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Valve Steam Deck

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951–960 of 1001 posts

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#951

This is neat, but I really would like to see Valve putting a tiny fraction of what must be a monstrous private cash pile into some new content that can run on these devices (and my old-school desktop). I feel like I am in the middle of a desert of gaming content right now... I can see the mirage of BF2042 and AOE4 on the horizon, but who knows how that is going to play out once we get there. Maybe Netflix (with the r…

I'd imagine that Valve is counting on others to fill that software void, as they frequently have in the past. Frankly? I can't blame them. Proton has gotten to the point where most Windows games "just work" on Linux the same day they release for PC. Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 5 all ran on Linux within a week of their release, and I'd imagine that compatibility will only get better as time goes on.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#952

I might be the target audience for this. I have a steam account for years but I barely touch it. I don't feel like building a PC, and games for MacOS were limited last time I checked. I've been happy playing my Switch and PS4. My first thought when I saw this was that it better be able to connect to an external screen, and it does! An added bonus would be if I could hook up external controllers to it as well. I've he…

I'm not here to dish out undue praise, but Proton really is incredible. Unless a game has intrusive anti-cheat or DRM, you can expect most Windows titles to "just work" these on Linux these days. Valve has put a tremendous amount of work into this project, it's almost hard to describe.

It’s really long-term planning. Valve gets shut for not following through on game projects these days, but building Proton and preparing Linux for gaming will yield 10x to 1000x the returns on making a game…

Let’s not forget they were the single most important player in the whole VR Revolution. Oculus took the huge improvements that were made inside valve in VR and took the team to FB. But pretty much all the major breakthroughs were done at Valve, not oculus.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#953
post #263

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'm fairly certain SteamOS was based on Debian, not Ubuntu.

SteamOS was indeed based on Debian, and Ubuntu was the officially supported distro of the Steam desktop client, and now the new SteamOS is apparently Arch based. Distro-hoppin' like a Boss! ;)

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#954
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.

I recently bought a M1 MacMini for dev and general desktop use. This new device means I may finally be able to sell my bulky "gaming pc". Can play on tv with the dock, in hands or as you mentioned could dock it on my desk, use my existing kb/mouse!

I enjoyed using SteamLink app on my AppleTV so this also replaces it! Am guessing when in dock, we will be able to use bluetooth controller which Steam already supports.

Can’t wait to sell my big ass pc case. I’m disillusioned with that ecosystem, such a circle jerk. I bought a high quality power supply only to find out the cables are so thick, it was not possible to bend them and fit inside NZXT case. So... I ended up buying "gamer" braided, colored psu cables... conveniently sold by the same maker of PSU. Well of course, pc building nowadays is just a massive scam, circlejerk between parts makers who send pieces for reviews, reviewers which almost always glowingly rate the hardware, and "pc gaming masterrace" whose ego is too thick to notice what a con this has become.

Frankly it’s to a point where I want to applaud Apple’s new iMac for selling an actual usable computer, thin, light, all in one. Can you even build a NORMAL computer nowadays without all the "gamer" crap?

Even my Asus mobo pisses me off. It replaces the windows booting logo with their shitty gamer logo, and tweaking bios did not help.

I can’t wait to sell my pc case. It looks nice, but it’s also really heavy, bulky and Windows takes far too much of personal time just to get it to run like you want it to. The future is this (portable, dockable) and what Apple has done with the new iMacs ( almost a new class of portable desktop form pc )... and it doesn’t matter if we will replace the entire computer every few years, just as it doesn’t matter with this iPad i’m using, since all our purchases are linked to an account, and transfering data and apps is fairly easy nowadays.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#955

How is this going to be able to play AAA games? It's going to need to emulate x86, as well as add the WINE layer for compatibility. I can't imagine this being able to keep up.

It IS x86.

I see my confusion. It says "AMD Zen 2", and when I didn't recognize the name of that CPU, I assumed it was just another ARM variation.

In fact, Zen 2 is not the name of a CPU at all, but the name of a technology family of CPUs that are, as you pointed out, x86.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#956
post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we'll see other cloud gaming platforms make their services available through it.

It's just a PC. You can install whatever you like on it. Consider `geforce now` has a web version of it. It is already possible today?

I'm sure Stadia will probably run just fine on it, too. That only requires a Chrome/Chromium web browser.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#957
post #529
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…

As a Mac user, I'm very interested as well. I don't play any games nowadays because I cant justify spending all that money for a latest generation PC, let alone the space it takes. If I can have a dockable PC that can churn decent frame rates, It's just a matter of switching the input on my monitor and switching the bluetooth mouse/keyboard to it. For me, the fact it's portable is just icing on the cake to be honest.…

Exactly. But I fear that 1280x800 won’t look great upscaled on my 1440p.

That said for playing 2d or lighter indie games it will probably run fine at native 1440p... assuming with external display that you can use native res.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#959
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…

Fun fact: the "learning curve" was initially meant as having time on the x-axis and knowledge on the y-axis. Thus your expression "an absolute wall" would mean that you immediately grasp everything there is to know. But since the meaning since has unintentionally shifted and the original meaning is universally ignored, we all understand you.

I think the thrust of sayings like "the learning curve is a wall" is to indicate that there is little to no slope, which is to say you don't get the benefit of time spent learning easier parts step by step until you know a lot of the system and can handle the more difficult aspects of it. Instead it feels like you either know how it all works or nothing about how it works, and it's hard to figure out how to start and get a foothold, so to speak.
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