I think Valve needs to come out with two devices. A new mobile Steam Deck 2 for sure. Then Valve needs to have a face melting console for under the TV.

I haven't kept up much with AMD's big.LITTLE cpu design, but imagine a Steam Deck with power sipping little cores that give crazy good battery life for low end games and BIG cores for latest AAA titles. Add some controls to the power profile feature of SteamOS to customize power and performance of the big and LITTLE cores would be a huge win. The big cores can be prioritized when plugged-in/docked or when the user isn't really concerned about battery life. If I remember correctly, the AMD big.LITTLE compute unit also had the ability to determine the work load size and assign the work to either big or little cores. A hybrid big or little mode might be all you need.

I think a console would be great. I dock my Steam Deck all the time. But I still want a power house for under the TV. Plus, I'm big on, "right tool for the right job". Not to say that the Steam Deck shouldn't be docked, but I think if there were a dedicated Steam console, then less people would think of their Steam Decks as aging. When folks dock their Steam Deck 1/2, they would have different expectations/wishes. Right now my Steam Deck plays all my games way better than I ever hoped for when I first heard about the Steam Deck. I mean, playing HD2 and DiableIV on my Steam Deck??? Shut the front door, I would of thought you were getting ready to sell me snake oil. I can and will build my own Steam Console but, I'm thinking for the people who aren't going to want to build their own custom gaming rig or really know how, nor want to learn. I mean, the Steam Deck 2 is going to be leaps ahead of the Steam Deck. But a Steam Console could be designed and use hardware that is purpose built for high FPS and higher resolutions.

Around 2026 or 2027, I'm sure the big.LITTLE AMD architecture will have gone through a few iterations.

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Updated from 23.10 to 24.04. Running great. Just the run of the mill boring LTS update, no exciting new features. Everything works well except a manual package I installed (Wezterm) and one gnome extension that's not Gnome 46 ready. Switched to similar extension that was 46 ready, and also switched over to the Wezterm ppa. I look forward to another stable boring 6 months.

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Quoting: liamdI doubt all that many browse the web regularly on Deck. However, indirectly? Possible, I've seen lots and lots of posts about people enjoying Linux thanks to the Desktop Mode on the Steam Deck.

That's a good point. The overlap is probably quite small.

I really think all of the growth with Linux will come from the spill over. Tech dad installs Linux, sees it works just fine. Kids computers don't support Win11 and require hardware upgrade. Doesn't want to replace perfectly working hardware for Win11 support. Installs Linux on kidos computers. For every 1 tech dad, you get an average of 2-3 bonus Linux installs. Normally tech dad would have had to stick with Windows on the kids computers so they can play games or they needed Windows for school. But that's been flipped on its head.

The question I have, how long will the spill over last. Once the machines have to be replaced, then what happens?

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If you read the Community Game forums on Steam, you can see people getting help with switching to Linux. Not even the Steam Linux forum. I mean, the actual game specific forum. Essentially, someone playing your game is using Linux. I don't think I would have seen that 1 year ago, people would have had to wonder if their game played on Linux.

Since most Windows gamers are Nvidia owners, this new NVK open source driver that dropped a few days ago will make a huge impact. That Nvidia pain point I think has been a turn off for many. I remember back in the day, you just installed the headers and ran the Nvidia binary. That was it. I helped a buddy of mine switch a month ago, and he had to update his kernel for some NVME controller bug and after that, installed the Nvidia package, that's it. But from the forums it seems like there are some configurations, laptop configurations, that are a little trickier. So hopefully the NVK driver will mature quickly and alleviate the various issues around Nvidia cards.

Anyways, now my buddy switched all his family computers to Linux. A little anecdotal but sort of explains the desktop growth seen in the statscounter vs Steam Linux growth. Maybe the Steam Deck sales aren't directly responsible for the overall Linux growth. But the work Valve and others have done in support of Steam Deck has paid in dividends to Linux. The rising tide lifts all ships. Eventually there will be enough Linux gamers out there, it'd be like the late 90's where your gamer friend helps you get an OS installed on your computer, except it wont be Windows.

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Quoting: PenglingAm I the only person who can't even find the physical wallet cards anywhere? All of the places that they list as UK stockists don't seem to actually carry them!

Like so many geeks, I'm frequently told that I'm difficult to get gifts for on traditional gift-giving occasions (and I always say they don't need to worry about it, and on it goes :tongue:) - physical Steam cards actually being available would be kind of helpful.

That would be nice. My Sisters just buy me gift cards to Subway, the sandwich place. It really feels like a punishment at this point. If I got a Steam gift card I'd probably fall over in shock.

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Quoting: nlborlclIf only Apple wasn't so broke they could support OpenGL 4.6.

According to the Steam for Mac discussion board on Steam, Apple apparently can't afford to implement Vulkan either.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: const

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: constMy take on some of the arguments here:

1. Chromebooks are pretty much an US thing. I know no one who owns a Chromebook here in Germany and when I looked for their prices, I know why. You get a pretty good Business Laptop for the price of a cheap tablet with a bad keyboard.

2. Not so sure about the Appstore. I can see that for single player titles, but for multiplayer? I really don't know. My guess is Apple Users tend to prefer console gaming.

Chromebooks are quite popular to hand out in schools here in Sweden.

Yes, they exist and are sold. I know that. Still, people living in certain regions might overestimate their impact. While around 30% of Laptops in the US are Chromebooks, it's 2% in Europe and close to zero in Asia. Current installations don't really matter either, since most of them are made to handle not much more then a browser. Yes, as Google opens up ChromeOS, beefier Chromebooks are sure to come, but chances they'll be popular here in Europe are much worse then in the US, where they are actually a trademark.

Which is why I mentioned that it was regional just like you mentioned the state in Germany. Over here Chromebooks have about 10% of the total computer market and is above Apple.

Wow! I never noticed Sweden had such a huge ChromeOS percentage [External Link]. Even statcounter is able to track similar numbers. MacOS and ChromeOS must certainly be in a real slug fest when it comes for 2nd place in the Swedish market. The real numbers month over month must be wild. In ten years when all those students are out of school and in the workforce, ChromeOS is going to explode.

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I'm fine with the way it is. But it would be interesting to see a graph that sort of starts when the Steam Deck was released.

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Quoting: gradyvuckovicThree surveys in a row with Linux over 1.90%. That's a very good sign. 2% in 2024 seems extremely likely. 2.5% by the end of the year? That would put Linux up where MacOS was not too long ago before it started dropping.

2.5% will definitely happen this year. Honestly I thought for sure Linux and MacOS were both going to eat into the Windows percentage. I never imagined Linux overtaking MacOS. I don't know how long this will last MacOS percentage world wide [External Link]. A roughly 5% drop for the last two months. I know nothing about anything Apple, but I do know that they brought in a custom ISA. So I'm guessing the older Intel machines are dying(or can no longer be updated) and they were replaced with Windows machines? Maybe there will be a resurgence in MacOS numbers when the older Intel machine are finally replaced.

Anyways probably some of the Apple enthusiasts out there can give some insight into the 5% drop. Like everything, there is probably a simple explanation.

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Steam Beta. It's pretty rare to see an issue.

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