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Valve Steam Deck

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#891

It's 1280 X 800 on the device, I wonder how it fares playing AAA titles at higher res on a TV or monitor. Have only given the specs a cursory look so far but seems the GPU is (understandably) significantly less powerful than, say, a laptop GPU from a few years back.

IGN claims it should have power similar to a PS4‐ which means it should do a good enough job on current games if IGN is correct.

Good point, PS4 is about 8 years old now and games still look pretty great.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#892
post #833
post #44

There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming. Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move. But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution. I guess the question becom…

This is my feeling. Money is no problem for me, but I'm not immune to purchasing stuff I don't end up using. So I'm cautious about that and I'm sitting here wondering about the value. Say, the $650 model. On one hand it would be nice to have my Steam games on a portable without having to double-purchase(a problem ATM with Switch, on top of the higher typical costs of those games on eShop). But I have the Switch and S…

I view this as more of a tinker device. They’ve stated you can install anything on it. I just know I haven’t regretting buying the steam link or controller, so I may give this a go.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#894
post #386

I'm going to buy this just to support Valve for their continued support in making Linux desktop a viable gaming platform. Their reasons may not be entirely altruistic, but there's no doubt that they had a tremendous impact on the Linux gaming ecosystem. And it's not just the Linux gamers that are benefiting from their work. They also seem to be doing good work on lower-level parts of the stack (e.g.: graphic drivers,…

I'm going to use it as a (mobile NUC with screen + battery) and use it for programming etc.. not going to buy it for gaming at all. Having an amd machine with 16Gb ram + nvme storage + linux - perfect setup for day to day coding! And will buy it as a thank you to Valve for supporting us all these years. I think this will pay off for them in the long run.

With a 7inch screen, 2 hours battery life when pushing it, and no keyboard (i.e. extra £££)? I think I'd prefer a mid-range laptop.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#895
post #663
post #606

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…

I highly recommend staying away from Arch and NixOS if you're not ready to commit upwards of 30% of your work and free time fixing and tweaking your box. I've tried both, Arch Linux will routinely hose your entire install if you don't carefully read the update notes every time (even if most of the time there is no call to action for you). Unless it has changed, this is still the expectation of users. NixOS promises s…

I have my home server/router running Arch, update maybe 5 times per year, only one time a non-critical service(redis) failed to start due to a default config option change. I originally meant to run Debian on that, but when I bought the hardware, it's pretty exotic for Debian's old kernel, and Arch ran great.

I also have a Pi2 running Arch ARM at my mom's house, doing one or two updates per year when I visit her, also failed only once, and that's because of a corrupted SD card.

I'd admit I'm usually a bit nervous typing pacman -Syu on those two, but it's doing surprisingly great.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#896

Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it. I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere l…

I appreciate what Valve is doing and I will vote with my money. I don't see myself as a "handheld gamer" but I am making a reservation today just to be able to play with that device a bit.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#897

This is my chance to finally play the 1000+ games I bought on steam but never touched. Curious to know how they map the buttons / pads / sticks to PC game inputs, or games have to manually provide input scheme for this system.

Steam input. If a game supports steam input, the developers can create a mapping for controllers that is automatically loaded for users using a controller. You're also free to modify these layouts in the comprehensive steam input UI provided. People can also share their mappings for a specific game which anyone can select in the community section for that game's steam input menu. Often times community mappings will be better than developer created mappings, and the community mappings have a rating system so you just search by highest rated or most downloads etc. The best part about steam input is that it makes enabling gyro support easy as, so long as the game supports simultaneous mouse and controller input at the same time (which Valve exclaims to developers in the steamworks documentation to make this possible).

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#899
post #781
post #606

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…

> Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs.

SteamOS was based on Debian directly, not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is just what they officially support for the desktop Steam client.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7" Display | AMD Zen 2 | 16GB Memory | microSD > Arch Linux > KDE Plasma > Will be able to install whatever they like Is that you smartphone? The one I've been waiting for?

It will fill the void that was left by the Nokia N900. Still miss that thing's slide out keyboard.. soft rubber buttons.

I remember it has plastic buttons, not soft rubber.
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