Steam Deck is just a computer. You can install any other Linux distro. Or Windows, if you are into that. I wouldn't recommend anything other than SteamOS, though.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
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Yeah I know, but I want a OS preconfigured for handhelds
Doesn't SteamOS satisfy that requirement? What do you dislike about it?
Thx, I know nobara too. No thanks fedora
There is ChimeraOS for gaming. You can install most modern distros and the gamepad will still work like a gamepad. Navigating most Desktop Enviroments will be problematic without a keyboard and mouse though.
At least the mouse is emulated by default in the gamepad's "lizard mode". And when you run Steam you get the same functionality as on the Deck.
There’s ChimeraOS. Not sure what it’s based on.
No OLED SD support (As far as I can read based on their site)
Just about any distribution should work out of the box. At least on the LCD model. Don't know how far the kernel sources are upstreamed for the OLED model.
I run OpenSUSE on my Deck. I did some tinkering to get it to a state I like. Unfortunately I don't have the energy to list everything. For many things I have created posts on Lemmy, should be my older stuff.
At https://gitlab.com/evlaV you can find all the sources from Valve's changes. If you have an OLED model you should be able to get a fully working kernel from here. For my LCD I created DKMS modules for the fan and controller.
There's also PikaOS. It's using Debian mechanics (so apt as the package manager and such), but a modern kernel and their own repos. If you're more used to this world, might be worth a look. 8 didn't know how well it'll handle the controller and specific button inputs from the deck though.
I personally also came from a mostly debian background, but ended up going with CachyOS for my desktop needs (my deck is still on steam os). It's arch based, and just very polished and well thought out. It has a version specifically for mobile consoles, like the steam deck.