Christopher

Nice. I’ll check those out.

I realize I sound AI AF.

Welcome to the world of Linux. Check out Fedora Kinoite. Here’s how they’re similar:

✅ It’s immutable – core OS files are read only. Just like the SteamDeck, this is more stable and secure. Updates happen all at once and the entire system can be rolled back to a working configuration (“snapshot”) if it all goes south.

✅ Applications are containerized and installed via a software store. Flatpak via Flathub is my personal preference, here.

✅ It uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment. In Linux there are a handful of DEs to choose from. The SD uses KDE and so does Kinoite. This is probably where you’ll see most similarities (that Windows '95 feel).

✅ Fedora’s community, like the SD, is large. Got a problem? There’s probably someone on the forums who had the same issue and can provide a solution.

I’ve been running it exclusively for two years now. As a self proclaimed distro-hopper, that’s really remarkable.

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/

Yeah. My TPM would trip every time Linux updated my hardware firmware… which was fairly common.

Boy howdy, you best keep that BitLocker key handy, though.

Back when I dual booted, I had the most success keeping Windows on a separate drive completely. After making the Linux drive the primary boot device, GRUB would pick it up and I’d be off to the races. I now just keep a Windows VM – it’s been much easier to deal with.