Yeah unfortunately this is a real issue. I also think it's an issue that experienced users don't really want to help newbies, especially those who can't or won't do research by themselves. Ideally experienced users would be more helpful, but at the same time that isn't their job. There are many who learned Linux more or less on their own so it's understandable they don't want to help given they didn't use any help when it was their turn. I think now that the community is growing this might start to change a bit, as the newcomers are more likely to have had help and be willing to help others.

I sometimes try to advocate for using Linux, and I don't mind giving friends advice from time to time. That being said I don't want to be stuck answering stupid questions all the time that could have been solved with a google search or a YouTube video. I have my own stuff to worry about both technical and otherwise.

That's why I think teaching new users how to access resources like man pages, gnu info pages, google, and so on is the correct approach to take. It is empowering having the skills to work through your own issues. That being said I also think it's important for experienced people to give advice on more complex questions.

This thread is about the steam deck. It is a purpose built piece of hardware that runs its software in containers.

It can run regular desktop software, but it is absolutely not a replacement for "a general purpose system".

That's good one :-)

I have enough PTSD from the aptly named TouchWiz era. I simply can't imagine all those Samsung executives nodding approvingly with the powerpoint presentation in their offices.

Darth Gaben: To verify your identity, say the gamer word out loud with the hard R explicitly pronounced. If you'd fail to do this check every half an hour (offline included), the VAC ban would follow. I don't make rules, hahaha, no, I make them up as we speak.

Oh yeah, I agree. I really only chose Samsung because they’re one of the very few companies with the same kind of market presence as Apple.

SteamOS is a thing. https://store.steampowered.com/steamos

Yeah, not using Quest. Trying to run an HTC Vive, which is pretty ancient at this point. In any case, I think the issue is I installed Steam via flatpak, but I guess it’s better to install it natively for VR. I’m sure I could technically get it running, but after putting a few hours into trying, I just gave up. Mostly just want to play Half-Life Alyx and after that I’m probably finished with the VR till some other killer game comes out.

I used Linux Mint originally. No issues at all with drivers there, worked perfectly. My main complaint was its kinda ugly and had limited UI configurability. It also was a pain to install certain apps, which weren’t available by default in the software manager. I tried a few other distros including Fedora and Elementary OS. Fedora was pretty nice. Elementary OS felt a bit dated looking and I was going to have to fix some UI issues to make it work.

Finally, I gave Zorin OS a go and couldn’t be happier. It’s based on Ubuntu so pretty stable and just works, plus the UI is polished and it has a lot of built in ways to customize it, whether you’re from Mac or Windows background. It’s also really easy to install apps - flatpak and snap. I guess some on here would say it isn’t optimized for gaming, but shrug it works fine for me (aside from VR). The free version works completely fine, but if you want to support the devs and get some extra UI customization, you can donate for the pro version.

I’m sure there are lots of other ways to do it, but my priority was to have something polished and easy to use without a lot of time spent tinkering. I’d rather spend my limited free time gaming.