this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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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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The following is a list of suggested flairs:
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@Fubarberry @Damage as someone who only uses basic programs for entertainment on the steam deck, what linux programs are hard to install and why?
So SteamOS is what's known as an immutable file system, which is where the system files can't be modified by the user. This makes the system very hard to break for end users, provides easy system repair options, and is generally nice for a consumer device.
However immutable systems are relatively new, and historically most programs are installed to parts of the drive that are now "immutable". This is a problem for installing software.
A recently popular software distribution system is called flatpak, and one of the nice things about it is that it installs software to the user section of the drive, allowing it to work for providing software in immutable systems. This is what the Steam Deck uses, available through the discover store. However flatpaks aren't perfect, they lack some programs available from the traditional sources, and they often have trouble letting programs interact with each other. An easy example of this is a program like a password manager may need to integrate with your web browser to fill in passwords, but the flatpak versions of the browser and password manager can't actually talk to each other and won't work together.
Bazzite also uses an immutable OS, but it allows you to install select programs to the normally locked down system partition. This isn't meant to be the main way to install software, but is a good fallback option for something that isn't available or doesn't work when installed through flatpak.
Bazzite also offers alternative desktop environments like Gnome, which has a more touch friendly user interface. Alternative desktops are not currently available for SteamOS in any reasonable way.
To be specific, SteamOS isn't actually immutable. Its "immutability" is more artificial, since the updates come as complete images, which effectively wipes out any changes to the core system files, resulting in the same goal of an unchanged core OS. But you could, if you wanted to, set up a sudoer user and modify things like any other Arch install (until the next update wipes it all out, obviously).
Bazzite, on the other hand, is truly immutable. But there's some drawbacks with Bazzite that will likely never change, like the fact that laying certain VPN clients isn't possible, due to how they need to write to certain system directories. You may be able to circumvent this in specific cases by layering via
rpm-ostreeor utilizing adistrobox, but I can't get mine to install no matter what I do. YMMV.