Stefano Prenna

I would say around 15 years ago, it was Windows XP

But it did MOST of the times…

Oh, I don’t know how it is nowadays, I have switched to Linux since many years ago…

Very often sfc /scannow will ask for an installation media, which, in a corporate environment, means sending the machine to onsite support for either “fixing” or “reimaging”. It’s basically the command you should try first if you don’t want to help someone fixing the issue. “See? There is something wrong with your installation, you should fix that before doing anything else…”

I used that trick a few times myself to get rid of poorly behaving people.

The Steam Deck is a PC…

I use regularly Lutris, Bottles, ScummVM, Dosbox-X or EmulationStation. So I can play from GOG, Epic, Itch.Io or plain old games (Dos) / emulated.

I do have many titles on Steam as well and generally I don’t look too much at whether something is verified or platinum on ProtonDB, I just avoid titles from companies like Activision, EA, Ubisoft and generally all works very easily or easy enough!

No, it’s Ryan Howard.

So, I’ve been using my Steam Deck as my main driver for more than a year. While there are options to install software without having those removed when you update (steamos-btrfs, nix, distrobox), you can just boot another OS from an external drive.

I have WinesapOS on a SD card so I can use SteamOS without restrictions (and there are other options like Bazzite that others have mentioned).

So far, I have not found anything that was not possible on my machine, because, well, it’s a computer with an Arch distro on it!

Something that I read elsewhere, not in this thread, is about limits when it comes to work with external peripherals. Now, I can tell you that I use an external Bluray player, printer, scanner, drawing tablet, floppy drive reader (to make images of floppies), azeron pad, programming esp32, work with sound with a Creative GC7, and I’m not sure I’m missing anything. My SteamOS is great!

I remember when I did the switch in 2008 and never looked back. I had a similar experience where across a few years I have been trying different distributions and finally settled on Lubuntu. Years have passed and different machines as well. Now my main driver is a Steam Deck with his Arch based OS and a secondary pure Arch on a sd card for more specific tasks.

Linux made my life more comfortable and relaxed, without even mentioning secure. My family uses Linux now, Windows is long dead.

We are free.

As stated from official Valve’s page https://www.steamdeck.com/en/oled

“Use your Deck as a PC, because it is one.” So Valve did market it as a PC and it’s one of the reasons I bought one more than a year ago. And it’s really my desktop (that I bring with me to places occasionally)c