The Steam Deck

[victorvas]

The Steam Deck video review
Hi. It looks like Valve corporation is selling The Steam Deck at a loss for just $500. They probably are counting on steam deck owners to buy a lot of video games from their store.
I don't play video games, can The Steam Deck be used as a regular computer by installing Linux or OpenBSD on it? Is is a good idea? What do you think?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

It already runs Arch and has a "switch to desktop" mode that runs KDE Plasma.

Other distributions can be installed, apparently, and even Windows.

The RDNA2 graphics chip should be supported by the OpenBSD 7.1 DRM stack, I think, but why would you want to run OpenBSD on a gaming device?

[victorvas]

Originally Posted by Head_on_a_Stick

... but why would you want to run OpenBSD on a gaming device?

It has very good specs for a $500 device. I want to buy it for just $500 and use it as a desktop computer: connect it to a monitor, add keyboard and mouse, install Fedora and/or OpenBSD on it. Looks like a pretty good deal to me. Of course if it is capable to work as a desktop computer.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

That's an interesting idea but you would have to buy the dock as well to provide an ethernet connection for installation.

SteamOS uses a custom kernel, compiler and graphics stack for the deck so it probably needs custom drivers.

If anybody wants to try here are the instructions for booting an ISO image: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faq...EDF2-EB6D-2BB3

[cohumat]

It sounds to me like this is a long shot however, if you are in mood and have the guts and technical stamina to embark upon a highly technical and potentially aggravation whenj things don't go exactly the way you want them to go.