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It's an astonishing achievement from Valve. The plug-and-play nature is truly miraculous...I expected to have to do a ton of hackery to make games work but the

It's an astonishing achievement from Valve. The plug-and-play nature is truly miraculous...I expected to have to do a ton of hackery to make games work but the vast majority of things I want to play work great out of the box. I'm a very happy Deck owner from day one, despite having a relatively powerful gaming PC and a Switch. As a dad with two very young kids I don't get much time for gaming, but the Deck helps me find that time and I am loving playing through some of my backlog of controller-friendly games. Also a plug for https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ which has thousands of user-submitted reviews and optimization fixes/tweaks for playing games on the Steam Deck.

bravetraveler 3y ago
I think they're to be commended on focusing in areas that aren't obvious, but have a lot of benefit. My immediate example for this is 'gamescope'. It's like a mini compositor that really improves the edges between X/Wayland For those using Linux outside of a Deck, look into setting it up!
- pfych 3y ago
  Wow Gamescope[^1] looks great! Definitely going to install this on my main system for playing games that like to wrestle with displays and resolution! [^1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope
  - aleden 3y ago
    I have an Intel GPU (HD Graphics 520) and gamescope doesn't work for me under arch Linux :( https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/356 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/356
cmur 3y ago
> I expected to have to do a ton of hackery to make games work but the vast majority of things I want to play work great out of the box This was my first sentiment as well, but found myself in the same exact position as you. I almost was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to playing with the underlying OS, but even some of these heavy AAA titles run really smooth considering the hardware they employed for the deck.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
There's so much discourse focused on playing the biggest games on max settings that it can be easy to forget the sheer number of older or non-AAA games that work just fine on modest specs. Or games that work fine if you bump down to medium/low. Oddly enough that is partially to the credit and fault of Sony/Microsoft. games have been stuck targeting 2013 hardware for a very long time, longer than any other generation prior. But it was also needed in a way; the cost/speed ratio of storage was woefully behind the power advancements, and we see that with the crazy load times in the mid-late generation games of gen 8. On the same end, mobile has been advancing in huge strides and there were more x86 hardware that could run on lower wattage. Valve simply saw a hole that only certain Chinese manufacturers were trying to fulfill, and they used their market advantadge to slash prices. Honestly surprised Microsoft didn't try this first, given their dabbling with Surface (I know Sony has long since been burned out on handheld gaming)

bravetraveler 3y ago

I think they're to be commended on focusing in areas that aren't obvious, but have a lot of benefit. My immediate example for this is 'gamescope'. It's like a mini compositor that really improves the edges between X/Wayland For those using Linux outside of a Deck, look into setting it up!

pfych 3y ago
Wow Gamescope[^1] looks great! Definitely going to install this on my main system for playing games that like to wrestle with displays and resolution! [^1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope
- aleden 3y ago
  I have an Intel GPU (HD Graphics 520) and gamescope doesn't work for me under arch Linux :( https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/356 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope/issues/356

cmur 3y ago

> I expected to have to do a ton of hackery to make games work but the vast majority of things I want to play work great out of the box This was my first sentiment as well, but found myself in the same exact position as you. I almost was a little disappointed because I was looking forward to playing with the underlying OS, but even some of these heavy AAA titles run really smooth considering the hardware they employed for the deck.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

There's so much discourse focused on playing the biggest games on max settings that it can be easy to forget the sheer number of older or non-AAA games that work just fine on modest specs. Or games that work fine if you bump down to medium/low. Oddly enough that is partially to the credit and fault of Sony/Microsoft. games have been stuck targeting 2013 hardware for a very long time, longer than any other generation prior. But it was also needed in a way; the cost/speed ratio of storage was woefully behind the power advancements, and we see that with the crazy load times in the mid-late generation games of gen 8. On the same end, mobile has been advancing in huge strides and there were more x86 hardware that could run on lower wattage. Valve simply saw a hole that only certain Chinese manufacturers were trying to fulfill, and they used their market advantadge to slash prices. Honestly surprised Microsoft didn't try this first, given their dabbling with Surface (I know Sony has long since been burned out on handheld gaming)