I was out of country for the past month. I have access to two monitors, and I brought a keyboard, wireless mouse, and a small JBL speaker. It has been a pretty good experience. I have edited documents, images, and created PDF’s. I can connect to jobs that require windows with a web browser to Azure Virtual Desktop. I have streamed live events, worked on my home servers, and it is always snappier than a windows machine. With a click I am back in handheld gaming mode playing SNES games, or Elden Ring.
There are a few hurdles: if there isn’t a flatpak for software installs can get tricky. For instance look up about adding tailscale. Remember the system is Steam. You are basically a guest in that environment. It’s Arch, but steam is making sure it can boot and restore back to a working steam state.
Second, a single monitor, or using a even less powerful computer with steam link works great. Dual monitors has some issues.
But as a travel PC, I have been very happy with it. I too am a long time linux user, so nothing about the apps or os really surprises me. Linux has been my only os at home for a very long time.
You can install and use a standard distribution through Distrobox, which has a few initial steps to install, but once it’s there, you can dnf/apt/zypper/apk/pacman/etc. install any packages completely in user space. (And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox containers lets you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.)
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/
And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox container sets it up so can you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.
https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-export.md
But, you probably want to not have anything private on your Steam Deck, as there’s no encryption, so anyone can take your Deck and copy files off of it. To solve this, you’d want to either have an encrypted loopback file that you use like a pluggable disk (there are some tools for this; “Plasma Vault” is even built into the KDE desktop that powers the Steam Deck’s desktop mode, but requires a little setup) or you could run a Linux distro (or other OS) within a VM in GNOME Boxes (available as a Flatpak without having to do anything special). The Plasma Vault solution is more lightweight and integrated, once you install the encryption support it needs.
https://github.com/popsUlfr/steam-deck-tricks#encrypted-vaults-with-plasma-vault-and-gocryptfs
https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes
FWIW: I used my Steam Deck as a desktop when traveling a few months ago and have been using Linux (with GNOME, not KDE — but both are great) for decades.
That’s for the heads up. I didn’t know that it worked that way. I think that would affect me to some extent as I use some things that are not flatpaks.
You can always dualboot with another Linux distro
That’s a good point. It’s hard to see it in the typical light of a PC.