Quoting: Alm888P.S. It is hilarious to see how some "Just Use Proton"™ fans are getting riled up by such a small detail. As if they perceive the notion that Proton™ is a commercial product of a in-for-profit company as something insulting. :)

Dear Alm888®,

Please, for future reference I prefer to be referred to as a "fanboi". 😁😎

I love the power of open-source, in the hands of a for-profit company they benefit themselves and also millions of other people.

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It looks amazing! Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

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Quoting: Alm888Proton™

Hey Alm888™, that are you on about with that?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut nobody not expecting to profit from the game sales could match Valve's price point

Valve wants to expand the handheld PC running SteamOS market, they could subsidize other manufacturer's hardware to keep the cost down. How much more incentivized would a manufacturer be to release such a device if they got 15% of each game sold though SteamOS installed on their device? How little profit would they be willing to take on the hardware if this were the case? As we know Valve has gotten 30% of each game all along, they could really afford to do this and it would align their long term and short term goals:

• More users on Steam
• Less dependence on Microsoft's closed source platform
• More users on SteamOS
• A ubiquitous console-like PC gaming platform running SteamOS
• A new product category [External Link], the console-like handheld PC linux gaming device
• Other manufacturers releasing hardware in the handheld PC linux gaming market
• Overcoming the catch 22 / chicken and egg problem with the relationship between the linux market share and game devs targeting linux
• Incentivizing other industry movers to help with the catch 22 / chicken and egg problem (they've already made huge strides with proton to mitigate this intractable problem)

I think it would be a brilliant strategy on their part.

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Quoting: saturnoyotheir controller was discontinued, probably because of the mixed reception it got

I think its more likely due to the patent issue and that an update with newly available technology is inevitable. Capacitive touch thumbsticks? Grip inputs as buttons (avoiding the patent issue) rather than paddles? Faster poll rate for the touchpads and gyro? Idk, probably plenty of other things which could also be updated and improved but the Deck already demonstrates some of the updates that can be made.

Have you seen the amount of robotics Valve invested in to manufacture the controllers? It was a lot. [External Link] They didn't make that investment without a long term goal in mind. Those manufacturing robots can be reconfigured to assemble a new controller with different parts. Honestly, watch the video, it's cool.

Here's the caption: "When we first started designing hardware at Valve, we decided we wanted to try and do the manufacturing as well. To achieve our goal of a flexible controller, we felt it was important to have a similar amount of flexibility in our manufacturing process, and that meant looking into automated assembly lines. It turns out that most consumer hardware of this kind still has humans involved in stages throughout manufacturing, but we kind of went overboard, and built one of the largest fully automated assembly lines in the US. Our film crew recently put together a video of that assembly line, showcasing exactly why robots are awesome."

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: dubigrasu

Quoting: Mohandevir...being forced to change the batteries, in my SC is the part I hate the most. I broke one of the "ejector sticks" in one of them... I can still change the batteries, but I'm in for a hell of a fight. :wink:

That is true, some batteries are slightly larger and hard to take out.
I do this to avoid fighting with them:

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You just pull them out with the ribbon.

Nice! I have some rechargeable batteries that are 100% smooth on the bottom, as opposed to most batteries that have some sort of lip/wrinkle. They are a pain to get out of the SC.

What I've noticed as a difference between standard alkaline and rechargeable is the shape of the positive end of the battery. The little protruding nipple that AA batteries have. On regular alkaline its a little smaller in circumference and has rounded edges. On all rechargeable AAs I've seen that nipple has hard square corners and a wider circumference.

This difference actually snapped off the terminal of a very expensive GPS I once owned. At first I thought it was a manufacturing error on Garmin's part but the replacement they sent fell victim to the same sharp nippled battery. It's a design flaw one way or the other but I'd place the blame on the batteries. Especially since hearing people also had issues with their Steam controller and rechargeable AAs.

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Quoting: Mal

Quoting: randylThe only big drawback to the current base Xbox controller for Windows is that it uses AA batteries instead of a self-contained rechargeable.

Odd. That's the main reason why I don't like ds.

You mean you don't prefer a proprietary offer for something that already has a standardized solution? I for one don't want to be able to go to my nearest store to solve the most common problem in all of consumer electronics, I want to order a special product™. But even better would be if the battery is sealed inside the device, then all I need to do is throw the whole thing away and order a new one!

LOL seriously, I love that Valve used AA batteries in the Steam controller - I order a 20 pack of AA rechargeable every few years. Its just a fact of life that rechargeable batteries wear out over time, why would anyone want to use a proprietary power source instead of a standard one? Makes no sense.

I'm glad its been indicated that the power pack in the Deck should be replaceable, with a little effort.

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Quoting: GuestI picked the wrong to to stop gaming and open my own (vape) shop.
So much big stuff happening and so many awesome games on their way right now and I feel like I'm going to miss a lot of it. Gaming was a massive thing in my life until very recently, the joys of reaching 40 eh.
Seeing as I have enough floorspace I might look into getting a vr setup in the shop I think.
Vape shops don't get overly busy and I'm sure the customers would love it as much as I would.

I have my own shop too, and am also just arriving at 40. So this gaming news is how we motivate ourselves to do such a good job that we can hire people to cover the front, and set up a gaming room in the back where we can entertain ourselves haha.

I hope Gabe starts taking his health seriously at some point.

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Quoting: F.UltraI think that what you have seen from the outside is Canonical going from having endless funds (from Shuttleworths selling of Twathe) to having those funds being dried up and having to earn actual income in order to stay alive.

I still believe that they have an interest in being a good linux distro, their users and the desktop. Just that they also try to cut everything unnecessary in order to keep the cost down as much as possible and this time they made the wrong decision that they thought that no one was using 32-bit software.

I myself stopped building 32-bit versions of our software back in 2016 when that first announcement came on ubuntu-dev and have not received a single request for it since then so I do think that it's an easy assumption to do unless you are deep into games and Wine.

About the "postponed" bit we don't really know about that either, earlier they where to abandon it altogether so in time they might come to the conclusion that they cannot postpone it either.

Indeed, it is not Shuttleworth's responsibility to indefinitely support what has enough popularity to be an entirely community maintained and funded operation, that's how he see's it, how you see it, how I see it, certainly.

IMO Valve should be the one funding the 32-bit support effort, they have the most at stake there, they have vast wealth to draw from and the motivation to gather the required resources. There perhaps ought to be a choice upon installation of Ubuntu whether to include legacy gaming support - Valve's official container (flatpak, Snap) or their official PPA, therein residing not only Steam but also all the maintained legacy 32-bit libraries at the heart of this whole imbroglio.

Valve has expended quite a huge effort toward improving gaming on linux. The client, the Steam machine efforts, Vulkan contributions, consultation and conferences with devs, and now proton. It is a huge effort, they must have easily spent millions on this. They prove their recent continued investment with proton - they have made the biggest investments of time and resources, I await their next move. IMO they should support Canonical and form an agreement to handle the 32-bit stuff going forward.

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Bad attitudes toward Canonical and Ubuntu are seriously laughable at this point. So much overblown hyperbole, for years.

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