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SteamOS
Valve's own gaming-focused Linux distribution, the operating system that ships on the Steam Deck and powers Proton, the compatibility layer that runs most Windows games on Linux.
Based on
Arch Linux
First released
2013
Package manager
pacman (largely immutable on Steam Deck)
Desktop environments
KDE Plasma (Desktop Mode) + Valve's own 'Gamescope' session
SteamOS moved to an Arch Linux base with its 3.0 release and today runs a largely immutable, read-only filesystem on the Steam Deck, with an A/B partition scheme for safe updates and a console-like 'Gaming Mode' controller-driven interface layered over a full KDE Plasma desktop that's a tap away for anyone who wants to use it like a regular PC. Its most consequential contribution to Linux gaming broadly (well beyond just SteamOS itself) is Proton, Valve's fork of Wine tuned specifically for game compatibility, which now lets a large share of Windows-only games on Steam run on any Linux distribution, not just SteamOS. While SteamOS itself officially targets Valve's own Steam Deck hardware, its Arch base and gaming-first design have directly inspired several other distributions (Bazzite, ChimeraOS, Nobara) aiming to bring the same experience to arbitrary PC hardware.
MirrorNest doesn't mirror distro ISOs — installation media should always come straight from the project's own official download page (linked above), so you get the correct checksum/signature to verify against.