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!
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!