Just got the Steam Deck and have everything set up, but I found out that Nobara has a Steam Deck version of their distro. My question is: is it worth switching to Nobara SteamDeck Version or stay on SteamOS? Are there any other big differences other than Arch vs Fedora? Also, does it use KDE?
I would stick with SteamOS personally. If you do want an alternative, check out Bazzite. It aims to be a closer alternative to SteamOS.
Not for a deck but an upcoming laptop I’m currently debating between nobara and bazzite, I keep thinking I’ve made up my mind and have settled on one but then change it again, is there somewhere I could find a good comparison/any glaring downsides I’m missing?
Nobara=mad respect to Glorious Eggroll
Bazzite is fucking cool because it uses the OCI framework. It is designed to be immutable and be run rootless(like SteamOS) so your base system just can’t break. Everything is sandboxed against everything else by default. Using Fleek/Nix you can even run software from the cloud.
https://github.com/castrojo/awesome-immutable This is an excellent resource on immutable OSes.
Cheeky PS: You can overlay an OCI image of Nobara’s enhancements onto Bazzite with something like this https://github.com/VinnyVynce/silvernobara
Saving this for that last link alone, thank you
The testing build of Bazzite should have everything in your bottom link and more ;)
Bazzite is Fedora-based. SteamOS is Arch based because (if I’m not mistaken) they usually have the latest drivers and will support the largest array of hardware.
For that reason I use and recommend ChimeraOS (on alternative hardware).
Not using chimera for no other reason than personally speaking I don’t like gnome, if there was a KDE spin then maybe, it otherwise looks good, but I’m not interested
I use Fedora on my main machine currently though, and know it will be compatible with the hardware I’m getting
Gnome is just an interface. You can install and use anything else you want.
Fedora also used Gnome?
I use the kde spin, and while yes I know I could change the DE, I’d prefer something like nobara or bazzite that have it out of the box, especially sense I’m planning on getting my partner to install it (to show it’s easier than they think)