Well that depends on if you need all the extra stuff bazzite does, like having a Gnome option and extra tools/scripts for setting up more launchers/applications as well as things like Waydroid.

But if you have compatible hardware and just want a Steam console without the other faff, then yeah, no real reason to bazzite imo.

@hj I've been running SteamOS on my bedroom cube for almost two years. And my proper gaming rig got moved from Bazzite to SteamOS this summer when there was a recovery image available that would boot on it.

I've not experienced any stability issues or w/e. Quite the opposite, Bazzite tended to be more buggy and every time i updated it fixed 5 bugs but also added 5 new ones. SteamOS has just worked.

@quad having distrobox and ease-of-install are nice to have too

@hj Bazzite still has a place.

But if you like me build an all AMD desktop that you just want to run Steam on (plus Heroic, but that's ez to setup) then SteamOS works well, and is what I personally prefer.

@quad @hj well valve is only interested in selling you their hardware as part of being on their plantation. it shouldn't be surprising they don't expend effort to make it work elsewhere. they don't even expend effort to make the controls usable outside of steam *on their own hardware.* the controllar mapping is locked to an always online account system

i haven't run any of the universal blues because i don't really want systemd. but i've heard very good UX reports about them.

@icedquinn @hj It's obvious that SteamOS is an initiative to make people use Steam more. But sometimes I dunno what Valve are thinking.

For example browsing the store on SteamOS is a pain and checkout seemingly never works. You'd think they'd do the same as every other company and make sure their profit-generating store works before selling subsidized hardware, but no, years running now and I still can't reliably purchase anything on my Steam Deck. I have to sit down in front of my desktop instead to get a checkout process that functions reliably.

@quad @hj
> subsidized
i don't think it is.
> store
you're meant to do it in big picture 2 ("controller mode.") desktop mode is just slightly more effort than sony claiming the PS3 ran linux to evade taxes.

@icedquinn @hj It's pretty darn subsidized, I dunno if they're taking a loss on it like consoles used to, but there's definitely not much profit in the hardware. The Steam Machine will supposedly be sold at a more standard price rather than being subsidized though.

not sure what you mean about the store, it's in big picture it doesn't work. it looks pretty but controller inputs can't navigate properly and checkout breaks whenever there's bank authorization or similar. which is why i have to switch to desktop mode, or more realistically put it down and use a computer with a proper M/KB to give them money

@quad @hj ngl i never tried to buy games -on- the thing. that's pretty bad if true

@icedquinn @hj I don't care much, I don't need to impulse buy from big picture anyways. But it's weird af

@quad @hj is the repair image the installer and the untagged .img.zst the image that gets flashed to the ssd? (or is that what the oobe images are for?)

@tromino @hj Pretty sure repair image contains an installer. I've always used the ones with "repair" in their name.

From my understanding the untagged image is what gets downloaded for major updates or if you swap between stable and testing channels. Essentially the same rootfs but without the tools needed to install or recover using a flash drive. I think.

The oobe images I have no idea what they are, if I had to hazard a guess, they're factory images that the deck ships with. But not sure.

@tromino @hj Again, it's confusing.

Valve wants you to download the recovery image from here: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/download/?ver=steamdeck

But they only update the download when a new product is released, this year it got updated to May 2025 (Release of the Legion Go S), but prior to that it always provided some old image from 2023 iirc.

I recommend just downloading the image Valve recommends first, if that won't boot for whatever reason, look through their repos for a newer image with the same or similar naming scheme.

@quad @hj I’m specifically planning to build a steamos pc with the 9060 xt I currently have, so it would probably be slightly easier to just get a 3.8+ image that supports it from the beginning

though I’ll probably be building it some time early next year, so maybe valve will have already released a new stable image for the steam machine by then anyway

@tromino @hj I suspect it'd work fine now. Although the newest images are for 3.8, my system has updated itself to 3.9 with kernel 6.16. ('Main' update channel. Essentially the rolling test channel)

I believe the minimum for RX 9000 GPUs is kernel 6.14 (but 6.15+ is recommended).

The SteamOS 3.9 that's rolling out to the main channel currently might already be what's intended for the Steam Machine/Frame and therefore might hit the preview channel sometime early next year, and probably stable not too long after.

@tromino @hj Also, I forgot to mention the images named "repair-main" will put you on the main channel.

That's why I recommend trying Valve's image first, if that works you know you can run the stable version. If you install a "repair-main" image you'll essentially be on a bleeding edge development build. Then you'll have to switch branches later if you want (it's just a dropdown in the system menu)

Being on main hasn't caused me any issues though. SteamOS uses an A/B update system so if an update ever failed, I haven't even noticed.

So again, try Valve's public image first, and only browse their repos if you actually need a newer image.

@quad @hj pretty sure the main branch is what I want (all the posts I’ve found on reddit say to either install steamos with an igpu and then switch to main before putting in the graphics card, or download the main image yourself and install from that), as long as it’s easy enough to switch to beta/stable once those are ready

if the last stable image was released in may, then that was probably before the recent kernel+mesa updates to properly support rdna4, right?

@tromino @hj Yeah if you were to install it today with a 9060 XT, I'm pretty sure you'd need main.