Many first time Linux users will find themselves fighting package managers and such, following guides on the internet (that often don’t even apply to any OS compiled after 2015). This is why I feared the failure of the Steam Deck, because most gamers don’t really possess much technical prowess.

Almost all of the Linux support I’ve had to give friends were the cause of someone altering system complements they didn’t understand, leaving them with a broken system. The expectation to mess with system components seems to be considered a necessity by whatever course or standard guide these people have followed.

Valve made it the default configuration that the system OS can’t be written to. You can mess with your user files all you want, but you’ll need to manually make your OS writeable. If you don’t know what the long command line starting with cat fails, your system will still boot. Yet, because of Flatpak and other advances, most of what the user considers software can still be updated. OS updates are also seamless, they get unpacked to an A/B system and after a quick reboot the entire OS is up to date.

I think this mix of static system images and configurable user directories is very powerful, and I think that this approach is should be the default to common Linux distributions. Maybe add a little checkbox (“Alter my system to make the root partition mutable (not recommended)”) to the installer to make the nerds happy.