Bazzite

Bazzite is an opinionated immutable Fedora-based OS, aiming for great out-of-the-box experience on Handheld/Livingroom PC ("deck" flavor) and general purpose Desktops and Laptops.

While it's understandable to desire the original SteamOS, distros like Bazzite are a better choice for non-Valve hardware.

Improvements over vanilla SteamOS

• newer Kernel and KDE components
• more Wi-Fi NICs and other non-Valve hardware supported
• NVIDIA GPU drivers included in -nvidia flavors
• a flavor with GNOME Desktop Environment is available
• tools provided to create customized OS images

System requirements

• GPU with Wayland support
  • AMD: GCN 1.0 or newer
    • Desktop: 2012 Radeon HD 7000 series
    • Mobile: 2013 Radeon HD 8000M series (8000D and 8000G not supported)
  • Intel: 2015 6th generation Core "Skylake" iGPU
  • NVIDIA:
    • RTX Series or GTX 16xx Series ("nvidia-open" flavor)
    • GTX 750, GTX 9xx and GTX 10xx Series ("nvidia" flavor)
• Motherboard with UEFI, or late CSM (e.g. Intel Core 3rd gen)

Overlaying RPM packages

While it's not recommended, and may cause issues when updating root immutable image, overlaying packages is a way to experiment with less popular desktops.

To add COPR repositories:

sudo dnf5 copr enable lionheartp/Hyprland

To install packages:

rpm-ostree install noctalia-hyprland-meta wlrctl hyprprop hypridle hyprpolkitagent hyprqt6engine kanshi

To reset back to unmodified upstream image:

rpm-ostree reset

More documentation: Package Layering - Bazzite Documentation

Disabling Steam on login to KDE Plasma session

Bazzite adds Steam to KDE Plasma session autostart globally, so non-privileged autostart editing tools can't disable it.

Edit /etc/xdg/autostart/steam.desktop as root, e.g. with sudo nano, and add Hidden=true line to [Desktop Entry] section.

Verbose boot log

Disable boot animation:

sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete rhgb

Enable kernel logging:

sudo rpm-ostree kargs --delete quiet