[lizard]

I recently learned however that the SteamOS desktop is built on a read-only image, with the expectation software will be installed via flatpak.

It is apparently possible to turn the read-only protection off to use pacman or your own thing, but anything you do may be wiped out on the next OS update.

See: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/671A-4453-E8D2-32...

I believe it was mentioned in a previous story that it would at least not void the warranty to replace SteamOS entirely though.

[piperswe]

Valve even supplies (sorta buggy) Windows drivers for the Steam Deck: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3131696... - a major selling point of the Deck is that it's just a handheld PC that happens to come pre-installed with a Linux distro designed for handheld PCs. And AFAIK all of its hardware is supported upstream, so other distros should just work by plugging in a flash drive and booting into them.

[jamesgeck0]

Other immutable state distros such as Fedora Silverblue and openSUSE MicroOS Desktop offer a “toolbox” environment that runs as a Flatpak with relaxed restrictions for development tasks. Is something like that an option on SteamOS 3?