Bazzite is an alternative OS to SteamOS for the deck and other handheld PCs. Unfortunately due to a mistake, anyone who installed Bazzite before July 3rd 2024 won’t get automatic updates.
If this affects you, I’d suggest checking out the article to get instructions on fixing it.
Because it’s based on fedora atomic it uses rpm-ostree, which lets you layer packages to persist between updates. Good for stuff that isn’t available as a flatpak or doesn’t work as well when installed as a flatpak. Beyond that not much, maybe if someone doesn’t trust Valve with their OS?
On SteamOS you can still kind of have non-flatpak packages persist by using distrobox.
It’s still a sandbox, just one that hasa bit more latitude in what you can install than a flatpak.edit: distrobox seems more integrated with the host OS than I thought