10 years ago, in 2015, I built a new gaming PC. Back then I thought: "That's gonna be my last gaming PC", as I wasn't sure if I'd stay being an avid gamer for another decade. Therefore, I invested in high-tier components to ensure it will endure for a long time. And it served me well.

Now 10 years later, I still enjoy video games. But as my tower PC is showing it's age and it's OS (Windows 10) is running out of support this year, I had to make a decision:

I could've easily built a new system as replacement, but there was one thing that really deterred me: Windows 11.

The breakup

I've been using nearly every version of Microsoft Windows since 3.11 (released in 1993). It's been a constant in my life, even during my rebellious teenage years with Ubuntu on the desktop and now macOS being my main driver for work. I even worked as administrator of a medium-sized Windows network for a few years.

Most people have the fondest memories of the versions they started with or used the most. For me, that's probably Windows 98 SE and Windows 7.

But times are changing: Windows used to be a flexible system that put the power to the owner of the system. But already since Windows 10, the users have become the product: Constant upselling of services, silent installation of unwanted software like Candy Crush and all these little knobs and switches you have to change to stay in charge. Now even Notepad, a decades-old but reliable tool, has questionable generative AI features.

The most infuriating thing: Even if you're an IT expert and know how to disable all of the annoyances, many updates just add new toggles or reset them. As result, you're constantly fighting against a system that actively disrespects you. You cannot even disable telemetry unless you're a business customer.

And I am tired of this. I expect my operating system to do just it's job and not get in my way or constantly grab my attention.

Still, I want to continue PC gaming. And thanks to Valve, I can still do it.

Hello Steam Deck

Last christmas I treated myself with a Steam Deck OLED. A powerful portable gaming device running SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux.

It's an open device with unlocked bootlocker and OS that allows you to do whatever you want with it. Even installing Windows.

One of the first things I did was enabling the SSH server - which was easy thanks to many articles online and the fact you have sudo permissions by default. This way, I could easily copy files over and even configure the system using Ansible. Imagine that last sentence for any other gaming device on the market.

While it's designed as mobile device, you can also get the official docking station to turn it into a regular PC. Thanks to the integrated KDE desktop, it also feels like one.

Initial setup

The overall setup flow is smooth and quite a difference to the often rather bumpy experience you have with other Linux desktop distributions. Updates to the systems are also quite fast as the OS is delivered using a image-based method, which even allows a rollback if the new image is broken.

You can really tell that Valve spent a lot time testing SteamOS, something they're quite famous for with their games as well.

Backing up my old system

I like creating backups of my old systems, in case I really need some file I might've forgotten about. To do so, I created a SquashFS archive of the Windows SSD using a Linux live system. I like this archive format a lot, as it can be mounted by practically any Linux system and has been stable and in wide use for decades.

Note that these backups cannot be used to restore a full Windows system, as they're losing all information provided by NTFS features like permissions. In my case it doesn't matter, as I just care about individual files.

Saying goodbye to some games

While Valve did a great job with creating a compatibility layer to run Windows games, many modern multiplayer titles are not working due to their need to have anti-cheat solutions which are incompatible.

Still, my clear goal is to just use SteamOS for gaming in the future, and any game that is unsupported just won't be bought or played anymore.

2025 is the year of Linux gaming, at least for me.