really, they skipped printer support on SteamOS 3?

it's obviously not something essential for gaming, but still I'm disappointed, because many linux distros managed to integrate great out-of-the-box support for printers that puts Win's driver-download&install-fest to shame

SteamOS is designed with one thing in mind - gaming. It was never for general computing. However now that we have the deck, people want more of a computer experience than just gaming. I'm curious how any of this will get solved, if it ever gets solved...

Linux is a great general purpose OS. The CUPS service is very low hanging fruit. Print your screenshots (that's a terrible idea but...)

Originally posted by Red Star Gopnik:

SteamOS is designed with one thing in mind - gaming. It was never for general computing. However now that we have the deck, people want more of a computer experience than just gaming. I'm curious how any of this will get solved, if it ever gets solved...

They also advertised it as a full on PC.

Originally posted by BezaoBuilder:

Originally posted by Red Star Gopnik:

SteamOS is designed with one thing in mind - gaming. It was never for general computing. However now that we have the deck, people want more of a computer experience than just gaming. I'm curious how any of this will get solved, if it ever gets solved...

They also advertised it as a full on PC.

yes, the deck is a pc, so you can install Ubuntu or other distribution and print as much as you want. steamOS is not a general purpose operating system, and was never advertised as such.

Not being able to print is one of few reasons not to use the Deck as my daily driver. CUPS support would be really nice.

For the time being I print the document as a pdf, use warpinator to transfer it to my phone to print.

Originally posted by ole.schuette:

Not being able to print is one of few reasons not to use the Deck as my daily driver. CUPS support would be really nice.

For the time being I print the document as a pdf, use warpinator to transfer it to my phone to print.

The default operating system is extremely unsuited for usage as a daily driver. The deck can be used in such manner only when the operating system is replaced.

Originally posted by Red Star Gopnik:

Originally posted by ole.schuette:

Not being able to print is one of few reasons not to use the Deck as my daily driver. CUPS support would be really nice.

For the time being I print the document as a pdf, use warpinator to transfer it to my phone to print.

The default operating system is extremely unsuited for usage as a daily driver. The deck can be used in such manner only when the operating system is replaced.

Not really. I find it meets 99% of my daily needs. Getting the SD to be both a daily driver and a good gaming system is so much easier with the default OS than trying to jury-rig another distro to do all the gaming features SDOS comes with.
If it didn't already come with a desktop mode, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Stop gate keeping just because you don't have an answer.
Unfortunately, that answer today is probably "there's not a flatpak yet, so you might not be able to get it working" and that's fine. But don't tell us not to want to use Linux the way we want to use it.

Originally posted by rossperk:

Originally posted by Red Star Gopnik:

The default operating system is extremely unsuited for usage as a daily driver. The deck can be used in such manner only when the operating system is replaced.

Not really. I find it meets 99% of my daily needs. Getting the SD to be both a daily driver and a good gaming system is so much easier with the default OS than trying to jury-rig another distro to do all the gaming features SDOS comes with.
If it didn't already come with a desktop mode, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Stop gate keeping just because you don't have an answer.
Unfortunately, that answer today is probably "there's not a flatpak yet, so you might not be able to get it working" and that's fine. But don't tell us not to want to use Linux the way we want to use it.

that missing 1% is what annoys me (and it seems you) very very much.

Well, we don't really need a flatpak to get it, but it's cumbersome.
I managed to get my printer working by using the Arch package manager (pacman).
This requires moving the system partition out of readonly, setting up pacman to look at the default Arch repos, and knowing what package you need.... But in the end, it works.
Caveat : on next system update, you have to do it again because it is wiped out. But I've put the related commands in a script so that I just have to run it when it happens.

All that to say : you don't have to put another Linux on it. It's already Linux, and you can tinker it as any other :-)

Glad to see I'm not the only one who has run into this. Not glad to see that it has been a noted shortfall of Steam OS since April.

Within a couple of days of getting my Steam Deck I had it hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard+mouse, running desktop mode. It's Linux! It's a PC!

Even though most of my experience is with *ubuntu or Fedora, it was a breeze to get the Steam Deck 99% usable as a Linux PC, except for printing. I'm so used to the simplicity of using CUPS under Linux, that it took me a while to realize that the SD was the problem.

I'm also looking for printing capability. The Steam Deck can handle almost all of my daily chores, so I tend to use it in Desktop mode almost as much as my Windows laptop. Consider this my vote to add printing Valve.

you can basically install anything you want that doesnt need root (yes even from pacman) to a /home folder as another / and use systemd to launch services in user mode from a service file in /home.

you can also use chroots/fakeroots or distrobox to host another distro in /home that uses the current kernel as its own but houses all the apps and services individually as well as allowing gui apps to work as intended.

I would very much like to have this feature as well. This is one of the very few issues preventing me from letting my old gaming laptop go.

i also would like to add printers. as an artist, i love the steamos. the only thing i need my pc is the need to print. but it sucks to send images, start my pc, get the image, print, shutdown pc and so on.