steamos is debian-based

This used to be the case until the launch of the Steam Deck, on which SteamOS (3) is actually based on Arch instead. However, SteamOS is a very special distro based on Arch due to ‘immutability’, how it achieves said ‘immutability’, the implications thereof, ‘freezing’ of packages, inability to install packages persistently without some hacking etc. So, SteamOS is not representative of how Arch works in general.

while popos is ubuntu-based

And Ubuntu is based on Debian.

is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.?

If we take your average (popular) distro, so the likes of Gentoo, NixOS etc are dismissed as they are very unique compared to the others, then arguably the most important differentiators would be: Model for updates, package manager and available packages. One might delve deeper into this and with the advent of stuff like Distrobox this becomes a lot more blurred, but traditionally speaking the aforementioned three things used to be the main differentiators. Beyond those, the end-user has the freedom to do whatever with their system. For example, Pop!_OS comes with GNOME + their own touches by default. However, the desktop mode of SteamOS comes with KDE. But you can install KDE on Pop!_OS and even customize it very closely to how it’s done over at SteamOS. This is not a special quality of Pop!_OS, but of Linux in general.

Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin

It’s important to note that both of these are not unique in what they offer in terms of UI/UX. You can recreate 99% of it yourself, simply by installing the appropriate desktop environment; which constitutes most of the UI/UX. Nitrux has KDE as its desktop environment (with a touch of Maui), while deepin uses the Deepin desktop environment. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend any desktop environment beyond Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE and Xfce. Don’t be discouraged by this though, feel free to put Nitrux and deepin on a Live USB to get a feel for them. Regarding good UI/UX, your best bets are probs Kubuntu, Linux Mint, openSUSE and Pop!_OS. Honourable mention would be MX Linux, but I don’t recommend systemd-less distros to newer users.

that are debian-based

Sure, Nitrux is based on Debian. But it’s immutable, systemd-less and favors AppImages over Flatpak/Snap. It’s a cool project, but I find it hard to recommend to a newer user. While deepin is less unique by comparison, it’s far from a distro that’s known for its polish. I’d argue it’s mostly just eye-candy instead 😅.

or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

Bullseye! This isn’t a hard rule though. I started venturing into Linux through a somewhat obscure distro as well 😅. But, at the time, I researched for about a week which distro to install and why. Afterwards I spent another week on how I should install it and what should be considered for install. And then I installed it, after which I spent almost two weeks getting the system to a working state. It still wasn’t quite there yet, but after spending a month on it from start to finish I wanted to move on to something else 😅. I kept the install, don’t get me wrong. And it became my daily-driver. After some time I even ‘fell in love with it’. But like, I know that I can be stubborn about things like this and persevere where others might have preferred to hit their heads to the wall instead. So your mileage may vary…

Do you have any advice for me?

As you’ve correctly assessed, you are indeed lost 😅 . That’s fine, I think almost all of us have been lost at some point in time. Uhmm…, but honestly, I think you’re conflating two very distinct things. Pop!_OS is a general-use distro on which you can do whatever. And most distros that people talk about and engage with are similarly general-use distros. SteamOS, on the other hand, isn’t quite like that. Sure, you may hack your way and achieve some things with it. But it’s false to believe that you can find any distro that qualifies as SteamOS but on your laptop. Before giving you any recommendations, would you be so kind to answer the following:

• Your post is written in a way that implies that you want to forego Pop!_OS for another distro that’s more like SteamOS. Therefore my question would be:
  • What things from SteamOS did you prefer over Pop!_OS? Please be specific and elaborate*.

I would choose a popular distro instead of a niche one.

The main pro of that is that you’ll get a big support community and lots of documentation. When you decide to use a less common one, especially one with only one or a few developers, this can backfire. Maintaining a distro is a lot of hard work and you have to trust them to patch all security-things and don’t just stop sending out updates.

Most niche distros are just Debian/ Arch with some custom themes and a few apps pre-installed, which you can do on your own super easily anyway.

My recommendations would be:

• Fedora: my favourite distro. Gets major updates twice a year, and therefore is leading in new technologies and software, but not bleeding edge, so it is pretty reliable. There are many spins (editions) available, which differ in their desktop environment (DE), aka GUI and app family. The “Official” (Workstation) is with Gnome, which is a very unique and interesting DE that supports very smooth trackpad gestures (better than MacOS imo!) and looks very clean. But it is very unconventional and minimalist, so not everybody likes it. Hit me up if you have any questions. And the other one is the KDE spin, which looks exactly the same as your desktop mode in your Deck, since it also uses KDE Plasma as DE. Both are user friendly, but require something like a “10 things to do after installing”-tutorial, since there may be a few codecs or so missing.
• Mint: THE recommended distro for newcomers. It will take you by the hand and show you the wonderful Linux world. It’s a bit more conservative, but therefore very stable. Even my Mum and tech-illiterate friends/ elderly understand it. If you like the UI of the steam deck, you may not enjoy it as much, but even when not, will introduce you
• Pop!OS: you already used it, nothing to say
• Kubuntu: similar to Fedora KDE, but not liked by the community as much. Would choose Fedora over it, but doesn’t matter much tbh
• Fedora Silverblue/ Kionite: probably the most similar to the steam deck in this list. It is also immutable, so you can’t brick it or fuck up much. But it should be more used by more experienced users.

–> I would recommend you Fedora Workstation if you have a good trackpad or prefer a keyboard based workflow. It would be a quite unique experience and something else than your Steam Deck. Otherwise, if your laptop is a bit older, try Mint.

As others have said, older Steam Machine era SteamOS was Debian-based, Steam Deck era SteamOS is Arch-based.

By default, SteamOS ships with the KDE desktop environment, so if you want a desktop that looks like the one on your Steam Deck, go with a distro that ships KDE.

In terms of terminal commands, most are going to be similar across Linux distros and there will be a non-zero amount of overlap with MacOS. The main differences are going to be in package management, ie installing and removing software. SteamOS has an immutable file system and doesn’t let users get to the system package manager (which should be pacman for an Arch-based system) by default; users are expected to install applications via Flatpak.

Flatpak is typically used as an alternate package manager; it’s designed to be distro agnostic (doesn’t matter if you’re on Debian or Arch or Fedora etc.), and really geared toward graphical end-user apps rather than OS components or CLI tools. On a typical Linux desktop, Flatpak would be used alongside the standard package manager. Installing something on your Steam Deck via Flatpak would be done with the same command as on my Linux Mint machine, but I could also use APT to install something from the standard repos. SteamOS prevents users from doing that by default. They chose to do it that way to provide a smart phone-like environment where the underlying OS “just works” and the user just installs games and apps. I keep using the phrase “by default” because you can change that setting and then monkey around with it. Or install a different OS entirely. Paraphrasing GabeN: It’s your PC; do whatever you want with it.

The new SteamOS is arch based, the old ones were debian-based. Also, since ubuntu is based on debian, Pop is also kind of debian based, fyi

Personally I like fedora with gnome as the desktop. It always felt slick on a laptop. I haven’t used anything else in a long time… But kde plasma looks like it might be worth checking out if gnomes not your thing.

TL;DR: Install Plasma/KDE on your current Linux and select it when logging in.

First a correction, SteamOS used to be debian based, it’s now Arch based, not that that should matter to you because 90% of using a Linux for day to day will be through the DE or with commands that are the same for all distros, so anything with Plasma/KDE will look and behave the same as SteamOS. The remaining 10% has to do with how you install things, on SteamOS you don’t install things to your system (i.e. the equivalent to apt/yum/pacman/portage in other distros) because it’s immutable, but there is a store to install Flatpaks for your user which I’m sure you can install on other distros (or something similar enough).

So realistically any distro with KDE/Plasma should feel the same as SteamOS for you. While technically Arch/Manjaro/Garuda are the closest ones I wouldn’t recommend any of them because Arch is bleeding edge, which means sometimes things will break, it’s rare but it happens, and Arch’s philosophy is that you should know how to fix it. If you already have Pop maybe just install Plasma on it and see how you like it, you can select your DE on the login screen, and you can even change the login manager program in the future if you want, and most of the things you’ll learn by doing so will be usable on other Linux distros. Until you’re VERY familiar with Linux the difference between a distro and another is just the package manager they use and what comes pre-installed by default, so use whatever you’re already using unless you have a specific reason for wanting to change.

Since you’re a gamer and like PopOS, I think you’d really enjoy Garuda Linux.

Looks like you need to switch one driver to get full retina graphics going, but here’s how to do that: https://forum.garudalinux.org/t/macbook-pro-10-1-mid-2012-retina-garuda-works-but-one-more/23751/8

Check out Garuda here - I’m betting you’d like the Dragonized Gaming Edition: https://garudalinux.org/downloads.html

Install video here (don’t worry about the German language stuff, your installer would be in English) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYsL5J5vVC4

I do not think anybody has mentioned it yet but the closest you can get to SteamOS is this:

https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso

That may not be your best install experience as a newcomer to Linux though.

My favourite distribution is EndeavourOS ( easier to deploy Arch Linux ). If the Arch association seems scary, my feeling is that the best all around newbie distro is Linux Mint. My impression is that the distro people are happiest with is PopOS but I have not used it. It sounds like you have.

Reading into your question though, the “desktop mode” of SteamOS is KDE ( the desktop environment ). That provides the user experience and is the biggest factor on how you interact with your computer.

KDE is available on most distros but it is not the default desktop environment on many of them. Ubuntu uses a modified GNOME desktop for example and Debian defaults to GNOME as well. Linux Mint uses a GNOME derived environment called Cinnamon. If you wanted KDE on Ubuntu, there is a project called Kubuntu that delivers it out of the box. The last disto I used that installed KDE by default was Big Linux.

As I said though, most distros offer KDE even if it is not the default.

Hey! Glad to see you’re interested. To confirm though, steamOS is arch based not debian based. I really wouldn’t suggest arch though, it sometimes takes manual intervention to keep working and you should keep up to date with what’s going on if you use it. Subscribe to the mailing list, keep up with the community on lemmy, etc.

SteamOS will handle all of that but Arch absolutely will not. If you’re ok with a distro that needs some for babysitting arch is a fine thing to use. It’s not as bad as some say and it’s certainly not “for CS majors or people who know every detail of how a unix like system works” as the other guy states. That’s nonesense, and the rest of their comment was filled with misinformation too

Sorry to say but there will be no “one to one” option.

However, the “desktop mode” is something called KDE Plasma and is available on all distributions. Kubuntu is a good option, it’s just ubuntu but it looks different. The underlying tech is the same. Personally I’d suggest looking at the KDE linux mint flavour/spin though.

Though I’d stick to ubuntu or a ubuntu based distro, Fedora Kinoite is also a great option for gaming, or nobara with the plasma spin. Both will be more up to date and nobara is made specifically for gaming

Sorry for the info dump, wish you the best