---
title: 'I Tried Daily Driving SteamOS'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=43ce24_7bng'
video_id: '43ce24_7bng'
date: 2026-09-15
duration_sec: 1039
channel: 'Austin Evans'
---

# I Tried Daily Driving SteamOS

> Source: [I Tried Daily Driving SteamOS](https://youtube.com/watch?v=43ce24_7bng)

## Summary

The video explores the possibility of using SteamOS, Valve's Linux-based operating system, as a replacement for Windows on a laptop. The creator shares their experience installing it on a Framework Laptop 13, highlighting the performance gains and the potential for gaming, while also discussing hardware compatibility limitations.

### Key Points

- **Inspiration for the video** [00:00] — The creator's friend made a video about switching to SteamOS, prompting the creator to try it on a laptop.
- **SteamOS is now open** [00:13] — SteamOS is now open to install on any hardware with compatible graphics, not just Steam Deck.
- **Performance is impressive** [00:52] — The creator found SteamOS to be significantly faster than Windows on the same laptop, feeling like a new $2000 machine.
- **Hardware compatibility caveats** [01:19] — SteamOS works best with AMD graphics, NVIDIA is not supported out of the box, and Intel is 'kind of okay'.

## Transcript

A couple weeks ago, my friend Betty made a video about ditching Windows and switching to SteamOS. Which got me thinking, can I turn my laptop into a glorified Steam Deck? And should you? Well by default, SteamOS looks a lot like a console.
But underneath, it's Linux with a full desktop environment that can be made to look just like Windows. Valve recently opened up SteamOS, so you can install it on just about anything, as long as you've got the right graphics for it. So it's not just for the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine,
you can load it on something like this, a Framework Laptop 13. Because of course, SteamOS is good for gaming, but what about everything else? It handles the day to day stuff without the, uh, shall we say, issues with Windows these days.
It seems like it's the best of both worlds. Right? Well, not quite that simple. So my first impressions with SteamOS, it is so fast. So this framework laptop I'm using, it's not exactly crazy high end,
it's a 2 year old Ryzen 5 6 quarts shit, 16 gigs of RAM, I mean it's a nice laptop. But I will tell you, it is way faster on SteamOS than Windows. Everything just opens so quickly.
I mean, it really does feel like I'm using a brand new $2000 laptop. Now, Framework makes very Linux friendly laptops, so I wasn't too surprised that it works pretty well here. But even on this laptop, not everything is perfect out of the box.
So, they specifically call out that the support is best on AMD chips, specifically AMD graphics. NVIDIA is basically not supported out of the box. Intel's kind of okay. And I started to install this initially on a fairly modern Lenovo Yoga 7a
and that began to install but it stopped. It basically hit a power management issue that I could not move past it and while maybe there's some work around instead I moved over to this, the Framework Laptop 13. So while Valve technically let you go wild with SteamOS,
it still only officially supports the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine. Now there's beta support for most of their handhelds and for PCs with AMD graphics, but as far as something like NVIDIA support goes, that's a no-go. Now, they had discussed how they were going to build that support out, but it is not here
yet. But I will say, once you get it installed and up and running, things do largely just work. Now, if you haven't used Linux at all over the last couple of years, that shouldn't be a huge surprise, but, I mean, directly inside the store, I was able to pull pretty much
all of my normal apps, so Chrome, Spotify, OBS, Slack, to do with pretty much all of normal day-to-day stuff all installed and works completely fine. Now you might ask yourself often why SteamOS when there are plenty of other editions and
versions and distributions of Linux out there that you can go for. And to that I would say SteamOS is not normal Linux because out of the box you're actually not using the desktop. You're using it as a giant Steam Deck right. This is a big picture mode. This is
by default what it loops into and you have to go out of your way to move it into the desktop mode. So it's clear that this is not basically designed for your Steam desk first, for gaming and then like you have a desktop on the side
versus desktop being the primary key. Once it's set up the framework is fast and smooth but it also runs a little bit on the warm side. I wanted to see what is this thing actually up to. Because when I look at the energy reading even at idle it's
pulling something like 8 to 10 watts which is way too high to do basically nothing. Now it's hard for me to tell how much of this is SteamOS or just the laptop not being that efficient. So recently I did a deep dive on whether or not 8GB of RAM is actually enough
and in that I used a little utility I bycoded called WinStack to log memory usage. So today, meet TuckStack! Oh my god what did you do to that? Okay look I'm not an artist okay uh look TuckStack
he's super useful. Basically this is a simpler little version of the same idea. It's a quick at-a-glance look at how hard my skin's cranking, the power's being used, temperature. But this panel, it only works when you're actually looking at it. Something you probably aren't doing while
you're gaming. Which is why the sponsor of today's video comes in, Zapier. So last time, I used Zapier's XK to make my app talk to other apps. This time, I used their platform CLI, which does the opposite It turns the thing you built into a Zapier app You define your triggers you test it locally and then you push it and then my laptop shows up in Zapier just like any other Zap you might want to run So I going to turn on the integration and now this using Zapier is attached to this light So you can see that my temperatures are already coming up on
the system, especially once I actually turn on the benchmark. And what happens is, even if I'm in a game and I'm not actually paying attention to any kind of like overlays or whatever, this light, because it's a smart light bulb that's attached to the Zapier, now will show me exactly how warm
on this just now. So it's 77 degrees, it went from orange, now it's turning red, it's updating every five to ten seconds, and then if we give it long enough, this should turn like very bright red. It's just a demo, but it's a pretty cool way of showing how you can build
something locally and using the power of Zapier, reach out to all kinds of things such as an internet connection pole. Or if I want, is everyone ready to see just how absurdly bright this is? So on my laptop, what you get this light is just connected to your Wi-Fi. It's
connected to the laptop directly. Watch how bright this thing gets. So if you want to really make sure you know how powerful your gaming prowess is going, you can use Zapier.
I shut down the app, watch how fast the temperature comes down, and give it a light just a second and it will follow suit. It's orange. Give it one more second as the laptop continues to cool off and it should go back to like purpley blue. And...
There we go! Laptop is back to normal! How cool is that? If you want to check out Zapier and their platform CLI, the link is in the description. And thank you very much to Zapier for sponsoring this video. Okay, so I have now been using SteamOS for nearly two weeks, and the experience has been very positive.
Are there minor irritations I notice? Yes, there are. Stuff like the trackpad, I use for two finger tapping, right click like you do. A lot of times the palm rejection isn't great, so you'll, you know, either single click or you'll double click when you don't mean to.
a little bit weird. That was a small thing, but there is something that really bothered me the last time I used Linux. So earlier this year I used Xor and OS and had a real problem with scaling. Basically 100% and 200% scaling was fine, but anything in the middle after that's super blurry.
However that is not an issue at all here. Xor handles it like a champ. And there are a lot of little things that do make this experience feel polished. Now a lot of the things go to the KDE Plasma desktop, which I've only discussed the surface of, but there's a ton of customization
year. But there are also times where you definitely could tell that you're using an OS design for the Steam Deck and not for a laptop. Probably the first real issue I've run into is getting Nord
VPN up and running. So I am a civilized internet user who doesn't use public Wi-Fi because that's a terrible idea. And so I always use a VPN. And I had real issues getting Nord to actually work
on my laptop. So there's no install. So even though Nord is supported on a number of links distros it does not natively work on seamless so you can't just like download the app and turn it on like you would with you know basically every other computer device in your life now there is
a manual VPN configuration you can do I did do that it worked for me once and then I actually got to the hotel and tried to turn my laptop on it didn't work and then I had to sit in the airport and tether and that was less than ideal so there are still real issues you're going to run into
They're not necessarily deal breakers all the time, but the VPN thing was the first time I was like, oh, wait a minute, this is actually a problem. I'm glad I can tell you right now, because otherwise, I'd be a big ol' sad boy. Security also kind of isn't a thing out of the box.
So when you first install SteamOS, it'll ask you for a Steam login, but the system doesn't set a password at all. Now, you can set one, but that requires you to hop into the desktop settings, and also you separately have to turn on the password prompt when you wake up the system.
Now, this makes total sense on a Steam Deck, right? I should hit the power button and jump straight into my game. But on a laptop, you really should turn on some security. So, something else to talk about is some of the quirks of SteamOS.
And if you're thinking about doing something like this, these quirks are actually really worth considering. So, again, if you're used to using Steam on Windows, if you open up Big Picture Mode, it's basically just an app, right? It's not doing anything all that crazy. You can still open and close and everything.
Like, it's just a full-screen app. But in SteamOS, if you open gaming mode, it closes everything on your desktop. And it does it without asking. So for example the first time I did this I had you know Chrome and all my apps and all this stuff open I wanted to jump into gaming mode and it without asking me closed everything on my desktop It almost reboots right
It kind of reminds me of, like, an old-school console where, you know, on an Xbox 360 or something, if you're in an app and you want to jump out, the console almost does, like, a soft reboot because it wants to keep all the memory clear. This makes perfect sense on a fiend deck, but on a computer that you're using all day,
it's a little bit less ideal. It feels like maybe if you have like 10 tabs open and 5 apps open and you open gaming mode, they should be able to pop up saying, hey, are you sure you want to close all of your apps right now?
Just saying. Let's go put SteamOS in a little bit of a weird spot. Because Battle doesn't sell the Steam Machine as just a console. They straight up sell it as a computer. The trick is that you can use it for actual work. And to be fair, I have been using SteamOS for actual work everywhere I go the last couple weeks.
For me, I've been very, very stubborn on staying with COS because there are things that I like about it. So one of the downsides to some people is that COS uses an immutable operating system. Really, it's a read-only file system when it comes to the actual, like, core operating system itself.
Now, that's good if you're, you know, on a Steam Deck or whatever the case is. And what it essentially means is that you can go in and, you know, you can create a pseudo-password and change and tweak stuff. But a lot of this stuff will get overwritten when there's a major operating system update, right?
and new versions of Steam will actually come out tomorrow, and use a bunch of your weird custom stuff. Now, don't let the little quirks sound worse than they are. I'm mentioning them here just so you know what you're getting yourself into, but for the most part, a lot of these decisions make perfect sense
considering that this is a giant Steam Deck after all. This almost feels like, in some ways, like Linux with training wheels on, but there's also some weirdness, too. And I will say that, as with anyone who's using Linux,
but especially in 2026, there are a ton of resources out there, and boy oh boy am I googling stuff left and right like how do I do this where is the setting what do I do here but you know what I have not yet run into a single real issue that I could not either
solve or at least something that was not like a big deal. One of the things that I've not talked a lot about is actually gaming with SteamOS so if I hop into a game here it is better than a Steam
Deck but it is certainly not a gaming PC it doesn't make sense to use SteamOS if you're not of using gaming. That should be fairly obvious, but it is worth saying out loud. Because the best case scenario here is that you're using SteamOS to get the best performance possible
in gaming mode, and then when you're done with that, you switch over to the desktop and you can use a regular computer. It's kind of like, you know, if Windows was great at gaming and at being an operating system, wouldn't that be great? Performance is reasonable,
But there are some caveats when it comes to gaming. So in addition to whatever hardware you're running on, not all games, of course, will support SteamOS. So by far, the vast, vast, vast majority of games on Steam
will work on this hardware. But there are plenty of games that are not on Steam, right? Think about stuff with certain levels of anti-cheat. You think about certain things that want the Epic Game Store or whatnot. And while there are workarounds for some of this,
if you were someone who's going to be playing a whole lot of League or a whole lot of Fortnite. You probably don't want SteamOS, but you can do that, right?
It's SteamOS, right? That's like saying I want to use Chrome OS over Firefox. You could just not. So far, I've been pretty happy with this whole experience. I will tell you that if this sucked, two weeks in, I would be like,
All right, well, I'm signing off. I'm done. I did the thing. Here's what I learned. But I'm not doing that. I'm perfectly happy to continue to use SteamOS for a little while now. In fact, I think it actually might be time to pay a friend a little visit.
Hey, so I did a thing with my laptop. Like what? SteamOS. Okay. If you're thinking about doing this, right, which I think is a totally reasonable thing, I will say that while this is probably the wrong tool for the job,
I have enjoyed using SteamOS. and it has been a refreshing change of pace. What was your kind of experience with actually daily driving SteamOS? Well I say I lack of a Linux dabbler than you I done a lot more Linux music What the dabble phase Linux sort of
user. I have a Linux sort of user. My total Linux time is probably like two to three months. You're still bouncing around though. You don't have like...
I have three that I would like always come back to. Our upload PC is me. our gaming PC is Cache and my home theater PC at my house is Bad Rite
okay so you do have like a whole selection of things yeah so I can't help but notice the Steam OS it is not on there unfortunately alright can we talk about the good things first I really want to be positive here
I am positive they've done something amazing it's like throughout the past couple many many years People have been trying to push Linux for a long time with a lot of resistance, but now,
it's way more accessible. It's really pushed out in the kinks, made it very stable, very usable, accessible, and that makes people feel like, yeah, I can use it now.
The main thing that I do like about this before we get to though is that that's obviously a game. This is not a game you can see. No, it's not. But it can. You can play Stardew Valley. I could play Baldur's Gate 3.
Oh, I did. Because this thing... I don't know. Well, because it's... This is basically... I don't know if it's actual. But this is more popular than Steam Deck. And I play, like, $200 of Baldur's Gate on Steam Deck. So, like, for like kind of gaming, or for like, you know,
if you turn it down to like low settings, it's fine. I mean, I'm not going to tell you that that's what you should do. But I think that, like... Yeah. You can. You have the option. I think that, like, as sort of I'm coming to the end of this video and thinking about kind of like
what the point of the whole, like, trying something less is. I think your video is the thing that got me to really think, oh, I should try this. And not only have I spent time with it, I'm not going to stick with it. I'll be honest. It is good.
It's not quite there. But it feels like it is so close. It is very close. And I think if they just take some feedback and they really look at the usability from a desktop perspective instead of the Steam Deck perspective, I think they'll make a lot of the changes.
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't feel like it's going to take a huge amount for them to get there. I found that even though this is not an ideal set up, it's not my long-term first vision, I have been in zero rush to move on.
Because I'm still enjoying it. Maybe it's partial to the novelty, but, like, the speed, the performance, the fact that everything does largely work, except for some edge cases, which are, again, admittedly annoying.
But, like, it's been an edge case. And then, as someone who's been using Windows for a minute, not having OneDrive bother me, not having, you know, just the slow performance.
That's the big thing. I used a laptop on Windows, and moving to Linux felt like I had upgraded from my 7th gen Core i7 to a brand new Ryzen 9.
It was snappy. It was a lot snappier. Thank you for letting me steal your video. Thank you for making my stolen video better. So are you going to install it on Danny's laptop?
I don't know. Maybe I should. Are you going to use more Linux? I can't wait to use more Linux. You should subscribe to Betty's channel, click and find out what video she makes,
and I'm going to steal your mentality. You'll like it. Here's the thing. Betty is right. If you're a pro Linux user, CWAS isn't really the best option. Much of the work that Valve and the open source community
you have put in here will also apply to other Linux distros. So if you're looking for an upgrade from Windows 10, or you just don't like 11, I certainly understand, or maybe, just maybe, you're caring about this whole Linux thing.
I've really sincerely enjoyed my time with it. Thank you very much for watching this video, definitely be sure to go check out Switching Quick, and if you enjoyed, make sure to subscribe to the channel and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button, so next time I do something questionable on the internet, which I do twice a week,
publicly. And yes, everyone, I am happily using this framework, and I 30% apologize for the mean things I said in the past, but it's still too expensive, and here it is.
It's too expensive. I agree.