I Put SteamOS Into Omarchy - All The Gaming, None Of The Lock-In
I love SteamOS. The console-first experience, the Gamescope session, the way it just boots into gaming — Valve nailed it. But it's locked down. Immutable, atomic, fixated on specific hardware. You can't tinker. So I took the best…
I love SteamOS. The console-first experience, the Gamescope session, the way it just boots into gaming — Valve nailed it. But it's locked down. Immutable, atomic, fixated on specific hardware. You can't tinker. So I took the best parts of SteamOS — the Gamescope session and the Steam Deck experience — and side-loaded them into Omarchy. The result is an ISO that installs Omarchy with full SteamOS-style deck mode baked in, on whatever hardware you want, with none of the immutable restrictions.
It's all live on Git. visit the website to find out more .
and also a premade iso this can be found on the web site
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You can download Omarchy here https://omarchy.org
Amazing premade Omarchy themes here and other cool stuff
https://github.com/HANCORE-linux
HOW IT WORKS
I forked Omarchy into a deck fork. Because DHH structures Omarchy so well — everything named properly, everything in the right place — it's genuinely easy to bolt things together. When you assemble the ISO, it patches in the Steam Deck bits that live inside SteamOS: the Gamescope session and everything it needs.
Boot the ISO and it's a completely normal Omarchy install — username, password, drive, done in three or four minutes. But if you watch carefully you'll see the Steam elements folding in during install. By the time it finishes, the Gamescope session is there out of the box.
THE CLEVER BIT — IT DETACHES FROM MY FORK
This is the part I got wrong the first time and fixed. The moment the install completes, it detaches from my deck fork and reconnects to the main Omarchy branch. So you get all your normal Omarchy updates from DHH directly, you can switch to the dev channel, you're not waiting on me to push updates. You just update as normal. The fork is only used to assemble the ISO, then it's gone.
THE EXPERIENCE
After install you've got a totally standard-looking Omarchy desktop — but Steam is preloaded and the Gamescope session is side-loaded in. Ctrl+Super+T shows Steam already there. Log in, then type "game" in the launcher and you get Games Mode and Games Mode Settings — the same interface as my DeckShift script, but built into the OS.
Set your monitor, resolution, GPU, hit the games icon, and you launch straight into a full Gamescope Steam Deck session. Switch to desktop from the Steam power menu and you're back in Omarchy. Console when you want it, full desktop when you don't.
WHY NOT JUST USE STEAMOS OR BAZZITE
SteamOS is brilliant but the immutable AB atomic model means you can't muck around with it. Bazzite I loved for about three weeks, then hit a wall — why do I have to rebase, why is this so hard, too many layers on top I couldn't move. With Omarchy, if something's missing I just write it. It's that easy to make things and integrate them — DHH has usually left a hook somewhere to help.
This gives you both worlds. A beautiful desktop OS you can actually work and tinker on, plus the SteamOS-style deck mode for gaming.
THE NVIDIA CAVEAT
There are still glitches in the Gamescope session on Nvidia — the usual 1440p cap and HDR detection quirks. The sooner Valve brings proper SteamOS support to Nvidia and other platforms, the better this gets. Set resolution to 1440p, switch off HDR on first launch, and you're good.
STEAM MACHINE THOUGHTS
I'm tempted to get one of the new Steam boxes and make Omarchy run on it. That little box on a desktop running this would be ideal. You could mirror this approach onto a set-top box — boot straight into console mode by the TV. SteamOS is perfect for the console job, but if you also want a real desktop, this hybrid gives you the option SteamOS won't.
THE ISO
Going up on Git. Pull it down, build it, install it, have a play. I'd love to benchmark this against stock SteamOS — if you grab a Steam Machine, let me know how it compares.
ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
I make videos about Linux, Omarchy, gaming, self-hosting, and AI workflows. Subscribe if that's your thing.
00:00 - Start
00:13 - PRE_AMBLE
05:25 - STEAM OS
10:18 - OMARCHY/STEAM
21:27 - FINAL WORDS