Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

I reserved a 256GB model 4:07 after they opened and I got my email today. They're probably up to 4:30 in total and have been moving at about 20 minutes per batch for the last couple weeks. 64GB are at about 5:50 and 512GB models are still under an hour after reservations opened. I've very glad I decided to go with the 256 instead of the 512.

Yeah, I decided to hold off until there were some hands on impressions, because I was hoping for another Steam Link, but afraid it'd be another Steam Controller. So I didn't put in a preorder until Feb 8.

I'm going to be waiting a while.

Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

You're a couple weeks head of me

Chaz wrote:

Yeah, I decided to hold off until there were some hands on impressions, because I was hoping for another Steam Link, but afraid it'd be another Steam Controller.

It is another Steam Controller, with a portable PC shoved inside. Except someone said, "hey, if we make a Steam Controller where we don't take away the right thumbstick, and make it work as a normal dual-stick gamepad first and foremost, people won't hate it!"

Biggest mistake the SC made was having only one thumbstick. Instead of touchpads being a "use these when they make sense" feature like on the Deck, they were the only way to use the thing. The Deck shows just how little the Steam Controller needed to be changed to be good.

I reserved mine in August and I suspect we will see previews for the next hardware iteration before I'll get the invite to actually buy.

Because I’m me the first game I played on my Deck was Rocket League. It hits 120fps smoothly in my initial testing. I want to test how well it works docked and connected to a high refresh monitor/TV.

Edit: Installed and played a few of my Steam games. Ones I actually want to play handheld away from my PC. So far nearly everything played well at 60fps. I'm not trying to play AAA games here so I'm not bumping into performance limits.

Got Heroic (Epic/GoG) and Xbox Cloud Gaming beta working.

Trying to figure out the best way to get Heroic games added individually to Steam so I can customize controls and performance per game. What has worked best for others here?

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

I reserved a 256GB model 4:07 after they opened and I got my email today. They're probably up to 4:30 in total and have been moving at about 20 minutes per batch for the last couple weeks. 64GB are at about 5:50 and 512GB models are still under an hour after reservations opened. I've very glad I decided to go with the 256 instead of the 512.

I got an email yesterday for buying a 512 reservation (made around 1:55pm ET on the day reservations opened), so I guess we're getting there!

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Lucky for me the 256 emails moved at least 2 minutes today so I finally got mine. Hurray.

Ditto, placed my order last night, looking forward to it!

Rezzy wrote:

I reserved mine in August and I suspect we will see previews for the next hardware iteration before I'll get the invite to actually buy.

If that's the case, I'll need to figure out if I should just do the preorder rush thing and wait for v2.

Tyrian wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

I reserved a 256GB model 4:07 after they opened and I got my email today. They're probably up to 4:30 in total and have been moving at about 20 minutes per batch for the last couple weeks. 64GB are at about 5:50 and 512GB models are still under an hour after reservations opened. I've very glad I decided to go with the 256 instead of the 512.

I got an email yesterday for buying a 512 reservation (made around 1:55pm ET on the day reservations opened), so I guess we're getting there!

It looks like the majority of emails go out on Mondays. My reservation time was 10:59PST (1:59 EST) so I hope mine will be sent out next Monday. Fingers crossed.

kazar wrote:
Tyrian wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

I reserved a 256GB model 4:07 after they opened and I got my email today. They're probably up to 4:30 in total and have been moving at about 20 minutes per batch for the last couple weeks. 64GB are at about 5:50 and 512GB models are still under an hour after reservations opened. I've very glad I decided to go with the 256 instead of the 512.

I got an email yesterday for buying a 512 reservation (made around 1:55pm ET on the day reservations opened), so I guess we're getting there!

It looks like the majority of emails go out on Mondays. My reservation time was 10:59PST (1:59 EST) so I hope mine will be sent out next Monday. Fingers crossed.

They go out Monday and Thursday in fairly even batches. After yesterday, the 512 emails are up to ~1:58, so you'll get it on Thursday.

The calculator thinks I'll get my 512GB email on July 11, based on a reservation time of 3:11PM ET. So much waiting...

merphle wrote:

The calculator thinks I'll get my 512GB email on July 11, based on a reservation time of 3:11PM ET. So much waiting...

Is the time the date of res the date issued on the email?

Balthezor wrote:
merphle wrote:

The calculator thinks I'll get my 512GB email on July 11, based on a reservation time of 3:11PM ET. So much waiting...

Is the time the date of res the date issued on the email?

I used the epoch timestamp from the Steam API page, following the directions on the calculator.

I ordered mine like 5 days after the opening, so they'll probably be on to rev2 before my lot comes up.

pandasuit wrote:

Trying to figure out the best way to get Heroic games added individually to Steam so I can customize controls and performance per game. What has worked best for others here?

This is the method I'm currently using to add Heroic (Epic and GoG) games individually to Steam:
https://github.com/redromnon/HeroicBashLauncher/wiki/Steam-Deck-(Flatpak)-Guide

Not sure if there is a better way yet but this is working so far.

pandasuit wrote:

This is the method I'm currently using to add Heroic (Epic and GoG) games individually to Steam:
https://github.com/redromnon/HeroicBashLauncher/wiki/Steam-Deck-(Flatpak)-Guide

Not sure if there is a better way yet but this is working so far.

I've used that too - it's a little janky but it works great once you figure it out.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
kazar wrote:
Tyrian wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
Chaz wrote:

I finally plugged my info into the calculator. It's estimating I'll get to order on Feb 6, 2023. Welp.

I reserved a 256GB model 4:07 after they opened and I got my email today. They're probably up to 4:30 in total and have been moving at about 20 minutes per batch for the last couple weeks. 64GB are at about 5:50 and 512GB models are still under an hour after reservations opened. I've very glad I decided to go with the 256 instead of the 512.

I got an email yesterday for buying a 512 reservation (made around 1:55pm ET on the day reservations opened), so I guess we're getting there!

It looks like the majority of emails go out on Mondays. My reservation time was 10:59PST (1:59 EST) so I hope mine will be sent out next Monday. Fingers crossed.

They go out Monday and Thursday in fairly even batches. After yesterday, the 512 emails are up to ~1:58, so you'll get it on Thursday.

As you predicted so it came to be.

Podunk wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

This is the method I'm currently using to add Heroic (Epic and GoG) games individually to Steam:
https://github.com/redromnon/HeroicBashLauncher/wiki/Steam-Deck-(Flatpak)-Guide

Not sure if there is a better way yet but this is working so far.

I've used that too - it's a little janky but it works great once you figure it out.

This approach has been working for me for Epic games that depend on Epic store integration to work. For instance my epic copy of Hades needs this integration or it doesn’t sync save state properly.

For at least one Deck compatible GoG game I like to play, launching this way does not work at all. The game crashes regardless of the compatibility layer I tell it to use in Epic. If I add that game separately to Steam by pointing Steam directly at its exe instead of this heroic bash launcher then it runs fine. Why? Seems the Steam compatibility stuff works better than the heroic launcher compatibility stuff in some cases even when both claim to be using the same proton version.

So YMMV but launching games from heroic bash launcher seems to be a good way to go in general and supports epic integrations. Launching exe directly from Steam without heroic works fine for games that don’t need any epic integration. I’m not sure I have any games in GoG that rely on the GoG parts of heroic after install so I can’t say what happens there.

Finally got my Steam deck a few days ago and found some time to tinker with it.

I’ve gotten the following to work:
- Steam Deck playing games installed on it (from Steam library)
- Xcloud (streaming from Xbox servers)
- PS5 remote play (streaming from my own local PS5)
- Xbox remote play (streaming from my own local series X)

Overall, it’s working great and really enjoy it. Getting all that streaming set up took a while and is not all officially supported yet. The only mostly-supported option is Xcloud, which I was very unimpressed with. It was laggy, audio was stuttery, video dropped resolution very frequently, and it took forever to load (like minutes long wait). Meanwhile, the local remote plays were a pita to setup (unofficial programs to install) but work beautifully.

Still need to finish trying out Moonlight (streaming from my own local PC), install games from unsupported store fronts (GoG, Epic, Windows Store).

Sasu wrote:

Xbox remote play (streaming from my own local series X)

Which method is working for you? I very much want this working on my Deck eventually.

I’m using the beta3 version from this thread: https://reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comme...

It took a little tinkering. Especially because I’m a complete novice at Linux and the most basic things took some research. But now I’ve got it loaded so it has a link in game mode (no need for desktop mode) and is working great.

God I wish they didn't use FedEx. Got a notification this morning that my delivery was moved up to today. It left the Chicago area at 7 am. That's about 7 hours away. As I expected, it didn't get to the Twin Cities until 12 hours later and now my delivery date is pending. If I hadn't had another FedEx delivery do exactly the same thing earlier this week, I would have been really disappointed.

Haha, almost the same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago. Google Maps said it was a little less than a 6 hour drive from the departure city near Chicago to my home near St Paul. It took 6 days. Wtf.

Hope you get your deck soon!

LeapingGnome wrote:

I ordered mine like 5 days after the opening, so they'll probably be on to rev2 before my lot comes up.

I ordered when the reviews started popping up this year. Steam said I would get it after October 1st. While technically true that seems a bit misleading judging by where it appears they are on the pre-order queue at this point.

EvilDead wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I ordered mine like 5 days after the opening, so they'll probably be on to rev2 before my lot comes up.

I ordered when the reviews started popping up this year. Steam said I would get it after October 1st. While technically true that seems a bit misleading judging by where it appears they are on the pre-order queue at this point.

Pretty much me as well. October 1 2023 sounds more realistic

Sasu wrote:

I’m using the beta3 version from this thread: https://reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comme...

It took a little tinkering. Especially because I’m a complete novice at Linux and the most basic things took some research. But now I’ve got it loaded so it has a link in game mode (no need for desktop mode) and is working great.

The kinda lame but still workable way I have this now is I use Moonlight to launch the Xbox app on my desktop PC and from there I connect to my Xbox Series X.

It’s two levels of streaming but the PC and Xbox are both connected to the same Ethernet switch. I’m not trying to play any input latency sensitive games over streaming so it’s been mostly playable. Still, I want direct streaming from Xbox to Deck eventually so I might try the one you posted.

Right now the more annoying part of it is having to log into my PC before I can connect to the Xbox as Moonlight doesn’t support logging into Windows. I might try to get this working through Steams game streaming and see if that is nicer.

If you try Moonlight make sure you install the 4+ version not the 2.0 version. The older version was not working for me and kept dropping connections. The new version has been great.

When the game I want to play has a PC Game Pass version I’ve just been streaming it directly from the PC to Deck using Moonlight. Really happy so far with how low latency Moonlight feels on the Deck. For the most part I add games directly to Geforce Experience as a shortcut to make launching single games work. Most of those games are designed for a TV but are quite usable on a small screen as well. There are exceptions of course.

Streaming games like Doom from PC plays better than trying to run them directly on Deck and doesn’t use space on the Deck’s storage.

"pandasuit wrote:

I want direct streaming from Xbox to Deck eventually.

The method I linked does exactly that. You need to install it in Desktop Mode, then if you want a direct load in Game Mode, you have to install an appimage launcher. That second step hung me up for a while. But it’s working flawlessly ever since. I tried Dicey Dungeons several times and plays perfectly. I also tried Hollow Knight and there’s just enough latency to make that uncomfortable.

Just working through some emulation setup today

Anyone have a charger that plugs into a car 12v lighter port they’d recommend for using the steam deck as a passenger in a car? I see higher watt ones exist these days. I guess the other option is I use a power inverted and a regular wall power charger. There’s a REXING JETSPEED Black 78W car charger on Amazon.

As an Apple mobile device household we have nearly no USBC chargers and the ones we have are low watt ones that barely charge the deck even without a game running. I’m gonna look for one soon that can charge the deck while playing. 45+ watt ones are a little more pricey and I don’t know most of these brands. Which do you recommend? Is Anker any good these days?