Yes, it’s already installed on my steam dexk
It comes pre installed, the question should be the other way around: why change the system? And I don’t think those two are sufficiently different to justify it unless you want to use the deck mainly as a PC.
Nah, I want to keep using it as a gaming device. I changed the original OS to Bazzite because I absolutely need to flash alternate OSes on everything I can, the voices in my head tell me to. But joking aside, your question remains pertinent: why change the system? I honestly never gave SteamOS a fair shake and I probably should.
Yes, two primary advantages.
- you don’t have to install anything
- You can Game on first startup
Maybe it’s arch based? Tested bazzite and found it overhyped, I don’t think a immutable flatpak solution is the best for gaming. I use CachyOS on steam deck and love it’s easy setup (easy for an arch user).
Also happily settled on Cachy after trying stock/bazz… Was hardship to tinker around, sometimes I like the components to be able to talk to each other, why is that weird? 😆
I tried Bazzite for a while, personally I found only negatives. None of the features Bazzite provides were of any interest to me. I found it also downloaded a lot more updates, every time I picked the Deck up to play I had to wait for ages. Also, it did the shader caching thing EVERY TIME I started a game, instead of only sometimes. Went back to stock and I’m much more happy.
You can install actual programs, rather than taking up potentially gigabytes per program on flat or increasing update times to 30+ minutes…
Bazzite (or anything ostree) is the worst of all worlds.
Huh? Last time I checked, SteamOS literally removed user-installed (non-flatpak) packages.
I agree that it’s a pity that the first couple of flatpak packages take up a lot of space for what they are. But that shouldn’t bother most modern systems.




