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It's starting to occur to me that even without having any time or inclination for video games these days, one of these handheld Linux gaming computers seems to

It's starting to occur to me that even without having any time or inclination for video games these days, one of these handheld Linux gaming computers seems to be what I actually want out of an Android phone, and I'm really starting to despise the whole phone ecosystem. Does one of these exist with passable front/rear cameras for video calling/spur of the moment shots? I never even use my phone as a phone. I certainly don't make calls while I'm out and about. The thing pointlessly enables spying on me when I don't even want it. But a pocket computer with wifi, enough storage for my entire music collection + wikipedia + maps, and ability to take phone-quality pictures? Running an actual Linux distribution so I don't run into stupid issues like how Android doesn't let you use NFS so they can push you into their cloud services? Awesome.

ActionHank 2y ago
Check out the GPD devices. They are astonishingly capable and compact.
rtkwe 2y ago
This one doesn't and neither does the Steam Deck. Generally these are packed to the gills with screen (no good space on the front for a camera) and cooling (taking the space that a back camera could use.
- bsimpson 2y ago
  People who have only seen a Switch also might not realize how big the Deck and its cousins are.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    For people wondering here's s side by side https://i.redd.it/ot0j04k7apb71.png https://i.redd.it/ot0j04k7apb71.png It's quite a bit larger (and more powerful too).
ewzimm 2y ago
This is the first third party steam deck, but you could just use any USB camera. None of these are really pocketable. You can hook up a raspberry pi or any similar SBC to a screen and peripherals and make a DIY Linux phone.
freedomben 2y ago
A desire for a portable but fully capable computer is mostly why I bought one of the original Steam Decks. You can trivially plug it into a dock and have a full and pretty capable "desktop" experience out of it as well. At that point I didn't even own any Steam games and hadn't played a game in well over a decade, and had no interest in doing so. I'm a sucker for open hardware though. Forward a few years and I've been really happy with it. With games so easily accessible I have bought quite a few over the years now. Adding cameras would be awesome! Though were I in charge of product for it, I'd want to think very carefully before doing so. It is a general purpose portable computer, but it's important to remember that the vast majority of the market doesn't buy it for that, and a camera and associated software may get in the way of it's primary purpose... Though, it could enable some pretty slick live video chat during multiplayer, which could be pretty awesome for people that play those kinds of games.
maxglute 2y ago
Yeah sometimes I wish Valve would appy some of that micro transaction effort into just building a phone + steamdeck controller wrapper. And then start capturing micro transactions on mobile.
bsimpson 2y ago
Part of what's exciting about SteamOS is that Linux on a touchscreen is a disappointing experience otherwise. There are a handful of UI options (GNOME, KDE Plasma Mobile, Phosh, Maui), and they're all works-in-progress to varying degrees. I've been using Jovian-NixOS as a placeholder for SteamOS, and have been disappointed at how mouse-and-keyboard-centric Linux UIs still are.
yesco 2y ago
Not entirely what you are asking for, but Waydroid has a surprisingly simple architecture which makes it easy to tinker with to suit your needs. It just links the Android hardware compositor OEMs use straight into waylands interface, which is made easy since the interfaces are already very similar to each other. It's basically no different than how it runs on your phone once it's up and running. Non-wayland inputs/sensors work in a similar fashion, basically just getting the output of the /dev file then redirecting it into the android equivalent. All it's really doing is pulling a LineageOS image, then dropping in the waydroid "drivers/firmware" that make it work with wayland using a series of patch files people have contributed. It all then gets run in a container which you "remotely" access for the GUI parts. Starting and stopping the container is like turning your phone on and off. If you set it up as a systemd service then you can just make this lockstep with your actual boot sequence. It's primarily "marketed" as a tool to run android apps on Linux, which means the documentation kind of guides you down this path of running individual apps as their own window in Gnome or something. This doesn't work very well and apps tend to crash when you try to resize them. However, if you run it via `waydroid show-full-ui` it works perfectly in my experience and operates just like a phone/tablet. I currently use it with a 2-in-1 x1 Thinkpad (meaning it has a touchscreen + pen), primarily for reading comics, books and watching movies when I connect it to my TV. I have it "wrapped" in Hyprland, so I can easily switch workspaces to return to the "host" if I want to, but I usually just do everything entirely within waydroid, and lazily use JuiceSSH for most host operations. My laptops camera is a bit special and lacks linux support, but my understanding is a properly supported camera would work fine with waydroid. It doesn't support screen rotation or wifi configuration though, so those parts still need to be handled by the host system. I have my laptop auto rotate via hyprland since it was the easiest but I think it would be trivial to just add a patch for support as well. It uses a pretty old LineageOS image, but I rebuilt it with some community patches so I could use the latest image, so you aren't even restricted to just LineageOS. I also didn't quite like how my stylus was being treated by android, so made a custom idc file for it and plopped it into the overlay filesystem waydroid has, saving me the effort of having to rebuild the image again. It all sounds kind of complicated, but you can get most of this up and running right out of the box, complete with google play services too (requires you get a token from google, but they have guides for this). It's just once you notice something bugging you, you can actually do something about it, in an afternoon even, instead of just dealing with it forever. Something I personally appreciate. That said, I'm using it as a tablet, for a phone there will be some gaps that need still need filling, such as: - You would need to somehow get a small touchscreen device and install linux on it - GPS: You would need to make sure this device exposes the GPS interface in some way and integrate it with waydroid. Since waydroid works via the same path OEMs take, there are probably some guides for this. - LTE: Same as GPS, though so long as you can get internet on the host, waydroid will inherit that automatically. - ARM Apps: Waydroid has some stuff that should allow you to run ARM apps but I've never bothered to set it up, not sure how well it works. What should work out of the box, assuming they support linux: - Cameras - All touch interactions - All stylus interactions - Keyboard + Mouse - HW rendering, works perfectly - Network access (only configurable on host though) - Direct USB access (out-of-the box in the sense you need to enable this in the waydroid config since it's not always desirable) - Google play services (with token) - All android apps built for x86_64, which is surprisingly supported by nearly all apps I've tried other than doodle jump. - Storage, doesn't require a custom partition or anything and you can use bind mounts to get host files, though I find SFTP to be easier in practice. I have in the past bind mounted an SSHFS mount which worked fine. In theory you could utilize this to expose an NFS which is otherwise not possible on Android.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
It has been clear for several years now that non-Android Linux is the only way forward, but short of big changes like the EU stopping acting like a coward and banning both iOS and Android (or, yeah, maybe Valve trying their hand at it), progress is very slow (though still faster than a few years ago). See Librem or PinePhone/tablet for instance.

ActionHank 2y ago

Check out the GPD devices. They are astonishingly capable and compact.

rtkwe 2y ago

This one doesn't and neither does the Steam Deck. Generally these are packed to the gills with screen (no good space on the front for a camera) and cooling (taking the space that a back camera could use.

bsimpson 2y ago
People who have only seen a Switch also might not realize how big the Deck and its cousins are.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  For people wondering here's s side by side https://i.redd.it/ot0j04k7apb71.png https://i.redd.it/ot0j04k7apb71.png It's quite a bit larger (and more powerful too).

ewzimm 2y ago

This is the first third party steam deck, but you could just use any USB camera. None of these are really pocketable. You can hook up a raspberry pi or any similar SBC to a screen and peripherals and make a DIY Linux phone.

freedomben 2y ago

A desire for a portable but fully capable computer is mostly why I bought one of the original Steam Decks. You can trivially plug it into a dock and have a full and pretty capable "desktop" experience out of it as well. At that point I didn't even own any Steam games and hadn't played a game in well over a decade, and had no interest in doing so. I'm a sucker for open hardware though. Forward a few years and I've been really happy with it. With games so easily accessible I have bought quite a few over the years now. Adding cameras would be awesome! Though were I in charge of product for it, I'd want to think very carefully before doing so. It is a general purpose portable computer, but it's important to remember that the vast majority of the market doesn't buy it for that, and a camera and associated software may get in the way of it's primary purpose... Though, it could enable some pretty slick live video chat during multiplayer, which could be pretty awesome for people that play those kinds of games.

maxglute 2y ago

Yeah sometimes I wish Valve would appy some of that micro transaction effort into just building a phone + steamdeck controller wrapper. And then start capturing micro transactions on mobile.

bsimpson 2y ago

Part of what's exciting about SteamOS is that Linux on a touchscreen is a disappointing experience otherwise. There are a handful of UI options (GNOME, KDE Plasma Mobile, Phosh, Maui), and they're all works-in-progress to varying degrees. I've been using Jovian-NixOS as a placeholder for SteamOS, and have been disappointed at how mouse-and-keyboard-centric Linux UIs still are.

yesco 2y ago

Not entirely what you are asking for, but Waydroid has a surprisingly simple architecture which makes it easy to tinker with to suit your needs. It just links the Android hardware compositor OEMs use straight into waylands interface, which is made easy since the interfaces are already very similar to each other. It's basically no different than how it runs on your phone once it's up and running. Non-wayland inputs/sensors work in a similar fashion, basically just getting the output of the /dev file then redirecting it into the android equivalent. All it's really doing is pulling a LineageOS image, then dropping in the waydroid "drivers/firmware" that make it work with wayland using a series of patch files people have contributed. It all then gets run in a container which you "remotely" access for the GUI parts. Starting and stopping the container is like turning your phone on and off. If you set it up as a systemd service then you can just make this lockstep with your actual boot sequence. It's primarily "marketed" as a tool to run android apps on Linux, which means the documentation kind of guides you down this path of running individual apps as their own window in Gnome or something. This doesn't work very well and apps tend to crash when you try to resize them. However, if you run it via `waydroid show-full-ui` it works perfectly in my experience and operates just like a phone/tablet. I currently use it with a 2-in-1 x1 Thinkpad (meaning it has a touchscreen + pen), primarily for reading comics, books and watching movies when I connect it to my TV. I have it "wrapped" in Hyprland, so I can easily switch workspaces to return to the "host" if I want to, but I usually just do everything entirely within waydroid, and lazily use JuiceSSH for most host operations. My laptops camera is a bit special and lacks linux support, but my understanding is a properly supported camera would work fine with waydroid. It doesn't support screen rotation or wifi configuration though, so those parts still need to be handled by the host system. I have my laptop auto rotate via hyprland since it was the easiest but I think it would be trivial to just add a patch for support as well. It uses a pretty old LineageOS image, but I rebuilt it with some community patches so I could use the latest image, so you aren't even restricted to just LineageOS. I also didn't quite like how my stylus was being treated by android, so made a custom idc file for it and plopped it into the overlay filesystem waydroid has, saving me the effort of having to rebuild the image again. It all sounds kind of complicated, but you can get most of this up and running right out of the box, complete with google play services too (requires you get a token from google, but they have guides for this). It's just once you notice something bugging you, you can actually do something about it, in an afternoon even, instead of just dealing with it forever. Something I personally appreciate. That said, I'm using it as a tablet, for a phone there will be some gaps that need still need filling, such as: - You would need to somehow get a small touchscreen device and install linux on it - GPS: You would need to make sure this device exposes the GPS interface in some way and integrate it with waydroid. Since waydroid works via the same path OEMs take, there are probably some guides for this. - LTE: Same as GPS, though so long as you can get internet on the host, waydroid will inherit that automatically. - ARM Apps: Waydroid has some stuff that should allow you to run ARM apps but I've never bothered to set it up, not sure how well it works. What should work out of the box, assuming they support linux: - Cameras - All touch interactions - All stylus interactions - Keyboard + Mouse - HW rendering, works perfectly - Network access (only configurable on host though) - Direct USB access (out-of-the box in the sense you need to enable this in the waydroid config since it's not always desirable) - Google play services (with token) - All android apps built for x86_64, which is surprisingly supported by nearly all apps I've tried other than doodle jump. - Storage, doesn't require a custom partition or anything and you can use bind mounts to get host files, though I find SFTP to be easier in practice. I have in the past bind mounted an SSHFS mount which worked fine. In theory you could utilize this to expose an NFS which is otherwise not possible on Android.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

It has been clear for several years now that non-Android Linux is the only way forward, but short of big changes like the EU stopping acting like a coward and banning both iOS and Android (or, yeah, maybe Valve trying their hand at it), progress is very slow (though still faster than a few years ago). See Librem or PinePhone/tablet for instance.