Can't believe Valve pulled it off, honestly. Multi-year project to make Linux gaming a reality and then they launched it and not only did everyone love it, but they still love it. Honeymoon phase has worn off and people are still down with the Steam Deck. Even normies like it, not just Linux nerds.
I got my steam deck back in May of last year. It's held up really well and it's been my primary gaming device. It's basically gotten me back into gaming.
Is it possible yet for me to swap fully to linux if 99% of what I do on my PC is games? The only desktop app I use is photoshop but as long as there's a decent replacement not a real deal breaker.
There's GIMP, which fills the same niche as Photoshop but takes a long time to get used to.
I used to run CS6 with minor issues in wine. Both Photoshop and wine have come a long way since then I'm sure, I'm curiousv what the experience is like now
Nobara OS takes care of most setup. The few games that don't run on Linux yet are ones with anticheat that don't support Linux (Valorant and R6S are the biggest iirc); you'd probably get banned or something if you tried to run those on Linux right now.
Gimp is great as a photoshop substitute, but takes alot of getting used to cuz the UI is just not as good imo. Most other productivity software either support Linux already (obs, blender etc), or there are equivalent or superior alternatives (like davinci and krita instead of premiere and clip studio).
You can run Photoshop through a VM though, and actually get pretty similar performance.
Thanks for the recommendation, looks good. I guess I have one more qualm too; what's like the track record for smaller distros like this? I figure stuff like Linux mint and debian have a pretty good track record for updates; what's it like for something like Nobara? Will I be able to run it for a few years without fear of updates just stopping one day and my os just goes defunct? Thanks!
I'm not really into the mobile handheld gaming market, but I am very happily reaping the benefits of a growing platform. I have to use Windows less and less everyday and that's in no small part because Valve became suddenly interested in Steam OS again.