Could be really good. At first glance I feel like the sticks are in a really awkward spot, but I imagine in reality they're in almost the exact same spot as the dualsense controller, there are just touch pads where the dualsense has open space.

Probably an improvement, the touchpad on the dualsense isn't really useful except when navigating menus completely outside of anything like a game.

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Metal buttons sound awful. Especially copper. Copper looks cool as hell, but . . . is terrible for buttons. They're heavy and just going to be awful on your fingers.

There are some things plastic is just really good at. Like keyboards, even the craziest mechanical keyboard nerds, they don't want metal keycaps for the same reasons. They might look cool and appeal to some expensive = good crowd, but I don't want to type for hours on a metal keyboard, because I don't hate my hands. This just seems the same to me.

Mmmmmaybe this being some kind of 3d printed resin+metal makes me wrong? But . . . I doubt it.

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Quoting: TheRiddickWould you not be better off just buying a SteamDeck or one of its slightly updated competitors?

If you primarily want to play retro games on a TV, the deck is going to be a lot more expensive and no better than the low end version.

If you want to play newer stuff for about the same price, I'm pretty sure the 8600G will also destroy the steam deck.

It's a good thing. If you don't want to be mobile, I can totally see preferring one of these.

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Crazy. What this really means is, every feature of this controller, any customization of the buttons and features like that, are all being planned, by the maker, to work on Linux on day one.

Right now I really like my 8biitDo Ultimate, but I hate that I can't properly configure all the buttons on Linux.

Good times.

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What's really cool about the giveaway is really just what it says about Linux support. KH doesn't have a native Linux version, but we've gone through this slow creep of like, not antagonizing Linux users, occasionally having patch notes that mention making something work in Proton, to things like Neil Druckman acknowledging that yes they care about Steam Deck, to it being a key piece of marketing on launch day.

Weird times.

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Quoting: Mountain ManWhy do people keep poking the bear? It's not like Nintendo is going to suddenly say, "Fine, you win. We will stop attempting to protect our intellectual property rights."

Yes, why do people keep doing what's right in the face of an idiotic legal system. Silly protesters with their values. We'll never understand. When the deck's stacked against you, just roll over immediately, that's what I say.

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I suspect we'll get an update within a year.

Keeping the specs the same (I know the OLED bumps them a bit, but it's purposefully not a lot faster) for two whole years is an eternity for devices like this. No phone or tablet stays stagnant for more than about a year, and while the Steam Deck is the generic, like the google or the iPad of the space, it does have competitors who will just put out much faster versions of the same thing. Even consoles, other than Nintendo, a "pro" version just a few years in is pretty standard, Valve should fall sort of in between the iPad and PlayStation I figure.

I suspect we'll see an update every 2-2.5 years, basically following AMD's hardware roadmap but usually skipping one iteration.

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I conveniently, just this morning, decided to hit the button and upgrade my main PC to Fedora 40's beta. It seems I got in late enough that I got 5.4.6-1 initially and then 5.4.6.-3 on upgrade, completely bypassing the "probably OK" builds that were up there.

This is a good reminder of how often, boring old versions of software are pretty nice things.

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It's been kind of a big ask, paying $5 a month every month for the last two decades for Neverwinter+, but the value we've gotten out of it is pretty insane.

I know a lot of people bemoan subscriptions for everything, but obviously it would be impossible to get this kind of support any other way.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI'll have to test it soonish.

Quoting: Brokatt

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.

They don't support Gnome any more - well, specifically Wayland Gnome; X11 Gnome is OK - because it breaks SteamVR. I can't remember which widget it is that Gnome doesn't provide (I don't use VR and I don't use Gnome) but ISTR that the Gnome devs specifically refuse to support that widget. Someone with more familiarity with the details can fill in the gaps.

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.

Source? Their initial run of SteamOS was debian based, and not Ubuntu based. They include some ubuntu name libraries, and that's about it.

I've literally been installing steam on all my debian systems since it was first added to the repos... about 14 years ago. Never had any issues with it at all. Ubuntu LTS itself only supports their modified gnome install, so there is that.

By the way, Debian's package is now called 'steam-installer' and you can install it with three commands.
 
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install steam-installer steam-devices
And guess what? The /usr/games/steam file is a script that downloads the very official debian Steam package and installs it.

Funny enough, the Arch version likely does the exact same thing. Which basically means it doesn't really matter what Valve officially supports, people will get it installed, and currently the correct way to get the right dependencies, etc is to NOT use the .deb from their website, but to use your package manager on whichever distribution you choose.

Neither SteamOS 2.0 nor 3.0 was/is meant as a desktop replacement. If you look at the recommended specs on the Steam page for any Valve game they only ever recommend an Ubuntu LTS release.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1114-3F74-0B8A-B784 [External Link]

Quoting: mattaraxia

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.

They don't support Gnome any more - well, specifically Wayland Gnome; X11 Gnome is OK - because it breaks SteamVR. I can't remember which widget it is that Gnome doesn't provide (I don't use VR and I don't use Gnome) but ISTR that the Gnome devs specifically refuse to support that widget. Someone with more familiarity with the details can fill in the gaps.

I would be really interested to know that too. I was kind of surprised the deck doesn't at least support GNOME. I get KDE is more accommodating to Windows users and being friendly to them is obviously a high priority for the deck, but GNOME is so good on a hybrid/tablet style device like that. VR being a priority makes a lot of sense.

Edit: it appears to be this: DRM leasing. They don't refuse, it's just never been complete enough to be merged:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/2759 [External Link]

As far as I can see Gnome is supported on Steam for Linux. Why would they put resources into supporting Gnome on Steam Deck? I would guess a majority of the Steam Deck users don't ever use Desktop Mode. Other features like HDR support have higher priority than adding another DE to Desktop Mode.

The reason is literally right there in the comment you're quoting? You're welcome to disagree with it, you may be right about the usage, but uh, the reason is right there. I literally think it cannot be clearer.

I didn't say it should be a higher priority than other things, just that I've been "kind of surprised" that it wasn't there. The VR support makes sense.

Also isn't HDR there now with the OLED deck? And much of the development was done by not-Valve. I really doubt that they would have to sarcrifice resources for one over the other.

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