The Steam Deck has revolutionized the gaming handheld market. With the Linux-based immutable SteamOS, Valve has fostered an active community developing mods and alternative systems for this platform. Other manufacturers distribute Windows-based mobile consoles. However, time and time again it has been shown that they lag behind Linux in terms of software support.
But how easy is it to bring a Linux distribution, say openSUSE, to the Steam Deck?
In this talk, a prototype based on openSUSE’s open technologies and infrastructure will be presented, which is already (almost) fully functional on the Steam Deck and many other devices.
Do you mind elaborating on why you’re done with arch?
I don’t want a rolling release if I can avoid it. I don’t want a from-scratch distro where I’m suddenly in trouble because I forgot to install some crucial package that I wouldn’t have had to install on other distros. But I also don’t want a distro that’s forcing all sorts of software on me because that’s what it comes with (this point is about Arch-based distros: something that only ArcoLinux got right). I don’t want to wait to compile COSMIC every time there’s an update. I don’t want to compile from source all the time because that’s what the AUR is. And as powerful as the AUR is, it always feels janky, even with paru or yay.
I don’t want to worry that if I haven’t updated in a few weeks, I might get issues with the archlinux-keyring. You know what I’m talking about if you’ve used Arch long enough.
And after being an Arch Tester for a while and seeing how brittle package testing is (there are barely any testers, and that’s a massive concern), I decided I don’t trust the stability of Arch. So I left.