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Valve Steam Deck

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#611

Post by awill »

dralley wrote: post #118
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…

>They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. I'm a little surprised they didn't go with something like Fedora. The kernel / drivers are kept just as up-to-date as Arch but the rest of the system is a little more stable.

I don't think either of those points are correct.

1. Fedora is not a rolling release, so you don't get every single kernel point release like you do in Arch.

2. Steam does not want to do a full Fedora 30 to 31 upgrade every six months. They want to roll. It's a better model, especially when kernel/drivers are improving gaming quickly.

3. Arch has a stable base and gets small updates every day. Regular software services tell us this is a better model than infrequent large updates. Things like RHEL are the exception, but take years of QA, and leave you with old drivers in between releases.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#612

Post by nullgeo »

I am excited about this because it finally seems like there will be one more worthy competitor in the portable gaming arena. I was getting really tired of Nintendo's majority market share, with no one to compete against them they have been reigning free with their ridiculous "no sale on 4 year old games" policy.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#613

Post by Crespyl »

lostmsu wrote: post #572
caconym_ wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about Valve's record with hardware is that the products aren't bad , just extremely niche. If this thing really can play most of most people's Steam games in a Switch-like form factor with a standard gamepad layout, I think it stands to be a hit in a way their past hardware attempts weren't. It's also an interesting counterpoint to all the streaming services popping up these days. PC game streaming to mobil…

One of the major reasons people play PC games is mouse and keyboard are way better than joystick. I don't see myself playing PC games on a handheld.

Valve has experience already with making m+kb games playable via a trackpad on the Steam Controller, so I'm confident that the trackpads on the Deck will be good enough for a decent chunk of games (though I'm not about to try Dota 2 on the thing).

Not every game will be a perfect fit, certainly, but I've had a great time with my Steam Controller playing things like XCOM, Prey (2017), and Divinity Original Sin. IIRC Civilization 5 was explicitly a part of the advertising for the controller in the first place, as a way to play mouse-heavy games from the couch.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#614

Post by 5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV »

JeremyNT wrote: post #291
css wrote: post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

This is an amazing bit of kit for the price, and it's just a normal PC running Arch Linux! I hardly ever even play video games these days, but I'm absolutely buying one of these just to have a nice little portable PC.

Yeah I can imagine this being super nice to have even just lying around at home to connect to as a remote development environment or better: Plug it into the TV like a switch and have a powerful PC that fits behind the TV. At least for me it's super convenient since I wanted to play old games on emulator anyways (but not on a underspecces raspberry)

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#615

Post by Bancakes »

FinalBriefing wrote: post #294
Bancakes wrote: post #121

Wow that's as powerful as a base model PS4.

Yea, that's a great base to aim for. Lots of great games will look respectable with those specs. I'd have loved a full 1080p screen, but at least its larger than the Switch's 720p.

It's far below the average Steam hardware survey system.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#616

Post by christophilus »

l0b0 wrote: post #606
css wrote: post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date. Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty…

I share your feelings about Arch, but I'm still running Fedora mostly out of laziness.

Still, I think Arch is an interesting choice for a console. I'd think you'd want stability (in the sense of very controlled changes / not requiring updates every day).

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#617

Post by mywittyname »

dm319 wrote: post #571
danso wrote: post #300

IGN has a detailed hands-on which really boosted my interest: https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-hands-on-impressions... The joystick layout looks funky to me, but apparently it works? > However, as soon as I held it myself, the layout felt completely natural: the intuitive hand orientation when you grab the Steam Deck is more straight up and down, like holding the sides of a steering wheel, whereas with a contr…

I wondered why they didn't go for the same style as their Steam controllers with the concave pads.

I don't know about anyone else, but I hated the Steam controller. So I can understand why they didn't continue with that design.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#618

Post by mr_sturd »

l0b0 wrote: post #606
css wrote: post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date. Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty…

Manjaro Linux provides a nice, easy installer for Arch. With different editions based on your preferred DE.

https://manjaro.org/download/

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#619

Post by jreese »

sudosysgen wrote: post #587
amethyst wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Almost certainly has to do with cost and PCI-E bandwidth. Mobile chips like this only have so much bandwidth, and USB3 requires more dedicated bandwidth than USB2, not to mention more complicated circuitry that drives up price. And when your expected use case is attaching keyboards and mice, which generally are USB2 only anyways, it reduces the cost…

It's not really a mobile chip, it's a full laptop-grade Zen 2 processor.

PCIE lanes are still a function of both the CPU and the motherboard chipset. It's cheaper to build a board with fewer PCIE lanes, and cheaper to have fewer components that need said PCIE lanes.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#620

Post by everyone »

schmorptron wrote: post #520
everyone wrote: post #64

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

Nope, you can also install any other linux app / game on it. Or even an entirely different OS. SteamOS is arch based, so you can probably just pacman install whatever you please.

Is it actually a PC? Could I just put windows on it? Also as per installing any other linux stuff, Can u plug a keyboard into it so u can type in terminal? Otherwise how would u install stuff?
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