4 ms·

I bought Steam games and a Steam Deck just to support Valve... and I'm not really a gamer. However, the Deck has turned out to be a pretty good computing device

by cowmix 4y ago

I bought Steam games and a Steam Deck just to support Valve... and I'm not really a gamer. However, the Deck has turned out to be a pretty good computing device.

yellow_lead 4y ago
I was thinking of doing this - how do you like it? How's coding on it?
- cowmix 4y ago
  I keep it docked (mostly) and it works great. My ONLY beef is that the AMD drivers do not work 100% with Blender so you don't get the accelerated Cycles rendering. Otherwise, it is great.
  - slavik81 4y ago
    That's interesting. I'm no expert on the Steam Deck, but I would have expected it to work. Do you have any more details about the problem?
    - cowmix 4y ago
      Valve is using the 'wrong' AMD gpu driver.
      - slavik81 4y ago
        That's not enough information for me to understand what's wrong, but I suppose maybe I should find a Steam Deck and try things out myself. If you want to follow up privately, my email is in my profile.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        I believe they're misrepresenting the issue. Blender's Flatpak is possibly broken, but I'd imagine the Steam Runtime version works without-flaw.
        freedomben 4y ago
        AMD does have two different drivers (which I find maddening). I bought a monstrous GPU to use for hashcat, but the open source/built-in drivers don't support the openCL that hashcat (and crypto mining) need. The Pro driver doesn't get updated fast enough to work on Fedora, which is also a travesty for me. I really wish that weren't the case. I can't speak for steam deck though, just my experience on a self build.
        versteegen 4y ago
        Have you heard about just-released Mesa 22.3 which now has rusticl for modern OpenCL support? Previously Mesa used Clover for OpenCL, which was stuck somewhere just below OpenCL 1.2 (but only reports OpenCL 1.1 support).
        COGlory 4y ago
        There are two drivers for AMD on Linux. There's the open source driver, Mesa, and there's the proprietary AMD driver, called AMDGPU. I'm not certain which driver Valve is using on Steam Deck (I've never had to look), but if they're funding Mesa, I'm guessing they're using Mesa. Unfortunately, some of AMD's GP-compute infrastructure is only supported on Linux through the proprietary driver. I believe these are ROCm and HIP. I'm not sure about OpenCL. I'm not 100% sure what Blender uses for AMD acceleration, but if it's ROCm, you'd need the AMDGPU driver instead of Mesa. Could have some of these details wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it. You can, of course, install other OS on the Deck.
        werlkyhrkj 4y ago
        this is sorta true, but not quite amdgpu is the underlying open source kernel module -- it's in the mainline kernel. mesa is the open source userland driver, and runs atop the amdgpu kernel driver amdgpu pro is the closed source userland driver, which also runs atop the open amdgpu kernel driver. what's really nice about this is that you can run a fully open source stack in your host os while running amdgpu pro/rocm inside a container.
        BearOso 4y ago
        There's actually 3 drivers for vulkan, amdgpu-pro, amdvlk, and radv. In any case, ROCm works with the completely open source stack, and is open source itself. amdgpu, the kernel component, is the only thing needed for that, and modern upstream works fine. The integrated steam deck gpu simply can't work with it, though. The issue that has recently been resolved was that only the amdgpu-pro userspace had working OpenCL 2.0+ support. Mesa 22.3 has better OpenCL now, but that's actually become less relevant with the new HIP/ROCm stuff.
        slavik81 4y ago
        > The integrated steam deck gpu simply can't work with [the kernel amdgpu], though. That's a shame. I was hoping it was something I could help with, but that's a bit beyond the scope of what I can fix myself.
        werlkyhrkj 4y ago
        not sure why you added that "[the kernel amdgpu]" bit -- pretty sure that isn't what gp was saying. the open source kernel driver is the only one in use and sits under both the open source and closed source userland driver stacks. i'm pretty sure what they're saying is that rocm doesn't support running on the apu in the steam deck at all -- i'm dealing with a similar issue in bringing up a product on a different amd apu that has a beefy enough gpu for my application
        slavik81 4y ago
        If so, that's more promising. The HIP runtime sits on the ROCm Runtime (ROCr), which sits on hsa-kmt (ROCt). I was under the impression that the driver handles pretty much all of the stuff that is hardware-specific. It's an RDNA2 GPU and AFAIK, all the RDNA2 GPUs can be coerced into working with ROCm (even if they are not 'supported'). Maybe the Steam Deck is an exception. I don't know. I'll give it a spin over the holidays. Win, lose or draw, it sounds like I'll learn something interesting.
        4y ago
- bsurmanski 4y ago
  Not op, but I bought one. It's essentially a Linux laptop with a control interface built in. For emulators and steam games, it's really nice to have an option to play on the tv (with the dock). I don't see it being an especially nice coding experience; you'd need an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. And without a dock, all it has is a single USBC port. Though it has a full KDE desktop, so it should be feasible.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    yeah without a keyboard it sucks. it's like trying to code via SMS lol. But the dockability makes it pretty damn awesome. you can code in first class style by docking it with a monitor and keyboard, and then when you leave you can take it with you and get a great portable game player or movie watcher or web browser with good battery life. the built in screen is pretty good. I was impressed
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm using one from time to time to do some programming on minor projects. Works pretty well, although it's not as fast as the laptop or desktop (obviously) that I have. But it's pretty lightweight and handles games well, so if I go on trips somewhere, sometimes I just bring the Deck + small keyboard to do emergency fixes on, and for that, it works very well.
- andrewparker 4y ago
  The deck plus the OEM dock with mouse, keyboard and monitor makes for a nice, cheap Linux desktop that you can grab-and-go to play games. The dock is really seamless, always works right away. If you're programming, I wouldn't recommend Deck without the dock.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Doable on the device itself (Although I wouldn't bother without at least an external keyboard). Full KDE desktop based on Arch (/ is read-only by default, but this can be disabled) it Really shines when plugged into external monitors/dock. In particular, I have a couple USB-C displays that provide usb-hubs - I plug a single usb-c cable into the top of the thing and have a great little mini-workstation machine. Does 4k displays just fine and is very responsive for the size. It's basically replaced the linux laptop I would drag along on trips. If I need a workstation it suffices, and I can plug it into hotel room tvs really easily to watch whatever I want. Basically - hard to argue with the value proposition given it only costs $500 and I get a great little portable workstation. That fact that it does an excellent job with games is just cream on top.
- conradev 4y ago
  It's definitely great to support Valve in their efforts, but you all might be interested in GPD's lineup of small computers, because many of them have built-in keyboards: https://gpd.hk/product https://gpd.hk/product
- hellotomyrars 4y ago
  If you're going to properly sit down with it somewhere it works fine. But you're going to want external keyboard/mouse, and most likely a bigger display. You'll need a hub/dock if you want to plug in more than one USB-C device. Honestly a laptop makes a lot more sense in general for that still. You just pull it out and everything you need is there. But if the versatility of the device is appealing to you then it might make more sense. I have used it for traditional computing with a keyboard/mouse and portable monitor, but it is quite cumbersome to do so. But I value it much more and primarily as a portable games system. As an aside, the trackpads are great and for me the thing that sets it apart from any of the similar systems, but in desktop mode they aren't nearly as good or useful by comparison. Though it might be possible to change the way they work in desktop mode but the basic way it hooks input by default makes them pretty dumb trackpads.

by cowmix 4y ago

I bought Steam games and a Steam Deck just to support Valve... and I'm not really a gamer. However, the Deck has turned out to be a pretty good computing device.

yellow_lead 4y ago

I was thinking of doing this - how do you like it? How's coding on it?

cowmix 4y ago
I keep it docked (mostly) and it works great. My ONLY beef is that the AMD drivers do not work 100% with Blender so you don't get the accelerated Cycles rendering. Otherwise, it is great.
- slavik81 4y ago
  That's interesting. I'm no expert on the Steam Deck, but I would have expected it to work. Do you have any more details about the problem?
  - cowmix 4y ago
    Valve is using the 'wrong' AMD gpu driver.
    - slavik81 4y ago
      That's not enough information for me to understand what's wrong, but I suppose maybe I should find a Steam Deck and try things out myself. If you want to follow up privately, my email is in my profile.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        I believe they're misrepresenting the issue. Blender's Flatpak is possibly broken, but I'd imagine the Steam Runtime version works without-flaw.
      - freedomben 4y ago
        AMD does have two different drivers (which I find maddening). I bought a monstrous GPU to use for hashcat, but the open source/built-in drivers don't support the openCL that hashcat (and crypto mining) need. The Pro driver doesn't get updated fast enough to work on Fedora, which is also a travesty for me. I really wish that weren't the case. I can't speak for steam deck though, just my experience on a self build.
        versteegen 4y ago
        Have you heard about just-released Mesa 22.3 which now has rusticl for modern OpenCL support? Previously Mesa used Clover for OpenCL, which was stuck somewhere just below OpenCL 1.2 (but only reports OpenCL 1.1 support).
      - COGlory 4y ago
        There are two drivers for AMD on Linux. There's the open source driver, Mesa, and there's the proprietary AMD driver, called AMDGPU. I'm not certain which driver Valve is using on Steam Deck (I've never had to look), but if they're funding Mesa, I'm guessing they're using Mesa. Unfortunately, some of AMD's GP-compute infrastructure is only supported on Linux through the proprietary driver. I believe these are ROCm and HIP. I'm not sure about OpenCL. I'm not 100% sure what Blender uses for AMD acceleration, but if it's ROCm, you'd need the AMDGPU driver instead of Mesa. Could have some of these details wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it. You can, of course, install other OS on the Deck.
        werlkyhrkj 4y ago
        this is sorta true, but not quite amdgpu is the underlying open source kernel module -- it's in the mainline kernel. mesa is the open source userland driver, and runs atop the amdgpu kernel driver amdgpu pro is the closed source userland driver, which also runs atop the open amdgpu kernel driver. what's really nice about this is that you can run a fully open source stack in your host os while running amdgpu pro/rocm inside a container.
      - BearOso 4y ago
        There's actually 3 drivers for vulkan, amdgpu-pro, amdvlk, and radv. In any case, ROCm works with the completely open source stack, and is open source itself. amdgpu, the kernel component, is the only thing needed for that, and modern upstream works fine. The integrated steam deck gpu simply can't work with it, though. The issue that has recently been resolved was that only the amdgpu-pro userspace had working OpenCL 2.0+ support. Mesa 22.3 has better OpenCL now, but that's actually become less relevant with the new HIP/ROCm stuff.
        slavik81 4y ago
        > The integrated steam deck gpu simply can't work with [the kernel amdgpu], though. That's a shame. I was hoping it was something I could help with, but that's a bit beyond the scope of what I can fix myself.
        werlkyhrkj 4y ago
        not sure why you added that "[the kernel amdgpu]" bit -- pretty sure that isn't what gp was saying. the open source kernel driver is the only one in use and sits under both the open source and closed source userland driver stacks. i'm pretty sure what they're saying is that rocm doesn't support running on the apu in the steam deck at all -- i'm dealing with a similar issue in bringing up a product on a different amd apu that has a beefy enough gpu for my application
        slavik81 4y ago
        If so, that's more promising. The HIP runtime sits on the ROCm Runtime (ROCr), which sits on hsa-kmt (ROCt). I was under the impression that the driver handles pretty much all of the stuff that is hardware-specific. It's an RDNA2 GPU and AFAIK, all the RDNA2 GPUs can be coerced into working with ROCm (even if they are not 'supported'). Maybe the Steam Deck is an exception. I don't know. I'll give it a spin over the holidays. Win, lose or draw, it sounds like I'll learn something interesting.
        4y ago
bsurmanski 4y ago
Not op, but I bought one. It's essentially a Linux laptop with a control interface built in. For emulators and steam games, it's really nice to have an option to play on the tv (with the dock). I don't see it being an especially nice coding experience; you'd need an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. And without a dock, all it has is a single USBC port. Though it has a full KDE desktop, so it should be feasible.
- freedomben 4y ago
  yeah without a keyboard it sucks. it's like trying to code via SMS lol. But the dockability makes it pretty damn awesome. you can code in first class style by docking it with a monitor and keyboard, and then when you leave you can take it with you and get a great portable game player or movie watcher or web browser with good battery life. the built in screen is pretty good. I was impressed
capableweb 4y ago
I'm using one from time to time to do some programming on minor projects. Works pretty well, although it's not as fast as the laptop or desktop (obviously) that I have. But it's pretty lightweight and handles games well, so if I go on trips somewhere, sometimes I just bring the Deck + small keyboard to do emergency fixes on, and for that, it works very well.
andrewparker 4y ago
The deck plus the OEM dock with mouse, keyboard and monitor makes for a nice, cheap Linux desktop that you can grab-and-go to play games. The dock is really seamless, always works right away. If you're programming, I wouldn't recommend Deck without the dock.
horsawlarway 4y ago
Doable on the device itself (Although I wouldn't bother without at least an external keyboard). Full KDE desktop based on Arch (/ is read-only by default, but this can be disabled) it Really shines when plugged into external monitors/dock. In particular, I have a couple USB-C displays that provide usb-hubs - I plug a single usb-c cable into the top of the thing and have a great little mini-workstation machine. Does 4k displays just fine and is very responsive for the size. It's basically replaced the linux laptop I would drag along on trips. If I need a workstation it suffices, and I can plug it into hotel room tvs really easily to watch whatever I want. Basically - hard to argue with the value proposition given it only costs $500 and I get a great little portable workstation. That fact that it does an excellent job with games is just cream on top.
conradev 4y ago
It's definitely great to support Valve in their efforts, but you all might be interested in GPD's lineup of small computers, because many of them have built-in keyboards: https://gpd.hk/product https://gpd.hk/product
hellotomyrars 4y ago
If you're going to properly sit down with it somewhere it works fine. But you're going to want external keyboard/mouse, and most likely a bigger display. You'll need a hub/dock if you want to plug in more than one USB-C device. Honestly a laptop makes a lot more sense in general for that still. You just pull it out and everything you need is there. But if the versatility of the device is appealing to you then it might make more sense. I have used it for traditional computing with a keyboard/mouse and portable monitor, but it is quite cumbersome to do so. But I value it much more and primarily as a portable games system. As an aside, the trackpads are great and for me the thing that sets it apart from any of the similar systems, but in desktop mode they aren't nearly as good or useful by comparison. Though it might be possible to change the way they work in desktop mode but the basic way it hooks input by default makes them pretty dumb trackpads.