Main benefit for me is a more traditional Linux environment, whereas steamos basically has a single user without a password and encryption is difficult at best. Great for playing games but not for computer usability. Bazzite also supports full disk encryption, and recently I learned/was told that you can move your SD card between Bazzite devices like Nintendo cartridges to play wherever.

One downside would be arguably less support. It’s community driven so the hardware manufacturers aren’t going to necessarily help you get dysfunctional games working, etc. Not that they’re going to be much help even when you’re playing native.

Also, kinda silly but I regret not switching to Bazzite OS earlier. I still have not done it. In theory it’s got several benefits over stock SteamOS but being comfortable, I haven’t put in the effort to try the new thing.

If you’re comfortable changing an m.2 SSD in a standard laptop, then working on the steam deck isn’t much different. My advice is buying the lowest storage SD and then buying an aftermarket 2TB.

But also be aware that gameplay on SD cards is also very performative, so you may not need that extra storage anyway.

Off the top of my head I cannot remember the specifics, but there are several options during boot that you can make optional, for instance don’t wait until there’s an internet connection.

IDK but maybe check out Client.setMaximize(v, h)

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=403071