Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

I am excited about it. I will wait for hands on impressions post release but unless there are red flags I will probably buy one.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/15/2...

It’s a good thing they will let you install Windows or whatever on there. Driver support will have to remain though or even that gesture won’t go very far.

$400 also Is for a 64gb which won’t get you very much these days. I wonder if you can add your own SSD.

That is also a 64 gigs eMMC (a small memory chip like what you would find in an SD card embedded on the motherboard) not a traditional SSD and likely slower than a SATA SSD. I am guessing that the OS lives on the eMMC in all three models, but it uses the NVMe drive for storage if that is present. Hopefully that means the cheaper model can be opened up and you can just populate an empty m.2 slot with a standard 2280 size NVMe SSD.

I think the face buttons and sticks and d-pad are all placed bad, basically making them second class input devices with the odd dual thumbpads being the first class inputs. That said the triggers and should buttons look good and I would have to use it to give any impression of the grip buttons. Would have been great if the controller were removable like the Switch so that third parties could make different options. All I basically want is an Xbox One controller sawed in half with a 6 to 7 inch screen sandwiched in-between.

Speaking of the screen it is an odd resolution and aspect ratio (odd when you consider that according to the Steam hardware survey about 80% of people are using a 16x9 monitor). I expect to see a lot of games running with black bar at the top and bottom because of this.

There are tons of different projects out there for stuff like this. I think some people on here have funded them on Indiegogo but are still waiting for them to ship. Nice to see a major player step into the ring though.

I am very interested.

It helps that I have big ol' "wasn't the Xbox Duke controller great?" sized hands. Not worried about the oversized form factor.

As aphesian said, emulation alone already makes this compelling. x86 Linux gives you a lot more emulation options than most handhelds.

The original SteamOS was doomed by its expectation of developers flocking to port games to Linux. There was always going to be a hard ceiling on that, and not a very high one.

The Proton approach of "OK f*ck it, we'll spend all our effort on an amazing Windows->Linux compatibility layer so Windows games can work as-is" is much more sustainable.

Also, since it's just running Linux, I could presumably put Docker on it, make it a little development environment, and use my iPad Pro with its keyboard and an SSH client as a terminal...

I guess I should've prefaced any comment about this with:

I think the Steam Controller is one of the worst gaming hardware I've ever bought.

Steam Link is cool tho. That controller, nope. And this device has touch pads, which I'm sure will feel awful.

I get the hype any of you feel, it's a cool device with the sort of specs we'd all hope for, but Valve has fooled me before with hardware hype for it all to fall flat.

Is there a huge demand to run 4x Strategy games and other mouse and keyboard games on a handheld by gamers?? I don’t get Valves obsession with trying to bring M&K to controllers and now this. I would have been way happier to see it just support X-Input and ditch the trackpads.

Not to mention so many of those style games are going to be awful on a 720P/800P screen.

So which one are people going to preorder? The middle one? Or top version?

garion333 wrote:

I think the Steam Controller is one of the worst gaming hardware I've ever bought.

Cool, I'll take it. I own two of them.

It's by far my preferred way of playing point-and-click adventures and Civ-style games from the couch. I tried transitioning to a PS4 controller and using its touchpad, but the positioning on the Steam Controller one is far more comfortable.

TheGameguru wrote:

Is there a huge demand to run 4x Strategy games and other mouse and keyboard games on a handheld by gamers??

Me me me. I demand it.

Count me in as one of THOSE people. I love this idea. The other handheld Chinese Pcs look cool but this is at a better price point and hopefully a certain quality that brings it up. Give me my Indies, Visual Novels, JRPGS and emulators and I'm a happy.

Raw GPU power seems to be around PS4 level. This seems maybe less than adequate for a modern system going forward.

Anyway, it seems like it could be a great emulation machine and and could work well for playing console ports from the last two console generations. But, overall, it's probably not for me.

If it’s really 2Tflops of GPU power color me really skeptical on battery life. It will be lucky to get 2 hours unless the screen is at 10% brightness.

Darn it folks, I want this sorted by 9:59 am PDT tomorrow...do we buy this thing or run for the hills? Where is the consensus?

TheGameguru wrote:

Is there a huge demand to run 4x Strategy games and other mouse and keyboard games on a handheld by gamers??

While I am not really interested in any kind of mobile gaming, playing games like Civilization etc. on a device like this seems the most perfect for playing in a couch. Slow, turnbased, graphics not important, and not at all gamepad friendly. Heh, I am nearly starting to sell myself on this stuff.

I am getting nightmares just thinking about the wait-time between turns in Civ on this device though.

Anyway, I wonder if Nintendo got some patent on their attachable controllers. Being able to change between two different types of controllers, with and without the touchpad things could have been brilliant.

TheGameguru wrote:

Is there a huge demand to run 4x Strategy games and other mouse and keyboard games on a handheld by gamers??

Portable CK3 & Project Zomboid sounds absolutely insane.

Speaks to me a lot more personally than typical Switch fare.

What I absolutely want one day is portable Rocket League.

Unfortunately the Switch plays RL terribly (can’t hold 60fps) and the joycons are very uncomfortable for that game. I’m gonna get some third party joycons eventually.

Will this do a better job than the Switch? Hard to say. The controls look better for sure but still not great. Rocket League doesn’t have an official Linux version anymore however it apparently runs through Wine quite well. Curious to see some performance numbers and hear about how comfortable it is to use.

Edgar_Newt wrote:

Darn it folks, I want this sorted by 9:59 am PDT tomorrow...do we buy this thing or run for the hills? Where is the consensus?

It looks like it's a $5 refundable deposit to get your name on the reservation list, with no obligation to complete the order later in the year. I intend to sign up for the mid-tier one, and I'll wait for more info in the coming months to make a decision.

Savvy, doing this on the day the child tax credit hits. Still it's a few years too late for me. It has to fit in my pocket or be a laptop or I'll just have to hand it to a kid within a few seconds.

ETA PRIME has tested a ton of handheld PCs by other companies and seems confident this one will run AAA games at basic settings at 720p. He talks a bit about the APU and expected performance.

The APU is RDNA2 which means it might support FidelityFX Super Resolution to improve performance.

The Jumpgate dock I use with my Switch supports PCs and other devices so I wonder how well it would work with this.

Spawn Wave's video on it:

I am super excited for this. Signed up for a notification for when it becomes available in Australia...

Doesn't sound like the storage was designed for regular people to upgrade (at 57 seconds in).

This is another one of those devices that looks interesting, but ultimately doesn't have an audience. AAA games aren't going to run on the device, complex PC games that benefit from a M&K will be garbage, and the Switch is far better for indies. That might be okay if it were cheap, but it's packing a hefty price tag. There's just no audience for this thing.

Yeah, yeah, I know there's some of you reading this going "You're wrong. This is exactly what I want because of X and Y". Yeah, well, no one cares what you think. Don't make me post the "there are dozens of us" gif.

This is a very niche product that a few people will buy it and love it to bits, but ultimately it'll be completely forgotten a year later like Google Glass or the 3DO or something.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

Doesn't sound like the storage was designed for regular people to upgrade (at 57 seconds in).

Regular people can't pop an SD card in? Games can be stored & played directly off of one...

Djinn wrote:

This is another one of those devices that looks interesting, but ultimately doesn't have an audience. AAA games aren't going to run on the device, complex PC games that benefit from a M&K will be garbage, and the Switch is far better for indies.

The first two, yeah. But Switch being best for indies? PC seems endlessly better for those. Broader support, cheaper games.

Djinn wrote:

This is a very niche product that a few people will buy it and love it to bits, but ultimately it'll be completely forgotten a year later like Google Glass or the 3DO or something.

Seems very likely.

I wonder if a thing like this might have more of a market outside NA/Europe/etc. due to the portability and even price - not easy to get a PC with monitor for less.

Do all the indies support Steam OS / Linux? That's one of the biggest negatives imho.

Aaron D. wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Is there a huge demand to run 4x Strategy games and other mouse and keyboard games on a handheld by gamers??

Portable CK3 & Project Zomboid sounds absolutely insane.

Speaks to me a lot more personally than typical Switch fare.

I'd probably want someone to play CK3 on a small screen first.

One of the drawbacks with the Switch is when a game's UI isn't designed for such a small screen. I fear you're going to be getting a lot of squinting at text with this device. If it takes off you might get patches for UI and new games potentially could come built in with UI scaling or whatever, but until then your mileage will vary greatly from title to title.

*Legion* wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I think the Steam Controller is one of the worst gaming hardware I've ever bought.

Cool, I'll take it. I own two of them.

It's by far my preferred way of playing point-and-click adventures and Civ-style games from the couch. I tried transitioning to a PS4 controller and using its touchpad, but the positioning on the Steam Controller one is far more comfortable.

And here I thought you played Civ on your Switch.

merphle wrote:
Kurrelgyre wrote:

Doesn't sound like the storage was designed for regular people to upgrade (at 57 seconds in).

Regular people can't pop an SD card in? Games can be stored & played directly off of one...

Having experienced the outcome of trying that with earlier generation handhelds and full laptops, I wouldn't get your hopes up for using it as a replacement for a larger internal drive.

Djinn wrote:

This is another one of those devices that looks interesting, but ultimately doesn't have an audience. AAA games aren't going to run on the device, complex PC games that benefit from a M&K will be garbage, and the Switch is far better for indies. That might be okay if it were cheap, but it's packing a hefty price tag. There's just no audience for this thing.

Yeah, yeah, I know there's some of you reading this going "You're wrong. This is exactly what I want because of X and Y". Yeah, well, no one cares what you think. Don't make me post the "there are dozens of us" gif.

This is a very niche product that a few people will buy it and love it to bits, but ultimately it'll be completely forgotten a year later like Google Glass or the 3DO or something.

Yikes. This comes off really aggro.

One of the IGN vids had Doom Eternal running on high settings at 60fps. I think the resolution scaling will make most modern AAA titles viable at medium settings at least. Also worth noting that Switch at dramatically lower specs has trouble with the AAA scene, but that hasn't affected its popularity at all.

Indies are most plentiful and diverse on PC, full stop. This is an undisputed fact as the numbers simply don't lie. And that's on Steam alone. When you throw options like itch.io into the mix the scales tip even further.

Jury is still out on mouse control with trackpads, but the Steam controller seemed to work fine in that regard. Perhaps the built in gyro controls will help as well with typical mouse aiming scenarios. It obviously won't be as good a traditional mouse, but phrasing it as "garbage" seems hyperbolic.

Pricing is an interesting thought experiment. I'd imagine the price point is mitigated significantly by the size of one's current Steam library. As someone on Twitter noted, "Deck is poised to have the greatest launch lineup in history." I know I'll be starting with around 2K games on Day 1. I guess ymmv on the price, but it's an incredibly powerful piece of kit for the form-factor and asking price.

Either way, no one is suggesting Deck will be perfect and it will most definitely have drawbacks compared to traditional desktop PC gaming. Perhaps it will be niche as well and that's fine too. But to suggest that people who are genuinely enthusiastic about the portable are somehow "wrong" just strikes me as weird.

I will slap down $5.00 to see where this ends up in December (if it really hits the date).

garion333 wrote:

One of the drawbacks with the Switch is when a game's UI isn't designed for such a small screen. I fear you're going to be getting a lot of squinting at text with this device. If it takes off you might get patches for UI and new games potentially could come built in with UI scaling or whatever, but until then your mileage will vary greatly from title to title.

Yeah, that screen makes me nervous because I can think of a lot of games (especially older ones) where the text scaling is practically non-existent, so it's very difficult to read things on a 24-27" monitor.

The clincher for me is whether or not this thing is going to be rolled out in stores eventually or will forever be exclusive to buying online from Valve. If it's the latter, then it's a no go for me. A hundred hands-on impressions still won't make me comfortable shelling out $529 for a portable gaming device that I've never got to feel for myself, let alone see what types of games I play look like on that screen.

Shadout wrote:

The first two, yeah. But Switch being best for indies? PC seems endlessly better for those. Broader support, cheaper games.

Yeah, fair point. Indies are way better on PC. More options and far better pricing. I guess my point is that you wouldn't buy a Steam Deck just for Indies, so there's not much of an audience there. If the controls are better to use than they look, it would be pretty sweet as an Indie machine. Not for $400 though. It's hard to sell an expensive product like this to play games that you already own and that has no exclusives on it.

Aaron D. wrote:

But to suggest that people who are genuinely enthusiastic about the portable are somehow "wrong" just strikes me as weird.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/N2sRJbC/youre-wrong-and-you-should-feel-bad.jpg)

I'm just talking about the financial success of the thing. I'm not saying anyone is wrong for liking a niche product. We all have our niches.

garion333 wrote:

And here I thought you played Civ on your Switch. ;)

On the go!

If the Steam Deck had existed two years ago, I might not own a Switch now.

garion333 wrote:

Do all the indies support Steam OS / Linux? That's one of the biggest negatives imho.

Well they don't need to support Linux, that's the point of Proton. The compatibility list for Proton is pretty impressive. The main thing that Proton struggles to support is the anti-cheat systems (other than VAC) in some online games. Which definitely is something anyone interested in the Steam Deck should be aware of.

BattleEye supposedly is working with Valve to function in a Proton environment. If that ever comes together, the number of red titles will shrink significantly. I imagine the Steam Deck bringing Proton more to the forefront will help spur those efforts along.