Looks like almost all of this update is focused on improving support for other handheld devices.
Tell me Asus is making a SteamOS handhelds without telling me Asus is making a SteamOS handheld device:
Added support for the power button on Asus and Lenovo handhelds
Improved input support for Asus and Lenovo handhelds
I mean I’d assume they’re just talking about when installed on the handhelds Asus already have
Wish they would release the desktop version before Win10 support ends.
I know there are other Linux distributions out there.
Bazzite is essentially steamOS except the base isn’t Arch, it’s fedora, which doesn’t really matter much when you’re running an immutable system. Bazzite has a “home theater” and “PC” versions.
Also:
- Nvidia compatibility
- They automatically ship faster updates
- You can install more software OOTB.
- Android apps
- GPU Passthrough
- OS rollbacks
And much more
There ya go.
SteamOS is not a good general purpose distribution for random PCs. Internationalization is basically non existent. For an external keyboard the layout is hardcoded to US in Game Mode and for people who don’t know where to look it’s basically impossible to find where to change it in Plasma/Desktop Mode. Language files including spell check dictionaries are unavailable for anything but English, presumably to save storage space everywhere for the 64GB Deck.
If you manually set the system language to anything but English, you end up with a weird mishmash of languages because the .desktop files still contain all translations, GUIs of bundled apps stay English, and Flatpak apps respect the language setting.
The sole thing SteamOS has over other distributions is the fact that you can order a Steam Deck and everything is already right there. Once installation on random PCs comes into play, SteamOS loses against Fedora and alike hands down because those have the wizards to set up language, encryption, dual boot, etc.
