Steam Deck – What is the pre-installed operating system?

Valve’s Steam Deck laptop will offer a console-like interface – but underneath is a regular Linux distribution. You can find out what operating system is pre-installed on Steam Deck and if you can change it here at GIGA.

In order to make entering the Steam Deck world as easy to use as possible, your laptop starts a modified version of Steam called “Big Pictures Mode” when you turn it on. The user interface is very similar to the menu navigation of Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony consoles.

By default, you will only see games that are compatible with your laptop, so don’t buy or accidentally install something that doesn’t work on the device. But Steam Deck remains a handheld PC, giving you full access to the operating system, the ability to change it, and everything else.

SteamOS 3.0: Steam Deck Operating System

On Steam Deck is the operating system SteamOS 3.0 pre-installed Based on Arch Linux. Behind the simplified interface, you can also access a normal desktop interface as you are used to from a PC or laptop.

Via the package manager “Pacman” All software and software packages compatible with Arch Linux can be installed. For example, you can also install non-Steam games or other game players (Lutris, Epic, etc.), Office software, your favorite browser, or more special applications.

The pre-installed software and operating system are said to occupy about 10 GB of Steam Deck’s internal memory (Those: Madjoki via MetaCouncil).

Can I install Windows on Steam Deck?

Steam Dick is open system It gives the user a choice. If you’re not satisfied with SteamOS, want to play a deck game that doesn’t work on Linux, or want to install a Microsoft Xbox app, for example, you can also install Windows as the primary operating system on your handheld PC. Of course, you can also install other Linux distributions if you don’t want to miss out on the pure Arch, Ubuntu or Debian experience on the go.

Thanks to the APU from AMD, all important drivers should also be installed automatically, so you can easily turn your Steam Deck into a Windows tablet. Valve is working closely with AMD on this matter and is also monitoring the TPM issue, Steam platform designer Greg Coomer tells us. computer games Already announced in August 2021:

“There are discussions with AMD to make sure we can accommodate this at the BIOS level. So there are no indications yet of any issues with Windows 11.”

Since the system is primarily designed for use with SteamOS, there may of course be unexpected problems with other operating systems Incompatibility and errors Come. Therefore, we advise new PC users not to install an alternative operating system.

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