Valve Steam Deck • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#61

Post by have_faith » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

justinsaccount wrote: post #47

have_faith wrote: post #7

> Deck What an uninspiring name! (with unfortunate mispronunciations). Looks very interesting though, price point (starting at £349) seems very competitive.

The closest competitor to this is called the switch. Other competing products are called a station and a box.

Steam Deck just doesn't seem to roll off the tongue, maybe it will grow on me.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#62

Post by NegativeLatency » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

Is this going to be locked down? Can I use a web browser or install my own Linux apps?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#63

Post by systemvoltage » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

The best part is that you don't need to buy games if you already have a Steam library full of games.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#64

Post by everyone » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

So, I guess its plays only games from Steam? I'm curious, does every game on Steam run on SteamOS? cus SteamOS is Linux.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#65

Post by duxup » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

The size of that thing looks like half a laptop... I'm wondering about how comfortable that beast is?

I would love to see more competition in portable land, but it will take a lot to pull me away from the Nintendo Switch.

I'm also wary as Valve hardware has had an up and down history.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#66

Post by ukd1 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #48

caslon wrote: post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

USB 2 on a mobile device might be for limiting power consumption?

USB 3/C has really fine grain power control - using "PD" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#USB_Power_Deliver...), it's possible to negotiate the rates pretty finely - so I don't think it's that.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#67

Post by deeviant » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

I really wonder what the point of this is. Mobile gaming is a meme at this point. It's a thing but phones and tables have it well catered too. We don't need another mobile gaming thing that will surely be in the bargain bin in as couple years.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#68

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

mikl wrote: post #17

Typo in the title. It’s “Steam Deck”, not “Steam Desk”. Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?

Honestly I'd much rather have Hardware Innovation and Linux Gaming Enthusiast Valve than Made Yet Another AAA Shooter Valve.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#69

Post by petepete » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

vbernat wrote: post #35

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech > Operating System: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based) > Desktop: KDE Plasma This is sure to excite the Linux community.

And they switched from Debian to Arch. Can't say I don't understand them, but I would have thought there would have been better bases than a rolling distribution (Gentoo, NixOS, Fedora).

They'll surely host their own repository rather than use Arch's directly. There's no reason to question stability when they're in control of both ends, and Arch is light with excellent tooling.

It's a good fit.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#70

Post by mrpippy » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

CPU: AMD APU Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)

GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)

RAM: 16GB LPDDR5

Display: 7", 1280x800, 60Hz

OS: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based), KDE Plasma desktop

Storage: Onboard 64GB eMMC/256GB NVMe/512GB NVMe, microSD slot