Hello community!
I come to you for advice. Using an m1 macbook air since 2020, I installed popos on my old 2013 macbook pro and I was quite happy with it but… I bought a steamdeck two weeks ago and exploring its desktop mode made me reconsider some choices. Using distros based on different systems, with different commands, desktop environment, etc. gets a little confusing for someone like me, who doesn’t use linux as my main machine. Do you have any advice for me? From what I understand, steamos is debian-based while popos is ubuntu-based: is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.? Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin, that are debian-based, or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?
Thanks in advance, I’m a bit lost.
steamos is debian-based
This used to be the case until the launch of the Steam Deck, on which SteamOS (3) is actually based on Arch instead. However, SteamOS is a very special distro based on Arch due to ‘immutability’, how it achieves said ‘immutability’, the implications thereof, ‘freezing’ of packages, inability to install packages persistently without some hacking etc. So, SteamOS is not representative of how Arch works in general.
while popos is ubuntu-based
And Ubuntu is based on Debian.
is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.?
If we take your average (popular) distro, so the likes of Gentoo, NixOS etc are dismissed as they are very unique compared to the others, then arguably the most important differentiators would be: Model for updates, package manager and available packages. One might delve deeper into this and with the advent of stuff like Distrobox this becomes a lot more blurred, but traditionally speaking the aforementioned three things used to be the main differentiators. Beyond those, the end-user has the freedom to do whatever with their system. For example, Pop!_OS comes with GNOME + their own touches by default. However, the desktop mode of SteamOS comes with KDE. But you can install KDE on Pop!_OS and even customize it very closely to how it’s done over at SteamOS. This is not a special quality of Pop!_OS, but of Linux in general.
Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin
It’s important to note that both of these are not unique in what they offer in terms of UI/UX. You can recreate 99% of it yourself, simply by installing the appropriate desktop environment; which constitutes most of the UI/UX. Nitrux has KDE as its desktop environment (with a touch of Maui), while deepin uses the Deepin desktop environment. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend any desktop environment beyond Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and Xfce. Don’t be discouraged by this though, feel free to put Nitrux and deepin on a Live USB to get a feel for them. Regarding good UI/UX, your best bets are probs Kubuntu, Linux Mint, openSUSE and Pop!_OS. Honourable mention would be MX Linux, but I don’t recommend systemd-less distros to newer users.
that are debian-based
Sure, Nitrux is based on Debian. But it’s immutable, systemd-less and favors AppImages over Flatpak/Snap. It’s a cool project, but I find it hard to recommend to a newer user. While deepin is less unique by comparison, it’s far from a distro that’s known for its polish. I’d argue it’s mostly just eye-candy instead 😅.
or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?
Bullseye! This isn’t a hard rule though. I started venturing into Linux through a somewhat obscure distro as well 😅. But, at the time, I researched for about a week which distro to install and why. Afterwards I spent another week on how I should install it and what should be considered for install. And then I installed it, after which I spent almost two weeks getting the system to a working state. It still wasn’t quite there yet, but after spending a month on it from start to finish I wanted to move on to something else 😅. I kept the install, don’t get me wrong. And it became my daily-driver. After some time I even ‘fell in love with it’. But like, I know that I can be stubborn about things like this and persevere where others might have preferred to hit their heads to the wall instead. So your mileage may vary…
Do you have any advice for me?
As you’ve correctly assessed, you are indeed lost 😅 . That’s fine, I think almost all of us have been lost at some point in time. Uhmm…, but honestly, I think you’re conflating two very distinct things. Pop!_OS is a general-use distro on which you can do whatever. And most distros that people talk about and engage with are similarly general-use distros. SteamOS, on the other hand, isn’t quite like that. Sure, you may hack your way and achieve some things with it. But it’s false to believe that you can find any distro that qualifies as SteamOS but on your laptop. Before giving you any recommendations, would you be so kind to answer the following:
- Your post is written in a way that implies that you want to forego Pop!_OS for another distro that’s more like SteamOS. Therefore my question would be:
- What things from SteamOS did you prefer over Pop!_OS? Please be specific and elaborate*.
Thank you for taking the time to explain my muddied understanding of linux and its various distros! You’re completely right about the stuff around packages and updates being the important differentiators, and it’s really hard to grasp without using linux and testing different things. Coming from popos and typing apt-get in steamos, but wait I should use pacman and oh what are those AppImage I keep hearing about: that was really confusing because I didn’t know what knowledge I lacked and how to look it up. reason was and some information about it was just contradictory. I think the steamos thing changing from debian to arch actually confused me a lot too, plus contradictory information and command lines, etc.
From what I gather, and thinking back on my short and past, while appreciated, incursion into the linux world:
- I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)
- Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands), but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.
Thank you also for the info about nitrux and the others, there is a lot of confusion between prettiness (or eye-candiness ;) ) and actually good ui/ux, and you were on the point.
Glad to hear that I was able to contribute 🙂 ! And thank you for your great reply!
I prefer KDE over gnome (I think that’s what’s bothering me about my install of popos at the moment)
That could definitely be it. No worries, even the community is somewhat polarized on GNOME; with a big chunk of the community favoring it over all the other desktop environments, while another big chunk doesn’t tolerate it at all. However, the reason that everyone has an outspoken opinion on it comes primarily from the fact that a lot of distros come with GNOME by default; with both Ubuntu and Fedora being the big ones (sure; both have flavors/spins with other desktop environments, but their main ISO defaults to GNOME). Regarding recommendations; while any major (independent) distro should technically suffice, I would argue that Kubuntu and openSUSE (contrary to the others; openSUSE actually defaults to KDE) are both excellent choices, with both Fedora’s KDE Spin and Debian (on which you can pick KDE during first install) are very good choices as well if you lean more towards minimalism. While Arch deserves a mention regardless, I don’t think you’re ready (yet).
Typing command line doesn’t bother me (on the opposite: I feel like I understand what is going on better if I can actually type in commands)
That’s great to hear!
but I don’t fully understand the difference and advantages/disadvantages between pacman, apt, yum, etc. I’m more used to apt and I feel like there’s more information available, but that’s it.
I won’t be able to be exhaustive on this, so I instead I’ll lean more towards being somewhat oversimplistic for the sake of brevity.
pacmanis the package manager on Arch(-based distros)aptis the package manager on Debian(-based distros)yumused to be the package manager on Fedora(-based distros), but has since been replaced bydnf. You can still install packages usingyumon these distros, however it’s just an alias fordnf.
These are not the only package managers out there, as almost all independent distros come with their own package manager;
apk(on Alpine),eopkg(on Solus),xbps(on Void) andzypper(on openSUSE) etc. The tasks of the package manager are varied, but all of them are to be interacted with when installing, upgrading and removing software. As the feature-set is different, so too are their performances. A rolling release distro like Arch will receive a constant stream of updates, thus having access to a package manager that’s very fast is beneficial. Thus we find thatpacmanis very optimized for speed. To perhaps illustrate how much difference this can make, I compared Alpine’sapkwith openSUSE’szypper. Note that Alpine is one of the most minimalist distros out there, and itsapkmight be the fastest package manager that’s in active use. So here are the results:sudo apk add firefox 0.01s user 0.02s system 0% cpu 8.216 totalsudo zypper install -y firefox 0.02s user 0.06s system 0% cpu 33.727 total
On which the number before
totalreveals how much time it took in seconds. These tests were done in distrobox containers btw*.Speed is not the only important metric, however as ultimately one can not engage with packages without waiting for them to be installed/updated/removed, a lot of the discourse is about how fast the package managers are at installing, updating and removing packages.
“hacking” ಠ_ಠ you mean tinkering.
- Your post is written in a way that implies that you want to forego Pop!_OS for another distro that’s more like SteamOS. Therefore my question would be:
I would choose a popular distro instead of a niche one.
The main pro of that is that you’ll get a big support community and lots of documentation. When you decide to use a less common one, especially one with only one or a few developers, this can backfire. Maintaining a distro is a lot of hard work and you have to trust them to patch all security-things and don’t just stop sending out updates.
Most niche distros are just Debian/ Arch with some custom themes and a few apps pre-installed, which you can do on your own super easily anyway.
My recommendations would be:
- Fedora: my favourite distro. Gets major updates twice a year, and therefore is leading in new technologies and software, but not bleeding edge, so it is pretty reliable. There are many spins (editions) available, which differ in their desktop environment (DE), aka GUI and app family. The “Official” (Workstation) is with Gnome, which is a very unique and interesting DE that supports very smooth trackpad gestures (better than MacOS imo!) and looks very clean. But it is very unconventional and minimalist, so not everybody likes it. Hit me up if you have any questions. And the other one is the KDE spin, which looks exactly the same as your desktop mode in your Deck, since it also uses KDE Plasma as DE. Both are user friendly, but require something like a “10 things to do after installing”-tutorial, since there may be a few codecs or so missing.
- Mint: THE recommended distro for newcomers. It will take you by the hand and show you the wonderful Linux world. It’s a bit more conservative, but therefore very stable. Even my Mum and tech-illiterate friends/ elderly understand it. If you like the UI of the steam deck, you may not enjoy it as much, but even when not, will introduce you
- Pop!OS: you already used it, nothing to say
- Kubuntu: similar to Fedora KDE, but not liked by the community as much. Would choose Fedora over it, but doesn’t matter much tbh
- Fedora Silverblue/ Kionite: probably the most similar to the steam deck in this list. It is also immutable, so you can’t brick it or fuck up much. But it should be more used by more experienced users.
–> I would recommend you Fedora Workstation if you have a good trackpad or prefer a keyboard based workflow. It would be a quite unique experience and something else than your Steam Deck. Otherwise, if your laptop is a bit older, try Mint.
Thank you for the suggestions, I’ll besure to look into it. I think I had an intuition but completely underestimated the importance of the community around a specific distro. When you’re not actively using Linux, it’s hard to grasp what criteria should be favored and what significance they will have, not just for anybody but for me.
So I should try it, and I must say the more I hear about fedora the more interested I am.
The only reason to not use Silver blue is if you use something like a VPN that requires root functions. Most VPN’s will work with network manager or have flatpak clients but there are some like Mullvad that are quite tricky to get sorted.
Yeah. I’ve just started using SB a few days ago AND decided for Mullvad. What a coincidence…
AFAIK you can just install the rpm via rpm-ostree and reboot. I have to look if this also works with tool- or distrobox.
Or, if you don’t rely on the client, just set up your connection using the native import function of Gnome/ KDE.
But for now, Silverblue is great and I don’t feel like it restricts me at all tbh. I just wouldn’t recommend it to newcomers, since you have to find a few workarounds and try other approaches as with Ubuntu for example.
rpm-ostree installs the client, but it hasn’t worked for me as the service is blocked, it’s the same with the ovpn/wireguard method using gnome’s network manager. Could be something simple I’m missing with Nix I had to enable it as a service, I haven’t used SB for a fair while now but have recently used micro which had the same issue.
I’m using Mullvad on Silverblue right now, through NetworkManager. Just had to import the wireguard config file they provide. No extra app/package needed!
Awesome stuff glad to hear it, I love immutable distros for my work machines silver blue definitely being the trend setter
Personally I like fedora with gnome as the desktop. It always felt slick on a laptop. I haven’t used anything else in a long time… But kde plasma looks like it might be worth checking out if gnomes not your thing.
I used gnome a long time ago and didn’t really like it, but it might be worth a try. A lot of things change in ten years!
It’s improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years! Definitely worth a second look imo
@thethirdobject @iHUNTcriminals I would say its a no brainer if you mainly use a laptop with a trackpad. its feels like the de is setup for laptops and has great gesture support. the desktop experience is also good though once you install a handful of extensions and configure the keyboard shortcuts
The new SteamOS is arch based, the old ones were debian-based. Also, since ubuntu is based on debian, Pop is also kind of debian based, fyi
TL;DR: Install Plasma/KDE on your current Linux and select it when logging in.
First a correction, SteamOS used to be debian based, it’s now Arch based, not that that should matter to you because 90% of using a Linux for day to day will be through the DE or with commands that are the same for all distros, so anything with Plasma/KDE will look and behave the same as SteamOS. The remaining 10% has to do with how you install things, on SteamOS you don’t install things to your system (i.e. the equivalent to apt/yum/pacman/portage in other distros) because it’s immutable, but there is a store to install Flatpaks for your user which I’m sure you can install on other distros (or something similar enough).
So realistically any distro with KDE/Plasma should feel the same as SteamOS for you. While technically Arch/Manjaro/Garuda are the closest ones I wouldn’t recommend any of them because Arch is bleeding edge, which means sometimes things will break, it’s rare but it happens, and Arch’s philosophy is that you should know how to fix it. If you already have Pop maybe just install Plasma on it and see how you like it, you can select your DE on the login screen, and you can even change the login manager program in the future if you want, and most of the things you’ll learn by doing so will be usable on other Linux distros. Until you’re VERY familiar with Linux the difference between a distro and another is just the package manager they use and what comes pre-installed by default, so use whatever you’re already using unless you have a specific reason for wanting to change.
on SteamOS you don’t install things to your system (i.e. the equivalent to apt/yum/pacman/portage in other distros) because it’s immutable, but there is a store to install Flatpaks for your user which I’m sure you can install on other distros (or something similar enough)
That’s exactly what I didn’t understand without knowing I didn’t understand it!
SteamOS used to be debian based, it’s now Arch based, not that that should matter to you because 90% of using a Linux for day to day will be through the DE or with commands that are the same for all distros, so anything with Plasma/KDE will look and behave the same as SteamOS.
While that’s true, 10% is a big percentage!Especially when you first discover a distro, you spend a lot of time trying to understand how to install this and why is that not working, at least for me: not being unable to replicate what little knowledge I had about linux (from ubuntu and popos) on steamos really confused me, even though I tried to gather as much information as I could.
I guess steamos being immutable also played a big part in my confusion…
I get what you mean, when you’re starting those 10% feel like a lot because it’s one of the main things you do when you first grab a system, but over time you install less and less stuff. Even if you’re not using Arch, the documentation there is really good, for example they have a Rosetta Stone for package managers, so if you know the command you want to do on one you can check the equivalent on other https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Rosetta so for example if you know in Debian based distros you would do
apt-get installyou’ll see that in Arch ispacman -S.At the end of the day once you’re familiar with Linux the way you install packages is not that relevant to how you use your system. I currently have 3 machines, with 3 different distros, 2 of them look exactly the same and you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which, except one is Ubuntu (company issued laptop) and the other is Arch (Personal computer), sometimes I run Pacman on Ubuntu or apt on Arch and get a command not found error, but other than that they’re completely interchangeable.
I am really pleased with all the answer I got and surprised by their wholesomeness. You were able to bring some clarifications on important points that have been really obscure for me for a long time. I will take some time to reply and/or ask follow-up questions, but I wanted you to know that your help is appreciated.
I do not think anybody has mentioned it yet but the closest you can get to SteamOS is this:
https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso
That may not be your best install experience as a newcomer to Linux though.
My favourite distribution is EndeavourOS ( easier to deploy Arch Linux ). If the Arch association seems scary, my feeling is that the best all around newbie distro is Linux Mint. My impression is that the distro people are happiest with is PopOS but I have not used it. It sounds like you have.
Reading into your question though, the “desktop mode” of SteamOS is KDE ( the desktop environment ). That provides the user experience and is the biggest factor on how you interact with your computer.
KDE is available on most distros but it is not the default desktop environment on many of them. Ubuntu uses a modified GNOME desktop for example and Debian defaults to GNOME as well. Linux Mint uses a GNOME derived environment called Cinnamon. If you wanted KDE on Ubuntu, there is a project called Kubuntu that delivers it out of the box. The last disto I used that installed KDE by default was Big Linux.
As I said though, most distros offer KDE even if it is not the default.
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Great post - I agree, Linux Mint or Ubuntu sound appropriate for OP. Solid systems with a lot of support.
