There are a ton of interesting apps to use on Linux.

The Steam Deck uses Flatpaks from Flathub by default in KDE’s Discover app “store”.

Browse and search https://flathub.org/ to find all sorts of apps.

Are there any types of apps you’re interested in or anything in particular that you’re used to and want to find something similar?

You’ll probably want Flatseal to adjust Flatpak app permissions (like giving apps access to more directories and such). You usually don’t need this, but some apps might not support portals and may need more “holes” poked in the sandbox to access additional directories.

If you want to run VMs, then I’d suggest GNOME Boxes (just searching for “boxes” in Discover should find it. You could install a standard Linux distro inside — or even Windows if you really wanted. It’s simple and straightforward, and even has Linux distro downloads from the UI (so you don’t even have to hunt for an ISO to download).

If you’re looking for command line stuff, then I’d suggest setting up podman and distrobox; this is more advanced, but would let you run almost everything from any distro on your Deck via containers that persist (even across Steam Deck updates): https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/compatibility.md#install-podman-in-a-static-manner & https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/

If you’re doing a lot of stuff on your Steam Deck in desktop mode, please remember that it’s not encrypted (so anyone can copy anything you do out of it) and doesn’t even have a password by default. You’d want to set up KDE Plasma’s Vault and use that for sensitive documents and/or use a VM with disk encryption. Sadly, EncFS isn’t included on the Deck, so you cannot use KDE Plasma Vault (without jumping through hoops), so you’d have to set up something similar in Distrobox (although probably a different program), use something similar from Flathub (again, which requires a command line program behind the scenes currently) or use a VM with encryption (which is the easiest thing to do).

If you aren’t doing anything sensitive (including browsing) on desktop mode and don’t want to do anything too advanced (like command line stuff), then all the many thousands of apps available from Flathub are still really astoundingly great and super easy to use. They’re basically just a click away in Discover.

👍

…Is Xits pronounced “exits” or “zits”? 🤔

Yep, Safari is still WebKit.

Safari thankfully hasn’t switched to Blink (the engine powering Chrome and all Chromium-based browsers), which forked from WebKit over a decade ago (April 2013).

Safari is only available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. In fact, every browser on iOS/iPadOS is WebKit-based, as it’s the only browser engine Apple permits on their phones and tablets. (Yes, this includes the so-called “Firefox”, “Chrome”, and all the other browser apps on iOS/iPadOS.)

GNOME Web (aka: Epiphany) is also WebKit-based and is available on Linux.

There’s no current Windows WebKit browser that I’m aware of. (Apple shipped Safari for Windows a long, long time ago, but also discontinued it shortly after.)

There are embedded ports of WebKit for various devices in the form of WPE Webkit. (WPE stands for Web Platform for Embedded.)

You can install and use a standard distribution through Distrobox, which has a few initial steps to install, but once it’s there, you can dnf/apt/zypper/apk/pacman/etc. install any packages completely in user space. (And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox containers lets you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.)

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/

And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox container sets it up so can you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-export.md

But, you probably want to not have anything private on your Steam Deck, as there’s no encryption, so anyone can take your Deck and copy files off of it. To solve this, you’d want to either have an encrypted loopback file that you use like a pluggable disk (there are some tools for this; “Plasma Vault” is even built into the KDE desktop that powers the Steam Deck’s desktop mode, but requires a little setup) or you could run a Linux distro (or other OS) within a VM in GNOME Boxes (available as a Flatpak without having to do anything special). The Plasma Vault solution is more lightweight and integrated, once you install the encryption support it needs.

https://github.com/popsUlfr/steam-deck-tricks#encrypted-vaults-with-plasma-vault-and-gocryptfs

https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes

FWIW: I used my Steam Deck as a desktop when traveling a few months ago and have been using Linux (with GNOME, not KDE — but both are great) for decades.

Note: You can actually play Halo on a Steam Deck. I’ve played it with friends over the internet and two of us were on a Steak Deck and Linux desktop. The other two were on Windows. It worked well.

(But, yeah, there still are a few other games that don’t have anti-cheat enabled, such as Fortnite and Destiny 2.)