Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

I find it quite portable, i bring it with me when I'm going to have to wait at the doctor, hang out while my kid has an event and also when i visit family.
Battery life is fine to, i limit it to 40 fps and i regularly get 4 to 6 hours with low impact games, some even get up to the 7+ hour mark.
YMMV of course, but i think it's very usable as a fully portable device, i don't have any trouble finding room for it in a bag when i want it for an outing.

Welp. Now I'm wondering if I could stick it in my handbag...

At this point I'm a bit of the opinion if someone has doubts about whether they should get a Steam Deck, they probably shouldn't.

It's neat, a decent bang for the buck, and more polished than most 1st generation hardware releases. But it's still a 1st generation hardware release and a chunk of change no matter how you slice it. If that enthusiasm isn't there, or all the use-cases people have thrown out in this thread don't seem appealing, there's not really any harm in waiting until something about it sparks that desire.

I have a pretty high end Alienware gaming laptop that I used to use in the house all the time. My main use cases were gaming on the couch while my wife watched TV or playing in bed. The problem with the laptop was that I didn't really use it for games that I wanted to play with a controller. I didn't know if I'd use the Deck, but, I'm a nerd with a bit of extra cash so I bought one anyway.

Fast forward to today. I now pretty much only use the laptop for mouse specific games (4Xs and other strategy games mostly) or games that require a bigger screen or have small print (4xs and strategy games). The deck has me going back through my 2000 odd Steam (and Epic, and EA, and Ubi) games and actually playing them. It's so much more comfortable and convenient for the couch and bed.

I WFH and rarely have to leave home (I know, I'm a hermit) and I still use the deck all the time. YMMV but, I love the thing.

Eleima, the approximate size of the hard case for the Steam Deck, with the power cord tucked into the elastic strap on the outside, rounded *up*, is 33cm by 15.5cm by 9cm. So you can use those numbers to see if it fits your bag and know you have a little bit of wiggle room left over.

More learning the hard way about save games and Steam Deck:

I’ve been playing Max Payne 3 on Deck and it does not support Steam cloud saves. It was installed on the internal drive. I needed to make some room on the internal drive for something else so I moved Max Payne 3 to my SD card. I launched it after moving it and all my config and saves were not there. Frustrating.

After figuring out where that game stores it’s saves when run through Proton I realized that Steam had moved the saves and config to the SD card during the move but the game was still looking on the internal drive for that data for some reason. Copying it back to the internal drive worked.

I’m still not clear on why Steam would move that data but let the game look in the old location. I’m just happy I didn’t lose my progress and now I know what to look out for next time. I don’t think I’ve ever run into this issue moving Steam games around in Windows before but I might have always had Cloud sync saving me from noticing.

Finally bit the bullet and ordered a 1TB drive for my Deck.

I still have a 64GB Deck (new in box) that I need to sell. I think I might do a drive upgrade + Hall sensor stick upgrade on it and then sell it.

After a week with mine, I officially hate the bumpers... but since they can virtually always be mapped to the paddles, I also don't care.

Loving how easy the SteamOS software makes little adjustments like that.

I do love the versatility of the deck. Seems like many of you play portable. I thought I would too, but in practice so far (1 month in) it's more like a Steam console I'm hooking up to big tvs and playing with mouse and keyboard or multiple controllers depending on the situation.

How hard is it to migrate to a new SD Card? I'm thinking of upgrading the base version with a SSD, but I also have a spare 64GB SD Card lying around. I would use that to install smaller indie games with lower performance demands. If I upgrade to a 256GB/512GB SD Card in a few months, how much headache would that cause?

I bet that if after you format the new card in the deck you could use your computer to copy the files over.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

I bet that if after you format the new card in the deck you could use your computer to copy the files over.

What filesystem does the steam Deck use? Windows can natively mount EXT4 but not ZFS.

The microSD card uses ext4 with casefolding, so most likely that's what the system uses.

If I recall correctly what I did was format the new memory card internally (because of course Steam OS uses a Linux file system) and then I plugged the old card into the Steam Deck using a USB-C card reader in Desktop mode.

Then I just copied the files over from the old drive to the new drive in Desktop mode, rebooted and I think it was good.

I am constantly amazed at the usability of this device. Not just the physical form factor, but the UI, the OS and the apps that make all this gaming possible. This is a real breakthrough in UX.

What's most interesting to me about it is all the ways they built up to the product through previous work. Steam OS, the Steam controllers, Steam Link.

Some products emerge from intense R&D and a focus on developing a product as a singular vision. The Steam Deck feels unique in that a lot of what makes it what it is was seemingly developed slowly along the way as they have minor flops with products that were almost there. I'm glad they were able to turn those learnings into the Steam Deck.

I think it's likely one of those situations where even if any individual product was a bit of a flop, or even if every individual product is a bit of a flop, Valve knows that the value is less in the profitability of any given product and more in having an escape hatch if Microsoft suddenly pulls something sheisty on them.

Which in turn probably gives Microsoft pause if they ever getting to looking at the money Valve is making on their platform and thinking, "could we be getting a cut of that somehow?" knowing that if they DID do anything to make Valve too mad, Valve could conceivably take their ball and go home.

Robear wrote:

Eleima, the approximate size of the hard case for the Steam Deck, with the power cord tucked into the elastic strap on the outside, rounded *up*, is 33cm by 15.5cm by 9cm. So you can use those numbers to see if it fits your bag and know you have a little bit of wiggle room left over.

Thanks a bunch for that info! 33cm is long, I'm not sure that fits, actually... That's bigger than I pictured. I'll have to compare it to my Switch case!

Definitely bigger than Switch. Like someone else said, you won't want to pull it out on the Metro. Couple hour train trip? Sure. Hotel room? It's great for that. But not for everyday commuting, in my experience.

Also, I measured the absolute edges of the zipper and the elastic holder for the power unit, and then rounded up. You probably could go in by a quarter or half cm on the long measurements and be fine. But I wanted to be safe.

I received my Deck yesterday, and promptly installed Trombone Champ. The default control profile makes use of the gyro, which I'm not very good. Let me tell you that this took the hilarity of this game to the next level. I had to move where I was sitting as I was afraid I was going to drop the Deck from laughing so hard.

Right out of the box I am impressed and already happy. My quick observations from my first night:

  • Built in sound is much better than expected
  • Pairing my bluetooth headset was easy peasy
  • Official dock just worked as intended
  • The first few games I just copied from PC to USB drive, then from USB drive to SD card on the deck. Worked no different than copying games from 1 pc to another. I know there are different/better ways but I wanted to jump in quick
  • Remote Play streaming did not initially work until I found the tip to disable hardware encoding on the deck side. Then it just worked perfect. And the realization that any game I'll only play around the house (my main use case) I don't need to actually install. And I just use a cheap TP-Link Deco mesh system for my wifi.
  • The quickness of getting to the desktop in order to futz around is great. And it's so fantastic thinking about how many folks will be introduced to Linux through this device
  • I can already see how this will become my "backlog burner" as I skim through my library of games I've never played, and think about how cool they will be to casually try on the deck
  • I'm a tall dude with bigger hands and this thing fits perfect for me

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. I'm very much looking forward to farting around with this thing over the weekend.

So I've been playing hifi rush on the deck and while I love the game and it's great on the go, i did run into 1 major issue that's worth warning about.
The audio lag for bluetooth can be EXTREME depending... Well seems like luck of the draw based on your audio device.
On my lypertek tevis i had nearly a half second of audio lag which made the game unplayable.
I should note that once i switched to a wired pair of earbuds the timing was fine.
Not a huge deal most of the time, but if rhythm games are your thing and you only have wireless
audio, keep it in mind.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

So I've been playing hifi rush on the deck and while I love the game and it's great on the go, i did run into 1 major issue that's worth warning about.
The audio lag for bluetooth can be EXTREME depending... Well seems like luck of the draw based on your audio device.
On my lypertek tevis i had nearly a half second of audio lag which made the game unplayable.
I should note that once i switched to a wired pair of earbuds the timing was fine.
Not a huge deal most of the time, but if rhythm games are your thing and you only have wireless
audio, keep it in mind.

Unless you have specific low latency bluetooth devices it's always bad for gaming tho right?

Searching online I see people claiming that the Deck does support APT-X LL (low latency codec) but it isn't used as the default and can't bet set as the default in gaming mode (only desktop). If they change this and you have an APT-X LL headset you should get much better latency. If you want to try it go to desktop mode. It's in sound options (drop down next to the audio device IIRC).

I've been use a wireless PC headset (not BT) with the Deck since I don't have any low latency bluetooth headsets.

Something nice about bluetooth on Deck is you can connect something like a phone to the Deck with bluetooth to send audio into the Deck from the phone. I use this to stream music to the Deck while I game or have YouTube/whatever running on the phone and mix it in. I always use headphones at home, especially when I'm not in my office, to avoid annoying everyone else and this lets me continue to be a dirty multi-tasker while on Deck.

I’ve been using a Skull & Co USB-C dock with my Deck. I originally bought it for my Switch. I like how the guts of the dock (they call it a core drive) slides out and can be used as a USB C hub for basically any device.

This week they emailed me saying they are releasing a Deck specific dock that both my current core drive and a new core drive pro can plug into.

I like the previous one and I have a second place I’d like to be able to dock my Deck so I’ve pre-ordered the new dock and a core drive pro. It’s a lot less expensive than the official dock but it also doesn’t come with a USB charger. I have enough of those already tho. If you are fine with the features of the basic core drive that is really inexpensive.

I’m going to see if I can get an esports game to run smoothly at 240fps on the Deck now that I’ll have a way to output at 240hz to a display.

I just placed my order! In the end I went for the 256GB version, as the price for an SSD that size is much higher here than in the US. My usual go-to stores don't even have options for the usual brands. So the 10/20EUR I could save by installing my own SSD doesn't really make much sense. I also got a 512GB SD card.

Main purpose is to play some indie games while on the couch, the occasional AAA game can be installed on the SSD the rest on the SD card.

But for now we play the waiting game... 1-2 weeks Steam says!

FWIW, I've been installing everything, including AAA games, on my SD card and it's been fine, just like folks here on the thread said. I haven't gotten to the point where my 64GB of internal storage is maxed with shader cache so maybe in a couple more weeks or months I'll decide it's worth the hassle to pop it open and throw in an SSD, but at least as of right now a couple weeks in, 64GB internal + 512GB SD card has been treating me just fine.

I definitely do have to be choosy about which 3 or 4 AAA games I can have installed on the SD card at any given time, but that's the same size as my dedicated Steam drive on my desktop PC so I've been living that life for a while now.

I jumped through the hoops over the weekend to get EmuDeck installed and load up some retro games. I'm sure it's preferable to installing and configuring each emulator program individually, but I found it... not quite as easy and streamlined as I'd been led to believe. Navigating desktop mode with the trackpad to handle installation and copy over ROMs and BIOS files kinda sucked, and each emulator program has a different UI and hotkeys and weird quirks to get used to, I was hoping for something a little more unified. Definitely for tinkerers, not for someone who wants something that "just works."

On the other hand, loading up Burnout 3 for PS2 at a rock-solid 60fps at 2x upscale is kind of a dream come true. A handheld PS2 has kind of been my holy grail for a while now.

On the OTHER other hand, a lot of those old games are available on Steam (or have a functionally equivalent sequel or spinoff available on Steam) anyway. "I should finally play Final Fantasy X-2! Oh, wait, why wouldn't I just play the Steam version that I've had in my library forever?" "Ooh, Spider-Man 2, I loved this game on GameCube! ...Wait, Sony's Spider-Man is on a weekend sale on Steam, why am I looking at these old busted graphics when that one's marked Deck Verified?"

I haven’t found load times on SD card slowing me down. The thing slowing me down is all the videos and other crap games often have at boot that they make you wait through and can’t skip. Now I’m in the habit of finding out ways to skip as much of the stuff as possible even if it means messing with game files to do it. On desktop a small delay to get into a game is no big deal because I’m usually in for a longer session when at my desk. When I’m on my Deck I’m often just trying to fit some gaming in a short session so that kind of wait is annoying. Most games I look up have some trick for skipping some of the boot up time.

I’ve been playing (or replaying) some slightly older games on Deck. Unfortunately this has reminded me that quick time events used to be common in games.

I typically stick to one game at a time, and I'm LOVING the ability to just sleep the device and come back to it and pick up right where I left off, without having to sit through all those obnoxious unskippable swoopy logos for the developer and the publisher and the licensor and the other developer that made the multiplayer mode that I never played before the servers got shut down five years ago etc etc etc ad infinitum.

hbi2k wrote:

I typically stick to one game at a time, and I'm LOVING the ability to just sleep the device and come back to it and pick up right where I left off, without having to sit through all those obnoxious unskippable swoopy logos for the developer and the publisher and the licensor and the other developer that made the multiplayer mode that I never played before the servers got shut down five years ago etc etc etc ad infinitum.

How much does it drain the battery to sleep with a game running? Like, can you let it sleep for a couple days or will it run dry? I'm currently paying a game that takes about five minutes to get to the main menu so I'm tempted to do that.

It should be possible for most games deck games to delete the intro videos or replace them with blank files of the same name via desktop mode. I make a habit of this for games with annoyingly long intros and i see no reason it wouldn't work on the deck.
Edit: this won't always work but it usually does in my experience.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

It should be possible for most games deck games to delete the intro videos or replace them with blank files of the same name via desktop mode. I make a habit of this for games with annoyingly long intros and i see no reason it wouldn't work on the deck.
Edit: this won't always work but it usually does in my experience.

In this case it's not the intro videos. It's an unskippable "cinematic" (in quotes because it's a Lego game so there's nothing cinematic about it).