Optionally, what would you have wanted to know before you bought one?

Thanks!

Edit: Hey, thank you all very very much for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate. I will most likely save up more and get the 1TB OLED model rather than the LCD model I was initially planning on. A couple of reasons for that, one, I am not good with electronics and I’d probably screw something up putting a new storage drive in. And two this thing will most likely be a permanent replacement for my old gaming laptop, which at this point is more than 10 years old, and seems to be on its last legs (I installed Linux on it, which was a struggle, but that is probably on me rather than Linux or the computer being at fault).

Anyway, I appreciate everyone’s responses and thanks for helping a gal out!

  • Dariusmiles2123
    3•3 days ago

    What would be the benefits?

    I only got interested in it because you could have gnome instead of Kde in desktop mode, but I haven’t heard about other benefits and there are pribably downsides too.

    • @Telorand@reddthat.com
      3•3 days ago

      Benefits:

      • Changes are persistent. Unlike SteamOS, which uses an A/B partition scheme for upgrades, every update is a new system image but leaves your home directories alone, and you can easily rollback or rebase at will without much issue.
      • Several built in tweak commands to set up or modify different settings/apps.
      • Comes with many QoL bundled apps.
      • Can utilize Distrobox to install other software from other distros.
      • Active and responsive devs and community.
      • Works on both desktop and handheld hardware.

      Drawbacks:

      • Does not always get updates as quickly as SteamOS (it’s nearly bleeding edge, but not quite).
      • The fully Atomic nature has a learning curve, and system management may be challenging, depending on what kinds of tweaks a user intends.

      There may be other technical aspects that differ, like battery life, but I don’t know enough to say if they are different in practice. Fwiw, I have Bazzite on a laptop and SteamOS on my Deck.

    • @ryokimball@infosec.pub
      3•3 days ago

      Main benefit for me is a more traditional Linux environment, whereas steamos basically has a single user without a password and encryption is difficult at best. Great for playing games but not for computer usability. Bazzite also supports full disk encryption, and recently I learned/was told that you can move your SD card between Bazzite devices like Nintendo cartridges to play wherever.

      One downside would be arguably less support. It’s community driven so the hardware manufacturers aren’t going to necessarily help you get dysfunctional games working, etc. Not that they’re going to be much help even when you’re playing native.