Best overall gaming experience I ever had. Being able to bring my Steam library on the go is something I wanted without knowing it. I really like the ergonomics and the layout of the device. The weight is no problem to me with this kind of grips. I can use it for multiple hours and I feel no cramps in my hands, like I do with the Switch. It could get a better screen, but it's more like a nice to have, imo. I got a docking station, but so far, I use it as a handheld only.

Since I got my Steam Deck (mid July), I didn't play on my computer, not even once. It's now a working machine, only. The only time I will probably play on my PC is when I will have an urge for my racing games (got a steering wheel).

Thank you Valve! You really nailed it this time!

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Quoting: NerdNoiseRadio

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: einherjarIt worries me a bit, everytime I read "how to get xy to work again on Steamdeck".

If it does not become a "just works" experience, it will fail over time.

You can't really blame Linux for this. If a game was updated and it stopped working on windows, would you respond "Windows will fail if it doesn't become a just works experience"? No. You'd say the game devs need to test their game more and fix it.

My point here is that we shouldn't be so quick to blame Linux, it's perfectly possible the game is doing something weird which is breaking the compatibility. The fact is, this was just working, but the devs updated it, which has broken it.

We're not physic and we don't have access to the next update, so we can't "fix it" before it's released. Only the game devs could do that.

It seems to me that he wasn't blaming Linux, but blaming Steam Deck - which to be fair, is the buggiest game system I've ever played on a whole host of fronts.

Now, three important caveats:

1) I don't blame Linux either.

2) in terms of Valve issuing a steady stream of fixes, reducing the impact of bugs, Steam Deck has come a LONG way since I first got my device in April, and I have confidence that it will only continue to further improve and hopefully still at the same quick speed with which it has been happening so far.

3) Even with all the above standing, I still regard the Deck as my favorite (or certainly at the very least, my "most esteemed") system of all. I've purchased something like 100 new Steam games since April, while purchasing zero new games for XBox Series X, or Switch (which had been my main system prior), and -maybe- one game for PS5 (can't remember if this game was purchased just before or just after I got the Deck). I've also produced an episode of the podcast from it in desktop mode. I love the thing!

But even so, ein's point, which I will [hopefully faithfully] paraphrase as "the bugs will eventually erode esteem, then confidence, and finally willingness, leading to an eventual die-off for the device", I think rings 100% true!

Even with as highly as I regard it myself, I will confess to having found multiple instances where I ended up deciding against a quick play session because of anxiety over whether or not that quick play session would be spent futzing with dropped (or scrambled) controller connections while docked, or a frequent game-breaking blinking screen issue while docked, or a game just deciding not to load....or hell, even something so simple as a game I've set to run in 1080p or higher while docked just "automagically" deciding to run in 800p for no good reason and not letting me kick it back up without having to reboot the device...and so on, and so on, and so on.

With a grabby, budding gamer of a toddler, I don't get much opportunity to play undocked unless I'm out of the house or it's after his bedtime, and so for that reason, plus an "I would just prefer to play docked in a vacuum anyway", I do most of my Steam Decking docked, which has been a joy when it works right, and a nightmare when it doesn't...and I've experienced more than my fair share of both.

My enthusiasm for the thing, and all its myriad freedoms and potentials leaves me with a huge bank of goodwill towards it. But if that bank continues to only deplete a little each and every time I go to use it (or decide not to even try for those same reasons), it will eventually, inevitably run out, where the Switch, for all the ways that it's outclassed, and outshined by this thing, and for all the ways I outright hate the evil corporate entity behind it....always "just works"...may someday lead to a situation where I just start reaching for that controller again instead.

In short, I think ein is 100% right. If it's impacting even someone like me who is so passionate about the thing, it'll certainly impact the people so much less passionate than me. And this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Linux.

Of course, the saving grace here is that I still do not believe this eventuality to be "inevitable", or even necessarily "likely", as Valve already has a tremendous track record of improving all these issues as we go, and at least at this juncture, I still maintain a healthy optimism that this trend will only continue. It sucks that the glory has been smeared coming out of the gate, but I'm still reasonably confident that we'll get there before it manages to kills itself off, or turn people like me off to it.

Cheers!

What I find peculiar, about the state of The Witcher 3, is witnessing all the work CDPR as put into CP2077 to support the Steam Deck and coming to the realization that it doesn't seem to transpose to The Witcher 3. That's why I'm hopeful something is in the work between Valve and CDPR to solve the issue; they seem to work closely when such things happen. It's just that it should have been worked out before release. Unfortunately for the Steam Deck, the PC gaming market will not wait for such issues to be solved.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: eldarionMy question for steam deck users would be if you actually notice any difference between the original and the next gen version. With a small screen, there should be almost none.

The texture improvement is, in theory, unnoticeable on small screens. The ray tracing thing is, as we can see on multiple comparation videos, almost indistinctable from the original (which, by the way, means the dev team did a great work with shadow simulation).

Text / UI scaling options, new content, new camera controls etc. There's lots of improvements to see.

Is it running at higher FPS, with AMD FSR 2.1?

FSR appears to only be in DX12.

Snif! Let's hope there will be an update to Proton that will bring DX12 support. Thanks.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: eldarionMy question for steam deck users would be if you actually notice any difference between the original and the next gen version. With a small screen, there should be almost none.

The texture improvement is, in theory, unnoticeable on small screens. The ray tracing thing is, as we can see on multiple comparation videos, almost indistinctable from the original (which, by the way, means the dev team did a great work with shadow simulation).

Text / UI scaling options, new content, new camera controls etc. There's lots of improvements to see.

Is it running at higher FPS, with AMD FSR 2.1?

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Oooooh! Niiiice! It was long coming, but it's welcome!

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Personnally, I run all my games at 30fps, unless the experience is bad (which I didn't witness, yet). It saves the battery and many of them have stuttering issues above that (Playstation titles, I'm looking at you). These "console games" have been designed for the PS4 or Xbox One at 30fps, and it shows. In some cases, I even found forum posts of guys that had these issues on Windows with RTX 3080 gpus, so... Not a Steam Deck hardware limitation.

A friend of mine tried Bioshock Infinite through Proton at 30fps, on my Steam Deck and found the experience pretty smooth and enjoyable. He's got a 2000$ computer with a 144hz monitor (not saying that he didn't see a difference, just saying that it's not a "deal breaker" for single player games).

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Quoting: TerraceThe Pop_os guys update the Nvidia drivers very slowly, whats the best way to manually update one time to a version that has these fixes and then let Pop_os go back to updating once they surpass this version?

For the record, Nvidia 525.60.11 is already available on Pop_OS! It just doesn't show in the Pop!_Shop, but you'll find it in the terminal.

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-525

Should do the trick.

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Quoting: GuestHmmm. While I agree overall, there's a catch, anyone with a laptop that has integrated graphics+ Nvidia GPU should absolutely install pop os, no questions asked.

This! Totally! Tried on many models of MSI laptops (Gaming laptops as much as Quadro Workstations) and since most of them (just not to say all of them) don't have a "discrete graphics" BIOS setting, running anything but Pop_OS! on them is a nightmare. Pop_OS! works ootb, no messing around.

Edit:
It even adds a software switch in the power manager, that actually works:
(Nvidia Graphics <--> Balanced <--> Integrated)

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No Pop_OS!? :wink:

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Latest I heard about it, DLSS 3 required an RTX 4000 series GPU... Does this DLC support previous versions of DLSS? If not, there is no hurry to publish a Linux version. RTX 4000 gpus are already a niche product, for the moment.

Edit: Personally, I'll wait for Valve to create it's own Raytracing build with a futur version of AMD FSR, approved for the Steam Deck it will have been designed for (Steam Deck 2? Steam Deck 3?). I feel absolutely no hype nor FOMO when it comes to raytracing. My wallet is most grateful. :smile:

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