also seen mention of another candidate - Nobara

I have not tried that one.

I have been using Bazzite for about 3 months now, it has worked quite well for me on my two desktop systems.

I can not use the SteamOs mode on my Nvidia system, but it still works decently well as a normal desktop running steam.

my AMD desktop system does use the SteamOs look mode.

I was using Holoiso last year, but had numerous issues, so gave up on it. The other similar distros, I recall testing, and not lasting a day with them for various reasons.

So for now Bazzite is my go to.

Side note: just noticed on reddit the /r/Bazzite sub is now banned for being unmoderated.

Not that there was a lot of traffic there anyway, but that is a major issue with Bazzite, it’s a bit fringe, and while a lot of silverblue stuff does apply, it’s still a small community it seems.

there’s also bazzite. (fedora based on uBlue, uses kde)

But I see no reason for myself to switch away from SteamOS.

I am using bazzite on my gaming desktop PC. It does a good job.

If you switch away from steamOS you may not find as many places with people to chat with for support.

the OLED deck has the feature from what I can tell to wake in Bluetooth.

my older LCD deck, does not seem to have the feature.

I don’t recall ever needing the --user option, if the command is ran by the user.

if you were running the command via sudo, then yes, you would want the --user option.

Understand that flatpaks can be installed system wide, or on a per user basis.

if you are not careful you can install the same flatpak system wide when you just wanted it installed by the one user.

I wasted a lot of disk space and time before I learned how flatpak works.

rarely see steam crashing.

old school solution is the devilspie2 utility. but that may not work on Wayland

if you wait for a sale, there may be a big rush on orders, and it may take longer to get one, once you do order.

look at the old sale prices to see if the discount is worth it for you for any potential delays.

there can be various file index services that run to allow faster searching of the system.

these typically run in a schedule, but in a new install they may run on the first boot.

after they run the first time, they will run occasionally on a schedule.

I am not sure if time shift does this or not, I never use that tool.

For mouse battery it may depend on the specific mouse and it’s drivers.

there are some enhanced mouse/keyboard utilities out such as that ‘libratbag’.

ProtonVPN supports the OpenVPN client , so you can import your proton VPN settings in to that, no need for the official proton VPN GUI client.

However you do lose some of the more advanced features of proton VPN.

I have seen a similar issue a few times, but not regularly, and I have not seen it since the last update.

I could see the game running, if I hit the menu/steam button, it would show up under the steam menus.

I could even hear the game sounds and music.

a reboot normally fixed things.

I have also had sleep issue where the deck would wake up, then go back to sleep after impressed the power button. I set the auto sleep timeout to be never, and have not seen this happen any longer.

it’s like the deck woke up, checked the clock, and decided it was idling for the proper timeout to auto sleep.

Be interesting to see what Steam Deck Distribution alternatives are going to be popping up.

Seeing a few interesting feature in this project, I may have to dig out my other desktop to attempt to make my own SteamBox.

You did right click and select ‘allow launching’ on the greyed out short cut icon?