Quoting: PenglingI favour portables and am a Nintendo ex-pat (they were the only console manufacturer still making games that I enjoyed - then they stopped and/or went off in strange directions with the ones I liked, so I bailed :tongue:). The reason I returned to the PC-gaming space for the first time since 4GB HDDs were huge and you could still buy big-box games from Toys 'R' Us and Electronics Boutique UK is precisely because, regardless of your preferred OS, it offers more choice. Much more.

Like many my age (approaching my 40s now), I fondly remember the 16-bit era because it was highly competitive, but also interesting - "exclusives" back then only existed in the form of which manufacturer's in-house titles you preferred, and most major third-party games were on most platforms and sometimes differed in interesting ways; The YouTube series Console Wars [External Link] is a good look at how this applied to the SNES and Mega Drive, though sadly it never touches on the UK market, which was much broader thanks to also including various 8-bit and 16-bit home micros.

I'm not a fan of the modern definition of "exclusives", which is just moneyhatting in order to prevent content from appearing on all platforms, and I wouldn't like to see it mar the Steam Deck or the broader Linux-gaming landscape.

I also have fond memories of that time and the early 3D era. It was really a time were no one had a clear idea of what they were doing so they just tried a bunch of shit to see what worked :) However some things I don't miss. Games back then was an insanely expensive hobby. Because it was so expensive most could only afford one console, which led to tribes of fans forming defending their choice, while in reality missing out on great games all thanks to exclusives. The Console War was an effect of anti-consumer practices.

Today you could buy a Steam Deck which is excellent value and only buy games on sale. With PC being almost like neutral ground a lot of games are released to one console plus PC. This in combination with emulators and the ability to tinker leads to a platform that teenage me would have been up in arms over. It's more approachable and cheaper than a PC while still being flexible and open. When Valve eventually does a wide release of SteamOS 3.X it will lower the bar of entry to DIY PC's and HTPC's. It could lead to a renewed interest in a hobby that's dying out. Or maybe that's just an old fools wishes and it's smart phones, games streaming tablets and predatory pay2win crap that are the future.

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Paradoxically Steam Decks exclusive element is its inclusive stance. It has the possibility to play games from almost all current and previous platforms. This is a possibility no other can or want to mimic and is only achievable through the open PC-like nature of the platform.

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Quoting: BlackBloodRum

This unmounts the removable drive, it does not physically eject it

... well duh.

Did they really have to write this? :unsure:

This is typical Valve humor. They aren't always super serious with every patch entry.

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I sincerely hope FTC will stop this deal. These big acquisitions has to stop. They are disaster for competition and while Microsoft right now seems open to Linux and Steam, they are just one board meeting away from releasing a new Xbox Store App, make it exclusive to Windows 11 and lock all their games to that store.

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I fully agree with Liam. If I were to recommend a distro to gamer, i.e. a person that maybe doesn't have time or interest to tinker with the underpinnings of a distro, it would be Ubuntu or Kubuntu depending on preference. I have tried installing PopOS on my laptop but the installation fails. I did run Manjaro but it has some strange UI quirks and after a while updates broke. I'm done distro hopping and spending more time tinkering with the distro than actually usining it. In the future this recommendation may change to SteamOS but right now if you only have a couple of hours a week to game and wants something that "just works" everytime - go with Ubuntu/Kubuntu.

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I find KDE Connect to work well enough onm Steam Deck these days.You just need to add the source in Discover via Settings > Add Source... > https://distribute.kde.org/kdeapps.flatpakrepo [External Link]

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Quoting: subWasn't that planned to be a free upgrade for those already owning it? :huh:

I don't know about that but the old game is using Source while the new is made in Unity. So it probably involved quite a lot of work.

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Quoting: ZlopezStrange, I played Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide in past with Proton and everything worked without issue, only thing that didn't worked was the launcher. So I'm surprised that it's marked as newly playable, when it was playable in past.

I thought it didn't work because of EAC?

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