Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

I reserved a 512gb model. As I understand it, I should be able to play Fallout and Skyrim with my mods. Do you think Steam will have an easy “copy all” sort of function over to the Deck?

Perfect is the enemy of good. I almost talked myself out of ordering after reading some posts. However, tying to capture childhood joy and embrace the idea of a portable handheld pc. Wow!

Chad

These were a bit harsh but I can't say I disagree with the basic sentiments.

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The Valve one is just nonsense, and pretty much everyone on Reddit tore it to pieces.

The Steam Controller was never “poorly supported”. It’s still supported. All of that Steam Controller specific stuff got expanded into Steam’s universal customizable controller support. So the SC continues to get the benefit of that development without any of it needing to be SC-specific.

Steam Link? Niche product, but it did exactly what it said on the box, and did it well. Also still works. Now that most set-top boxes are powerful enough, the software simply spun off into apps, as there’s no longer a need for the hardware component.

The Vive? Perfectly good 1st-gen VR headset. Every bit as good as the Oculus CV1.

Valve Index? Left off the graphic entirely because it would ruin this bullsh*t narrative.

Steam Box is the only one on that list that deserves some scorn. Everything else in that graphic is nonsense.

And while we’re at it, the PSP was legit.

chooka1 wrote:

Do you think Steam will have an easy “copy all” sort of function over to the Deck?

Steam has a feature for backing up and restoring games on an external drive that can be used to copy games between devices. It’s not as nice as network copying games between Xbox’s for instance but it works and saves you from redownloading games if that’s your concern. I don’t remember if it copies save games tho or if it still relies on Steam cloud saves for that.

Put me in the camp of Deck
And Switches are not direct competitors in the sense they offer similar software experiences. If you want Nintendo then nothing better than a Switch. Complement one another.

The real problem with those graphics is the idea that something has to die in order to either be a success or be enjoyed at all or having anything of value. There's plenty of good ideas that have either failed or had enough of a modest success without becoming the king.

Perfect comparison: Everyone that tried to make a WoW killer instead died. There are plenty of MMO's out there that are still around that never sought to kill WoW but are still doing pretty swell.

On one hand, I understand being critical of products in order to counter the hyperbolic hype of drooling fan masses. At the same time, there's no need to be the Anti-Hype. It's not even about "just let people enjoy things", it's "stop being so intellectually dishonest by having the most extreme response possible".

The Steam Deck isn't killing anything. The Steam Deck stands a good chance of being abandoned by Valve. Doesn't prevent it from being a nifty product that has its market.

farley3k wrote:

These were a bit harsh but I can't say I disagree with the basic sentiments.

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The basic sentiment that one product needs to “kill” another to justify its viability?

Fanboy rubbish.

farley3k wrote:

These were a bit harsh but I can't say I disagree with the basic sentiments.

I can't help but roll my eyes when I see these kinds of graphics pop up here because no one on GWJ has said anything remotely similar to the Steam Deck being a Switch killer. Let's leave that kind of hyperbole on Twitter/Reddit/Resetera where it belongs.

Me daydreaming about the possible future…

I’ve been thinking about the kinds of untethered computing platforms that could be built on top of this thing because it is so open and easy to extend with peripherals or software.

Would be interesting to see a lower end VR headset (think like Oculus Quest) specifically designed to work with the Deck. It’s faster than the hardware in a Quest and those things are a really cool tether free VR experience. Headset doesn’t have to be from Valve because it’s an open platform.

The “deck” is just the lowest part of the platform that you build cool stuff on top of.

Of course my first thought was to use it as a shell for software development but that’s lame and obvious. What kinds of experiences could be built on top?

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merphle wrote:

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I don't think either of them run DOS.

pandasuit wrote:

I’m curious to see if Valve tries to push game config profiles out that optimize games for the Deck. In one of their videos on IGN they mentioned things can be tweaked as much as any other PC game but should run well by default. Thing is, PC games often run non-optimally on all hardware until tweaked. Made me think they might include something like Nvidia Geforce Experience’s settings optimizer. I know what I’m doing when I configure a PC game and I still don’t want to tweak things a ton on anything except eSports games. One of the selling points about a closed system like Switch is your games come preconfigured with good enough settings and the game dev has optimized the game for that specific hardware (usually).

Optimized profiles for games would be a godsend. I really liked my Steam Link but sometimes I felt like I spent more time tweaking profiles for games than playing the game itself. As console versions of games became more identical to their PC counterparts (except with gamepad support designed "out of the box") and more stuff got ported, I kind of stopped using my Steam Link in lieu of just buying the console specific versions of things.

The points about text size are something I didn't think of, and made me hesitate. There are so many games presumably *made* for Switch with terrible text sizing that they become borderline unplayable. So maybe not ideal for "reading evolved" type RPGs that I was envisioning. For games not even theoretically made for small screens, woof.

Still excited about it!

The handheld gaming PC thing has been around for a minute. I wonder how performance of the Deck will compare if you install your own OS, since that would make it pretty much identical to one of these other things, right?

Something like this:

(Of course, that thing was $900 for the lowest tier. But in general I wonder how clones will compare, or if Valve will be open to clones to try and reboot their Steam Box initiative.)

ccoates wrote:

The handheld gaming PC thing has been around for a minute. I wonder how performance of the Deck will compare if you install your own OS, since that would make it pretty much identical to one of these other things, right?

Something like this:

(Of course, that thing was $900 for the lowest tier. But in general I wonder how clones will compare, or if Valve will be open to clones to try and reboot their Steam Box initiative.)

There's been a bunch of more expensive and/or less powerful options come out over the last few years. ONEXPLAYER, AYA NEO, etc. ETA PRIME covers most of them on his YouTube channel. Most of them are running Windows AFAICT.

Valve implied they are completely open to others joining them in this space and using SteamOS 3 on their handhelds. Question came up during IGN interview. Not surprising at all TBH. Valve doesn't make hardware to make money off it. They make it to encourage others to build on top of Steam and sell more games.

I was surprised I couldn't find a copy of SteamOS 3 easily available online to try on my own hardware. The latest version of 2 I can find is from 2019.

Veloxi wrote:
merphle wrote:

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I don't think either of them run DOS.

Yeah but the Deck could pretty easily!

chooka1 wrote:

Put me in the camp of Deck
And Switches are not direct competitors in the sense they offer similar software experiences. If you want Nintendo then nothing better than a Switch. Complement one another.

Chad, this is the wrong thread for reasoned arguments.

I have zero interest in this. I spend too much time on PC games as it is. Whenever I'm out and away from my PC the last thing I want to do is carry it with me. Just my opinion.

I was initially tempted, but thankfully the preorder issues hit and I remembered that I have a brand new rtx laptop that weighs next to nothing, has far better specs, and tons more usability. I’m still tempted - mainly because I travel a lot for work and it might be nice for long flights - but I’m safely in the “wait-and-see” camp now.

Link to that laptop?

I'm still fairly excited about this device.

The negatives for me.

Battery life stated is okay. Not amazing. 2 - 8 hours.

SteamOs is an okay solution that they are really trying to shorten the port work from Windows to Linux. Wait and see on that.

Pros. Tons if true

The resume function if works well.

Controls look okay.

Indies games and maybe up to PS2 games.

Price. Other handheld Pcs are way more expensive than this with way worse support.

I'm going to be all over this when it drops to a dollar in a year. I'm going hook my steam link to it just to prove I'm nuts.

After hemming and hawing I've decided to join camp Wishlist. I'll add this to the list of consoles I'll reconsider buying when hardware is in stock and I can just roll up to the store with my fistful dollars, or the price drops to $4.99.

Candy colored Steam Decks?... Artist renders but wow.

I was able to get one for myself and my son got one for himself. I probably won't keep both since I had two in my cart and ended up with the 64 gig one since I thought that might arrive sooner. He also got the 64gig one.

SteamOS info

The video mentions lessons learned from Big Picture mode, to which I say: put this new UI back into Big Picture mode, dammit!

BPM needs updating so badly, and now they have a new controller-based UI that seems like it would be just as good at going from handheld to TV mode as the Switch's UI.

They also say in that video the new UI is built into the same Steam client we use everywhere so seems likely it will be available to use everywhere as well once released. It looks like a better interface for Steam Link streaming to phone/tablet than big picture does so hopefully they swap it in there as well. TBH it looked like an evolution of big picture. Maybe it completely replaces big picture.

*Legion* wrote:

The video mentions lessons learned from Big Picture mode, to which I say: put this new UI back into Big Picture mode, dammit!

BPM needs updating so badly, and now they have a new controller-based UI that seems like it would be just as good at going from handheld to TV mode as the Switch's UI.

A Valve employee answered on their forums "Yes, we are replacing Big Picture with the new UI from Deck. We don't have an ETA to share yet though."
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/bi...

pandasuit wrote:

A Valve employee answered on their forums "Yes, we are replacing Big Picture with the new UI from Deck.

YESSSS FINALLY

We don't have an ETA to share yet though.

NOOOOO VALVE TIME

ETA PRIME simulating what game load times might be like on Steam Deck using SD card and external M.2