Bazzite is an alternative OS to SteamOS for the deck and other handheld PCs. Unfortunately due to a mistake, anyone who installed Bazzite before July 3rd 2024 won’t get automatic updates.
If this affects you, I’d suggest checking out the article to get instructions on fixing it.
Because it’s based on fedora atomic it uses rpm-ostree, which lets you layer packages to persist between updates. Good for stuff that isn’t available as a flatpak or doesn’t work as well when installed as a flatpak. Beyond that not much, maybe if someone doesn’t trust Valve with their OS?
On SteamOS you can still kind of have non-flatpak packages persist by using distrobox. It’s still a sandbox, just one that has a bit more latitude in what you can install than a flatpak.
Yep, distrobox is a wrapper for Podman, which is also installed by default.
But I agree, there’s actually not a ton of functional difference between SteamOS and Bazzite, unless you want/need to use your Deck like a laptop. If you are only doing gaming, SteamOS is actually the better choice, because Valve has patches and modifications that aren’t yet included in upstream that maximize the hardware’s capabilities and stability.