hi! I’m just interested in SteamOS—for those who have used it, is it true that the FPS in games is sometimes better than on Windows? And does SteamOS play nice with Nvidia graphics cards?
I’d be interested to hear your opinion—is it worth making the switch?
Posted by Suitable-Waltz3572
16 Comments
SteamOS dont work with Nvidia cards. Use Bazzite instead or an other Linux Distro
Switched to bazzite, which is similar. You gotta mess around to add mods but has been better than windows
it doesn’t work at all with nividia and it being an immutable OS isn’t great either unles you only do strictly gaming. i’d reccomend CachyOS but there’s also bazzite, linux mint…
I did and currently decited to waiting for Nvidia support or IDK maybe I can switch to Amd card in a few months
I switched to CachyOS on my laptop. Dual gpu, amd and nvidia. Being gaming oriented, it has everything you need pre-installed. Super easy to use with a bit of reading online. I can say that it surely uses less ram and sometimes less vram than windows in the same games. I still have to try non steam (gog) games properly, but drivers work, everything I plugged into the pc (including a gulikit hyperlink 2 adapter recently) worked flawlessly. You mileage may vary ofc, but it’s usable and the experience on steam has been flawless, I played rise of nations (2004 iirc) on a 2024 machine through a conversion layer by just pressing “play”, so I’d say it works well. Feel free to ask anything except bigpicture/console mode and other distros other than fedora and mint as I don’t jave any other experience!
I installed bazzite which works pretty much similar as steamOS over a year ago, started dual-booting with WIN11 and later completely nuked windows. In terms of performance, I don’t really monitor them and based on what I see online it doesn’t really make a big difference, some games works little better and some worse. But the console-like experience is just so much better compared to windows if you use your PC as a gaming console connected to TV. Full controller support, no desktop BS/notification, reliable in-game sleep/resume support. You can tinker with windows to achieve similar experience which I did, but it was never as smooth as bazzite. Since I most play steam single-player games, so almost every game I play simply just work via proton under linux.
I have switched on my rog ally. I wouldn’t go back. The experience is sooooooo much better.
I did try some Linux distros in my PC, but no dice. Always had driver issues. Didn’t try steamOS, but I already know my laptop is not compatible with it.
Performance is generally the same as Windows. A few game run better, most are close, but a few run worse. If you are ONLY looking for a performance boost, I won’t bother. You are likely to run into more issues and limitations than if you stayed on Windows.
That said, if you are looking to get away from Windows, go for it. While you will have more problems than native Windows, it’s not that bad. Issues are usually minor inconveniences or easy to fix.
The biggest limitation will be with multi player games that have Anticheat that explicitly blocks anything not Windows.
I switched my ROG Ally from Windows to steam OS through Bazzite. Best switch I made. It runs every game that I’ve played at better quality than on windows, boots/loads faster, and is very easy to manage. If I didn’t still play Destiny 2, I’d switch my PC to Linux also.
Wait whaaat
I cobbled a system from some parts I had laying around for the living room and installed the Steam OS restore image. I tried Bazzite first but it wouldn’t install. (I probably selected the wrong image but I don’t know for sure). It worked great but I was using all AMD hardware. Ryzen 2700x, Radeon 7900 GRE, 32 gigs of ram. From my experience, the FPS was slightly lower than Windows 10 but the 1% lows were better. Honestly it wasn’t noticeable when I wasn’t benchmarking. It was worth it just from the better UI for TV and less annoying system updating. Also no ads except what you might see browsing the Steam store.
Unless you like figuring out hardware issues, I would just stick to an Arch based distro until steamOS has all of the kinks ironed out
I have had, on occasion, slightly better performance on Linux than on Windows, but it’s definitely not guaranteed, some stuff may run worse too and many multiplayer games with kernel anti cheat straight up won’t run at all.
In any case, I wouldn’t switch to SteamOS tho. You *can* use it as a desktop distro, but that’s not what it was made for. It is very specifically tailored to Valve’s hardware. Better go with another distro like Bazzite or CachyOS
If you want to fully ditch Windows I’d recommend you to try a desktop focused distro instead a couch gaming focused distro. Something like Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuse. Gaming on Steam is the same, because Proton works its “magic” on the Steam client, so, game compatibility and performance is the same on every Linux distro. Extra points for Ubuntu, because installing Nvidia drivers is easier than Windows (if you provide internet connection during the installation and click on installing proprietary drivers and codecs, your Nvidia GPU will be working in the first bootup) and the official Steam client Linux installer is a .DEB file, which installs natively on Ubuntu.
I switched from Windows to Bazzite six months ago and Bazzite to SteamOS last night actually.
I have an upper midrange PC so the “improved performance” this is less true for me but the experience on Bazzite/SteamOS is INFINITELY better.
I’m also noticing that the micro stutter problem that would happen on bazzite intermittently is essentially GONE on SteamOS.
the difference in fps is gonna be single digits at most, don’t switch if that’s your main reason, it’s more of a nice bonus.
it’s MUCH simpler than windows. just hit play and go. settings tweaking needed in games still but less hassle of launchers and such
if you play a lot of multiplayer it’s not for you. the most widely used anti cheat’s do not support linux