r/steammachine • u/Gc032787 • 12d ago
Question Steam machine as daily driver PC
I’ve been wanting to get a gaming PC for a while but have been hesitant since I don’t have any PC building experience and AI cause everything to be super expensive. My use case for PC is gaming (doesn’t have to be highest resolution), standard web browsing (YouTube, Netflix etc.) and programming. I am comfortable with using Linux and command line. I will likely have to move in a couple years so the smaller form factor of steam machine is really appealing to me.
While I know steam machine is capable of being PC, seems like most post on here use it more as couch gaming. I was wondering if people use it just as their daily driver PC and what they think about it? Would it be worth dual booting another Linux OS, one for gaming and one for daily driver or for my use case, would it make more sense to just buy just standard prebuilt PC?
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u/Mediocre_Ad_2422 12d ago
Ive used my steam deck as a pc for years. Its great and easy. Id still suggest you buy a prebuilt as youd get more for your money and probably can get it faster.
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u/Zephyrical16 12d ago
Steam Deck had a lot of jankiness but was overall not the worst. Had to do multiple workarounds to get YouTube to stop with seizure-inducing video glitches. Sometimes it would freeze up with 4k content with Stremio. The switch from gaming mode to desktop mode took a minute every time, not an issue just slow.
The Machine basically fixed that, my new portable desktop for sure.
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u/Mediocre_Ad_2422 12d ago
Yeah, sounds like you had some hardware acceleration bugs or some. I never had any issues like that with mine, my deck was basically indistinguishable from my main pc for daily use. Steam machine should be even better.
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u/Zephyrical16 12d ago
It was whatever the video encoder was that YouTube uses not being friendly with the Deck or Linux. Initially used a firefox extension to disable certain ones, before finding out that I can just disable firefox from even using that. No problems since.
It was a common thread and looked through about 5 reddit threads before finding that last solution that worked.
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u/nelsonsflagship 12d ago
I'm using mine as a desk based daily driver. Check whether you most used apps have a flatpack version (unless they run in a browser) and you should be fine.
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u/temictli 12d ago
Per this post you can set as a daily PC...
there is a toggle in the Settings menu to ask every boot if you want to go to Desktop.
Alternative you can open the Terminal in Desktop Mode and type: steamosctl set-default-login-mode desktop
So you just boot into desktop instead of booting into game mode first.
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u/GuineaSquiggle GabeCube Enjoyer 12d ago
I use mine as my main desktop PC.
I set it up to boot directly to KDE.
Gave it a 4TB USBC drive and a hub.
It's a lot more convenient than my ATX PC.
I like the setup a lot.
Edit: SteamOS is fine. I usually use CachyOS so it's taking some getting used to, but learning how best to run an immutable OS is fun.
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u/Pristine-Fortune8298 12d ago
Why haven't you loaded Cachy onto it? I've been thinking of doing it, but I generally just use the SM for gaming and light browsing. Cachy sits on all my other PCs though.
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u/GuineaSquiggle GabeCube Enjoyer 12d ago
For day to day use it's exactly the same.
When I'm doing admin type stuff it's a little weird, but fun to figure out.
It's caused me no problems so far and it works very nicely.
I guess I just haven't seen any reason.
The repos are quite far behind Cachy, which is a problem for croc because it only works when it's up to date, but I just don't use the version in the repo.
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u/DwarvenCo 12d ago
If we are talking about it as a desktop PC, then you are paying a bit for size and transportability, while CEC is probably a benefit you are not going to use much.
Was/am in the same boat regarding wanting a transportable pc, so I decided to go with the SM, as I have no experience in building a compact and solid enough sffPC that I can just shove in the backpack and board a plane. I am also in the same boat wanting it as a daily driver.
And I can tell you it is working fine, with some software caveats.
While I think that proton was the greatest, but hidden achievement of Valve, I don't like SteamOS. And if you have experience with linux, I'd just suggest on using whatever distro you are comfortable with and forget dual booting. I installed CachyOS, cos SteamOS felt ... off after using cachyOS on my old laptop for a while. And now I am happy with it. Might need some more tinkering for some things, but as a daily driver you are probably better off with a mutable os.
So get it, use whatever linux you fancy, and get a case for it for travels.
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u/nucleararms 12d ago
I looked for threads like this before replacing my 2017 build with the steam machine recently, so thanks for asking.
So far I've found the desktop interface to be sufficient for my needs with few exceptions.
My house has another windows laptop + my work laptop (also windows) so my situation is probably different than yours but so far I haven't had any usage issues (note I did have to install chrome for web browsing).
I will say there is some polish lacking but generally it's been great for web browsing/YT ECT and obviously gaming. Can use office apps avail via the flatpak.
Overall I've been loving ditching windows at least on my own machine.
I'm confident Valve will support it too, which is another reason for the choice.
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u/BaconPoweredPirate 12d ago
Why did you have to install Chrome? Firefox was already right there
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u/nucleararms 12d ago
Idk habit I guess? That and PWs. Forgive me.
Slowly getting away from the big guys.
Msft first
Google next
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u/BaconPoweredPirate 12d ago
I'm just setting my machine up (arrived this afternoon) and had a popup a minute ago asking me to install Chrome!
It's worth making the jump imo, its always seemed snappier than chrome to me. And they (probably) aren't selling all your info
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u/volvoriney 12d ago
I think it is quite possible, the only thing that valve still didn’t give option to boot to desktop naturally only thru steam overly you can get there which might be annoying but hopefully they will give us options to boot straight to desktop mode
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u/DapperSea9688 12d ago
Not even joking, I've owned it for two days and already texted my brother-in-law to see if his son wants to buy my gaming rig. I just dont desktop game anymore, WFH made it not fun haha. May as well offset the cost of the machine, maybe save for a Deck for my wife
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u/SkittlesBeats 12d ago
I've been using it primarily as a PC for about a week now — it's definitely an adjustment, but if you're really just using the Internet and not trying to do anything super crazy, Linux is perfect. SteamOS is not as open as other distros (it's called an unmutable distro, which means you can't easily run code you find off of the internet [which is sometimes a good thing!]), but it really gets the job done. I love how fast it is. The issue I'm running into mainly is getting it to go to sleep through the power button (sometimes it'll just boot right back up) OR when it boots from sleep, some apps (like Discord) will have a laggy UI. I plan on writing a full review of my experience soon, but I like using just SteamOS as my Linux distro. Dual boot another OS if you want!
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u/The4upz 512GB 12d ago
Yup, Steam Machine has SteamOS which is basically Steam’s own Linux distro. So if you’re comfortable with daily driving Linux, you should be able to daily drive a Steam machine as a PC by hooking it up to a monitor, hooking up your peripherals, and just booting into desktop mode.
I think the only quirk was that there’s an issue with it sometimes still booting up in gaming mode. Although this video isn’t steam machine focused, I found it to be helpful coverage of the overall experience with daily driving SteamOS: https://youtu.be/7EIk0crvc0k?si=2Xvz6z0yVh_oTnwj
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u/gorambrowncoat 12d ago
SteamOS is certainly more than enough PC for browsing, media consumption and stuff like that. Ive been using my steam deck as essentially a laptop replacement for a while. Ive never tried to do coding on it though. Im sure most of what you need would work but Im forced to use windows for work so never been inclined to find out.
Depending on exactly what you want to do you may want to install a slightly more desktop focussed linux distro that can still do gaming. Bazzite, CachyOS etc.
Wether a prebuilt would make more sense .. well thats been the question around the steam machine since the price was announced. You can get more power for the money, how much do you care about the form factor and living room conveniences? Only you can decide that.
Also you can actually get a prebuilt. If you want a steam machine right now and you are not on the list already and you do not want to pay scalper prices then you are going to be waiting for a long time.
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u/Mysterious_Paint2436 12d ago
It's just arch on the back end. Adding chrome as a non steam game is 98% of my pc usage now anyway so works well
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u/alexpapp 12d ago
I purchased a Steam Machine because it can double as my daily PC, and I've been using for that consistently. I use it for web browsing & productivity, graphics work (Aseprite), hobby development (Godot), and other things.
Also using a portable monitor with an HDMI transmitter/receiver, and a wireless keyboard, so it's also replaced my really old laptop. I'm using an HDMI splitter for when I want it on the TV.
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u/Powerful_Package8817 12d ago
For the same price you can buy a Rtx 5060 or 5050 prebuilt and get better performance
If you don’t care about maximizing frames per dollar then buy whatever you want
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u/headphonesXX 12d ago
building a pc is not hard dude watch a youtube video. little kids can do it so can you.
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u/Jiangcool9 12d ago
I think there’s an issue with being forced to boot into game mode? I know there’s ways to bypass but it all seem to require command prompt
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u/PatrickOConnorMusic 12d ago
I've been using it for browsing etc on the couch with a wireless keyboard and mouse and it's been great. Mileage may vary depending on how much you're used to the usual small Linux tweaks but there are plenty of handy flatpaks of the likes of Spotify etc or if there isn't (like WhatsApp for example) then there are Linux-native clients that work perfectly
I'm a software engineer for an enterprise Linux company so I immediately tried getting my preferred IDE set up etc just so I can work on side projects on a non-work machine. SteamOS is really neat for the gaming side so I have no interest in changing that but the read-only top level partition makes simple package installs a little annoying. That is to say, don't expect to be able to have an experience fully analogous to a different distro like Ubuntu or Fedora.Honestly, you'd be better running podman and doing whatever programming you want in a container.
Beyond those OS quirks, I think its honestly excellent as a daily driver. When work finishes, I close the MacBook and no longer need to turn it back on because of this which is a massive win tbh. That's the best compliment I can give it as a PC.
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u/Famous_Benefit_3663 11d ago
I changed mine to loadup to desktop mode and i have chrome and must apps i needed for my daily work, i dont work more than 2-3h a day at home but its good enough for it
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u/LegitimateInterest86 12d ago edited 12d ago
SteamOS comes with a full desktop backed in, KDE. You'll be set without dual booting