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Can I replace Windows with SteamOS directly yet? -Basic Win11 user who is getting sick of Win11. Get off my WinXpLawn
You can definitely replace it with Linux Mint, I did it 8 months ago and it was seamless, save for a little bit of fussing with my GPU driver.
You don't need SteamOS, or Bazzite.
Just get a desktop focused distro that looks interesting and install Steam.
Yes and yes. Pick anything that is large and actively under development (Mint, Fedora, Arch, etc.) or anything actively in development based on valve's stuff (Bazzite, Nobara, SteamOS** but that is currently focused on handheld devices so desktop support technically comes second place. I'm going to let the official steamOS simmer for another 6 months or so before trying it on a custom build desktop.)
Valve and AMD have freed Linux gaming by injecting cash into the FOSS ecosystem and giving it enough power to build momentum. Nvidia's monopoly on AI, academic researchers getting budgets for it, and Microsoft's and Apple's refusal to make software that meets scientific quality, have all coalesced freeing us from proprietary drivers never getting ported to Linux.
The year of the Linux desktop is now, and is so hype inducing that Microsoft used their trillions of dollars and world class research facilities to calculate the exact date for us: October 14.
As of last week, you can. But Valve isn't officially recommending it as a general purpose OS yet.
There are some Linux distros that are very similar to steamOS that are very popular right now. I personally ditched Windows for Bazzite early this year and haven't had any regrets about it. I've been using both windows and Linux for decades and this was the first distro that made me confident enough to ditch Windows completely.
I got a few bugs here and there but only one annoying issue that I had to fix (PC wouldn't wake up from sleep properly). I'm fine with using the terminal on my day to day so I can't say for sure but I think I only ever needed to use it once, to fix that specific issue.
All games I've tried worked perfectly well, though one of them (InZoi) required installing an external tool (proton-GE). Some older stuff like World of Warcraft were easier to install on it than on windows (and wow doesn't even support it officially).
Unlike other popular distros like Mint, Bazzite works in a way that prevents programs from messing with each other or with the system itself, so you're much more unlikely to ever break it. And if you do break it, there's a quick option to go back to the last working version. The downside is that if you manage to break it even beyond that, then fixing the issue will probably be harder than it would be to fix a similar problem on Mint.
Unlike other popular distros like Mint, Bazzite works in a way that prevents programs from messing with each other or with the system itself, so you're much more unlikely to ever break it. And if you do break it, there's a quick option to go back to the last working version.
Most Linux distros running on BTRFS with a snapshot manager like Timeshift or Snapper give you the same functionality, but I do get the appeal of Bazzite/immutable distros, especially for people who are new to Linux.
My Windows PC doesn't wake up from sleep properly anyway. lol
I made a post starting my Linux journey (and I probably won’t start for a while until I can get a new PC) but hopefully you can get some information out of it
Probably not a good idea to go for SteamOS. I get the appeal, but I've since come to realize that SteamOS isn't going to work for what we want. It's designed for handhelds, so it's never going to be seamless for desktops.
Valve's work on SteamOS is open so their work is utilized by a bunch of other distros. So you can actually get the best of both worlds if you expand your options a bit. Pick a popular distro and you'll be fine
If you have AMD hardware, maybe. If not, definitely will be troubles.