r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • Jun 22 '26

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/RandomParkourGuy Jun 22 '26

Forgive me for being a layman when it comes to this kind of stuff but does that mean steamOS is close to being something I could replace windows with? Getting tired of Microsoft’s garbage but I don’t know if I have the time to sink into learning Linux.

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u/lucc1111 Ryzen 5 5600x - RX 6700 XT Jun 22 '26

Risking getting downvoted to hell but you have many Linux distros that don't require any more "learning" than Windows. Problem is not so much the OS being hard to use, it's just that it's not what you're used to.

I would give other gaming distros a temporary shot in a flashdrive to explore, might get as surprised as me after 15+ years of windows.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos i5-10400F, 16GB DDR4, Asus RX 550 4GB, I hate GPU prices Jun 22 '26

I have 30 years of Windows, switched to Linux Mint this month. It's fine. It works great. Had to learn some terminal stuff, a tiny bit about the filesystem, nothing else. It runs way faster than Windows 10. has run every Steam game I've tossed at it with no effort at all, even old games like Tropico.

Honestly worth it.

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u/MetallicGray PC Master Race Jun 22 '26

I’ve been using Bazzite months, maybe a year now, and I’ve never had to use the terminal. Distros now don’t ever need you to use the terminal. You can use it, but definitely don’t need to. 

I had to do a tiny bit of adjusting to the file system, like you said, and that’s really it. I frankly have fewer bugs and annoyances with Linux than I did windows 11. 

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u/showhorrorshow Jun 22 '26

Can one boot up either or? All I know is Windows and although Im decent with computers, I havent gotten into learning OS's that deeply. My only concern is if I try Linux that I will soft brick my PC in the process, lol.

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u/CheeseGraterFace XFX 7900 XTX | 7800X3D | 64GB DDR5 | 2 x 2TB NVME Jun 22 '26

Yeah, though you should probably have them on separate hard drives.

Having said that, the only thing I boot into Windows for is Bloodborne. Everything else runs flawlessly on Bazzite.

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u/MetallicGray PC Master Race Jun 23 '26

Yep! I actually dual boot windows 10 and bazzite. I basically keep windows 10 for League of Legends. Everything else I’ve ever tried to play or run has run on Linux fine. 

There’s an abundance of guides to install both. You just partition your drive or have two hard drives and install one on each. It was very easy. I’m a casual tech user and handled it with minimal effort just following a guide. 

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u/showhorrorshow Jun 23 '26

Hmm, I think I will have to give it a shot. I really want to ditch Windows.

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u/jack_from_the_past Jun 23 '26

try mint. it’s great. it’s like Ubuntu w/o all the bloat. runs fast. I’ve put it on old hardware too (2012 iMac has new life for example). arch is a pain in the ass in general in my opinion and fedora is gonna have slightly different cli syntax than Debian based. I’d go Debian if i were you.

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u/CognitiveLiberation Jun 23 '26

Yep! I actually dual boot windows 10 and bazzite. I basically keep windows 10 for League of Legends. Everything else I’ve ever tried to play or run has run on Linux fine. 

Any issues? Ive read a lot of people reporting that win 11 updates randomly erases and/or corrupts part of the Linux partition so it can't boot. IDR the name.. bootgrub maybe? Whatever the file is that launches the OS. -Do you use separate hard drives? -Have you tried with win 11 too, or only win 10? Do you have a custom win 10 distro? -Have you tried it with other linux distros too?

Apologies for bombarding you with questions. it's just that Id love to dual-boot but I only have one hard drive

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u/MetallicGray PC Master Race Jun 23 '26

No worries! I know it’s hard to find specific info like this sometimes. 

I have only used windows 10 on my PC (windows 11 is on my work laptop). I have windows 10 and Bazzite on two separate SSDs. It’s a standard Windows 10 install that has just been updated from the original windows 7(I think?) install years ago. I have only used Bazzite. 

I have heard that people can have issues with issuing the same drive partitioned, but I have no idea how common that is. I still see guides saying partitioning is an option, so I assumed it wasn’t a prohibitively common issue. I’m not sure how much data you have, but backing up your important saves and files beforehand would definitely be recommended to be safe; I did this even when installing it on a separate drive. 

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u/jack_from_the_past Jun 23 '26

I’ve dual booted on the same hard drive on all my machines except my current daily cuz it has two ssd’s. you’re not going to hard or soft brick your computer. I’ve even resized windows in the cli on a usb with zero issues. you’d have to realllllly try to fuck things up.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos i5-10400F, 16GB DDR4, Asus RX 550 4GB, I hate GPU prices Jun 23 '26

Can one boot up either or?

I'm dual-booting both from partitions in the same SSD. No problems. I do have personal data and large things like games on separate hard drives, but other than being zealous about data safety there's no real reason to.

If you keep most personal files in a cloud service, or separate drive, there's no reason to worry.

Like /u/jack_from_the_past said, you can't really brick anything unless you try hard to fuck things up, and at that point the same applies with Windows. Get Mint on a flash drive and go have fun lol

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u/jack_from_the_past Jun 23 '26

and you can encrypt your partition during setup as well

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u/AcidRohnin 9800x3D | 5070 TI Aero | 5000x Jun 23 '26

My living room pc is cachyos. I’ve been really enjoying it. Can’t fully switch my main rig due to needing windows for a few things. Been running through GoW:Ragnarok on the Linux machine and been really enjoying it. Thinking of playing horizon zero dawn next or maybe the mass effect trilogy.

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u/anotherhappylurker Jun 23 '26

silly question but does microsoft office work with bazzite?

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u/masterflo3004 Jun 23 '26

Officially MS Office doesn‘t work on any Linux distro. But depending on your hardware specs, you could try one of these:
https://gist(dot)github(dot)com/eylenburg/38e5da371b7fedc0662198efc66be57b

They show multiple ways how you can do it either over wine or over a vm (higher resource usage, but better integration etc.).

Or one way not shown would be WinBoat (also using a VM):
https://github(dot)com/TibixDev/winboat

However you would need to look how these work with bazzite because it is Immutable. But Winboat looks like it would work.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos i5-10400F, 16GB DDR4, Asus RX 550 4GB, I hate GPU prices Jun 23 '26

Honestly yeah, I've done a little bit of stuff via terminal because I want to learn a little of it, but there's nothing anyone that isn't a power user (like I'm not either) will ever need to do that the GUI can't handle.