4 ms·

I have a steam deck. Its incredibly easy to switch from game mode to “desktop mode” and get a full blown, portable linux device! Its fucking incredible. Gaming

by pm90 2y ago

I have a steam deck. Its incredibly easy to switch from game mode to “desktop mode” and get a full blown, portable linux device! Its fucking incredible. Gaming has been mostly good. You can trust the steam verification badge. Some games just won’t work but most do.

phoronixrly 2y ago
Let me expand on that - plug your deck in a laptop docking station connected to your lan, monitor setup, keyboard and mouse and you have a the smooth desktop experience of a not at all shabby laptop! It's amazing! Lately I've taken to using an Arch btw install on an SD card for testing GPU compute stuff on it. It's so smooth... Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now...
- diggan 2y ago
  > plug your deck in a laptop docking station connected to your lan, monitor setup, keyboard and mouse and you have a the smooth desktop experience of a not at all shabby laptop! It's amazing Just to be clear, this is not even needed, you can use the desktop mode straight up on the Steam Deck without any added accessories, terminal and everything included. Dope for quick maintenance without having to hook it up to anything. Or, if you happen to have a USB-based WiFi antenna with the right chipset, a portable aircrack-ng device :) > Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now... Doesn't Steam Deck have unified memory and 16GB available? I think it's more of a implementation issue than the amount of VRAM it could theoretically use.
- rjh29 2y ago
  Or just buy a laptop, and then you can just play games on it like normal! Amazing :P
  - mhitza 2y ago
    I think it's pretty hard to find a laptop with similar performance characteristics, build quality, repairability and firmware support at the steam deck price point. For one. On the other hand portability is also great, and so is the additional software customization on top. Having an easy slider for custom TDP is a great feature.
    - LorenDB 2y ago
      Not to mention that by purchasing a Steam Deck, you are helping Valve financially support many opensource projects. Valve invests in the Linux kernel, Proton (and by extension Wine), various KDE software, the Fex emulator for gaming on ARM systems, and more.
    - cesarb 2y ago
      > I think it's pretty hard to find a laptop with similar performance characteristics, build quality, repairability and firmware support at the steam deck price point. On the other hand, it's much easier to find any laptop at all than the Steam Deck... because the Steam Deck is not yet available in my country, while there are plenty of laptops from many different brands (Dell, Lenovo, Positivo, even Apple) at all price points.
      - skeaker 2y ago
        Works on my machine...
      - pm90 2y ago
        Im hoping that with the launch of the lenovo steam deck clone, that there will be even more products like this. But yes you are absolutely right that laptops are more accessible.
  - phoronixrly 2y ago
    True, but I prefer to optimize my laptop choice for work, not gaming. My point was that the deck does not limit you by its form-factor in any way should you plug it to a display, mouse and keyboard.
t_mann 2y ago
Have you tried Samsung DeX? I find it pretty amazing, you connect your Android smartphone to a docking station, and you have a usable Desktop OS. The only thing holding it back from becoming a full workhorse for eg document editing imho is that most apps will only give you the - substantially nerfed - mobile version.

by pm90 2y ago

phoronixrly 2y ago

Let me expand on that - plug your deck in a laptop docking station connected to your lan, monitor setup, keyboard and mouse and you have a the smooth desktop experience of a not at all shabby laptop! It's amazing! Lately I've taken to using an Arch btw install on an SD card for testing GPU compute stuff on it. It's so smooth... Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now...

diggan 2y ago
> plug your deck in a laptop docking station connected to your lan, monitor setup, keyboard and mouse and you have a the smooth desktop experience of a not at all shabby laptop! It's amazing Just to be clear, this is not even needed, you can use the desktop mode straight up on the Steam Deck without any added accessories, terminal and everything included. Dope for quick maintenance without having to hook it up to anything. Or, if you happen to have a USB-based WiFi antenna with the right chipset, a portable aircrack-ng device :) > Not enough vram for blender rendering it seems at least for now... Doesn't Steam Deck have unified memory and 16GB available? I think it's more of a implementation issue than the amount of VRAM it could theoretically use.
rjh29 2y ago
Or just buy a laptop, and then you can just play games on it like normal! Amazing :P
- mhitza 2y ago
  I think it's pretty hard to find a laptop with similar performance characteristics, build quality, repairability and firmware support at the steam deck price point. For one. On the other hand portability is also great, and so is the additional software customization on top. Having an easy slider for custom TDP is a great feature.
  - LorenDB 2y ago
    Not to mention that by purchasing a Steam Deck, you are helping Valve financially support many opensource projects. Valve invests in the Linux kernel, Proton (and by extension Wine), various KDE software, the Fex emulator for gaming on ARM systems, and more.
  - cesarb 2y ago
    > I think it's pretty hard to find a laptop with similar performance characteristics, build quality, repairability and firmware support at the steam deck price point. On the other hand, it's much easier to find any laptop at all than the Steam Deck... because the Steam Deck is not yet available in my country, while there are plenty of laptops from many different brands (Dell, Lenovo, Positivo, even Apple) at all price points.
    - skeaker 2y ago
      Works on my machine...
    - pm90 2y ago
      Im hoping that with the launch of the lenovo steam deck clone, that there will be even more products like this. But yes you are absolutely right that laptops are more accessible.
- phoronixrly 2y ago
  True, but I prefer to optimize my laptop choice for work, not gaming. My point was that the deck does not limit you by its form-factor in any way should you plug it to a display, mouse and keyboard.

t_mann 2y ago

Have you tried Samsung DeX? I find it pretty amazing, you connect your Android smartphone to a docking station, and you have a usable Desktop OS. The only thing holding it back from becoming a full workhorse for eg document editing imho is that most apps will only give you the - substantially nerfed - mobile version.