winesapOS VS gamescope

I run winesapOS[0] which is based on SteamOS and was able to repurpose an old Toshiba notebook for my kids, running Freddy Fish* and other games. Windows 10 doesn't run smoothly (even though it came with Windows 10) and I'm not going to run anything older than that.

* Yes, ScummVM is available for Linux but the Steam Linux distribution included an old ScummVM which wasn't able to load some libraries. Running the Windows version through an compatibility layer was easier than modifying shell files to run the latest ScummVM through flatpak.

[0]: https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS

HoloISO and ChimeraOS no longer support Nvidia so you'll need to use winesapOS.

If the BIOS isn't locked try booting winesapOS off a flash drive.

Context: winesap seems to be a spin of SteamOS3 with KDE, somehow optimised for gaming. It's meant to be used as a live distro?

My understanding is that Valve intends to release SteamOS 3 for install on other machines at some point, and it will likely include support when that happens. In the meantime, there a modified version of it available on GitHub here which claims to support NVIDIA GPUs, but I have not tried it.

Unofficial SteamOS 3.0 (steam deck) build for PCs, with a graphical installer

Currently I am planning on running a VM with winsapeos

https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS - it is a simple image, ready made, with a lot of software installed. There is almost no configuration needed. However, this means that the image will contain a lot of software that you don't need. From a gaming perspective, you could even game on this and it's already set up - but as it is running from a SD card, I prefer to just reboot into the standard OS.

If you want something similar to HoloISO, but it has everything you need out of the box, there is WinesapOS. It is also based on the Steam recovery image, but with a bunch of apps and changes for desktop gamers. For an advanced user it would be too bloated, but for a beginner it means you will not need to install or setup apps for any of your game launchers, antivirus software, Chrome, Wine, etc. It also features Intel Mac support, which is pretty cool.

Maybe gamesope can help? Games are nested into it to allow for better control.

Well I suppose you should start taking Wayland seriously then, because gamescope, the compositor on the Steam Deck, uses Wayland. https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/blob/master/src/wlserver.cpp

Mini-update: I spoke with Josh (and Strudel, who referenced me to the PR), and this has been already merged into gamescope.

Valve staff is also aware they cannot force developers to retrofit 16:10 support into existing games (some do, many don't), so they even go the extra mile to provide extra functionality in gamescope to improve the 16:10 gaming experience for games that only support 16:9 natively.

Source: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/issues/474

The ganescope github has all the commands and how to use them: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope

I'm trying out gamescope on my laptop, and I came across ChimeraOS's fork of it. I'm not sure why I would choose one over the other. ChimeraOS mentions something about "session switch", but I'm not sure what that's about.

You can use gamescope on the desktop, I use it for a ton of games like No Man's Sky, Bethesda games, and any others that have alt tab instability.

For those that don't know (like me, three minutes ago) gamescope [1] is a Wayland compositor custom-written for games (and, I believe, what the Steam Deck uses). it's open source, and under the "BSD 2-clause" license.

[1]: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope

I assume that this is because I'm still using ye olde steamos-compositor (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamos-compositor/.) I'm interested in switching to gamescope (https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope) but I'm getting the feeling it won't work on my 20.04 vintage Ubuntu; the required version of meson isn't available and I can't find a PPA that contains gamescope. My instinct act this point is to just live with the pain, as fully dealing with this will likely involve just switching all the way to Arch to more closely match the newest SteamOS and I just don't want to do that right now. Anyone know if there is a middleground that will support a modern steam big picture mode without having to totally redo everything?