841–850 of 1001 posts
“Installing Linux is hard” is about to flip on its head as people find themselves with Linux installed by default and instead having to figure out how to install Windows (and pay for it explicitly).
Arch no less
I'm a little disappointed that Valve is focused on Proton only. This can also play native Linux games. A well written native game should perform better, and, more importantly, get better battery life. Maybe Valve is going about this the right way. Focus on Proton now, and if it takes off, game devs will make the effort to do a native port.
Proton is the answer to the chicken-and-egg problem of linux gaming. No one will make games for it because no one games on Linux because no one will make games for it. With Proton and this, they’re trying to bootstrap a Linux gaming community. From there, native ports will happen when the community is large enough to be worth optimizing for.
Does it run the Epic store?
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…
Funny you say that! Arch images now ship with an official installer as of a couple of months ago - which is comparable to the Ubuntu or Fedora installers in ease-of-use.
I can see these being stacked like bricks to make a house when valve has to stop supporting them because it's too expensive. There's a reason an iphone or switch has a sizeable profit margin - you pay that back in RMA, returns, and general support.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m super excited to see that they’ve chosen Arch as a base for SteamOS. I understand fully why they originally chose Ubuntu, but I feel like Arch actually hits a lot of sweet spots for consumer use cases and could be adapted for such use quite effectively. (To be fair, I feel similarly about Gentoo, which was similarly adapted for ChromeOS quite successfully.)
I love a good distro story but it doesn’t seem very relevant here. A Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Arch or Gentoo provides a platform for users to configure their system. The distro is a toolkit for finishing up a generic OS into the specific workstation needed by the user to do their work. Steam Deck on the other hand has one job to do: launch /opt/steam and run things linked against libsteam. The end user won’t b…
I also wonder if this device will lead to more games targeting Linux as a first class platform.
The resolution, the weight, the battery life and potentially the cooling are all sub-par. There's also the fact that this can't compete with the Switch due to the simple fact that games are optimized to run at a stable framerate by the developers or subcontracted companies for the Switch, while this will just run games from Steam at a low-res and hope for the best.
Even some first party Nintendo games can't be relied on to run at a stable framerate so I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Link's Awakening has some nasty and inconsistent stutter issues, Breath of the Wild runs better than on the Wii U but it still has its moments. Then you have games like Hyrule Warriors where it just feels actively bad. Lots of Switch Games actually run a lot better under even a very mi…
I've definitely had issues with 1st party titles, but after going into the settings and forcing 720p, some did go away. At the end of the day I mostly play my Switch in docked mode with an mClassic, so the forced 720p doesn't typically detract from the experience.
However, many 3rd party titles on the Switch are just actively bad ports. Omensight, for example, which is an otherwise good game has the most atrocious port I've ever seen on a console. I would agree with you that the thread parent is off-the-mark in saying that Valve will do worse here -- PC settings are notoriously better than what you get from traditional consoles since you can actively choose to optimize them to your environment, instead of hoping some developer took the time to even try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. Canonical doesn't have any reason to be friendly towards the specific features Valve needs to make SteamOS a thing, and Valve probably doesn't want to maintain their own fork of the entire Ubuntu distro. Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. It's the perfect base to apply your own packages on top of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There was a learning curve though and games needed to support its weird style of giving inputs.