I can see the use case for someone who wants a single OS install on the Steam Deck that does gaming just about as well as SteamOS does, but has a more fleshed out desktop experience (or even just a different one). The linked article goes into detail on various desktop-focused developments within Bazzite that wouldn’t really make sense for Valve to prioritize in SteamOS itself.
In this case it’s referring to the fact that the OS is built upon the same containerization technology used on cloud platforms such as Kubernetes. As a marketing tool it’s a bit buzzwordy, but it’s not about running the core OS components outside of the physical machine here.
Yup, while Denuvo DRM is still an issue for many other reasons, it has been generally very Linux and Wine-friendly, especially in comparison to other popular DRM/anticheat solutions in place that explicitly block LInux users by-design, or at best change their implementation so often that it’s a cat-and-mouse game keeping Wine and other layers up to date to support it.
I think moving the folder under ~/.local before splitting the cache folders out is a bad idea. Many people will have specific backup or sync solutions in place that want to include config, recreate data, and exclude cache, so the XDG spec has separate locations for them.
Windows’s dedicated Saved Gamed folder is within the same user-specific directories that Documents and AppData are in, and would still allow for game saves to be user-specific.
The ideal end state is “why not both?”, I think. Have an immutable “base” system, and utilize mutable overlays on top for any necessary tinkering or involved activities.
Casual users need not interface with the overlays at all (or do so through very controlled mechanisms, like how Flatpak/Snap, Steam game containers, etc work today), while developers, tinkerers, and those that are curious can create throwaway environments that they can mess with to their heart’s content.
WSL on Windows has its warts, but it shows how such an ecosystem is possible (if you treat Windows itself as a Black Box That Must Not Be Modified). I think the immutable distro ecosystem is on the right track, with technologies like Toolbox/Distrobox to bridge the gap, it will just take time for the tooling, practices, and ecosystem around them to mature and not be as much of a hassle as they are today.
Today, I am running both immutable and non-immutable setups on various machines. My work computer (development) and gaming rig are on a traditional setup, as my specific development needs are not 100% compatible with a toolbox environment, and gaming-adjacent applications like Discord are slow to adapt to the needs of Flatpak containerization. I have a laptop that’s 100% just used for media consumption and shitposting, which is a good use case for immutable distros today and is running Fedora Kinoite.
If you’re running uBlock Origin, go into the addon settings, go to Filter Lists, and turn on the Annoyances filters. They’re not on by default, but should get rid of these kinds of “known” popups across popular sites.
I think their original intent back when Proton originally launched was to just show generic Linux compatibility on any titles if it worked with Proton and was approved by Valve. I’m not sure why they stopped doing that.