Quoting: buckysrevengeWhat's nice about those of us that bought Steam Machines back in the day, they've greatly benefited from all of Valve's work on Proton. Now if they could just properly migrate the Deck UI, we'd be set. I bought my Alienware Steam Machine r2 a little over 5 years ago, did some minor upgrades and it works better than ever now that I can play even more of my library.

It's not only beneficial to Steam Machines/deck though.

It's also great for GNU/Linux gaming overall. I mean Valve have done it in such a way that it's not "just for steam" - the changes benefit everyone trying to game on GNU/Linux, even those who don't use Steam, you won't need a steam deck, or a steam machine (or steam at all) to benefit from the changes they've brought to us.

It's great that they've done it in an open way, which benefits everyone. For that valve has earned my support and my respect.

There has been no other game store that's worked this hard to make gaming on GNU/Linux viable. You have to admire the work they've put it to make it so.

Perhaps it won't be long until the other stores catch on to the profit to be made, and bring their own stores over. Maybe?

Although at this point it would look like they're saying "Let's let valve do all the hard work, then we'll piggy back off their cash cow once it's ready".

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Quoting: NociferHey, what do you mean "imagine that"? Outside of Steam (which manages its prefixes automatically) I still use a single, manually configured prefix for all my games! Granted, nowadays I hardly do any post-setup because between Wine, Proton and Proton-GE most everything is already integrated by default (I just add a drive letter for quick access to the Games partition and install PhysX for compatibility with some older games) but still, "one prefix to play them all" is my mantra :D

Fair enough!

But I always go with separate prefixes, perhaps out of habit. I always think "Now what if I need to install some library (such as DX9) at some point for this app/game/utility?"

If I needed to add a library, or an app screws up - I can just clear the whole prefix and start over - leaving all other working apps/games right where they are (working).

I did it once, I had all my stuff under ~/.wine - then one day, an application needed an update - I updated it - It needed a newer version of .NET - I updated the .NET and.. booomm ~/.wine was dead, it was easier just to delete ~/.wine/ than try to remember which libraries I had already needed and set in winecfg, remove the broken bits of .NET and somehow get the thing working.

So it was 'rm -Rfv ".wine"' and then learn about prefixes more :tongue:

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I feel GNU/Linux has really earned this and in my view GNU/Linux has come a long way since Valve got here, for those oldies like me who remember GNU/Linux of the early 2000s before valve came long (and maybe older.. if so, respect!) and have been using GNU/Linux since then and all I can say is GNU/Linux has grown tremendously both in terms of usability and acceptance by the public.

Do you remember when the public used to think we were geeks/nerds? Or that GNU/Linux is obscure and difficult? Or that it can't play games? it's just for servers? These are things people used to say, but they simply don't anymore.

I mean sure, we still get the odd numpty who thinks those things but mostly their just misinformed, where as years gone by it was honestly mostly true (it used to be a nerd/geek thing tbh).

I mean, it's not just in the area of games that GNU/Linux has grown. Let's look at the desktop environments, notably KDE 5.24 - honestly just look at the functionality it has now.. and it's not even a buggy mess! It mostly works perfectly. (If you remember when KDE 4 was released.. you'll understand what I mean)

It retains the ability to highly tune the environment to how you like it, while also being able to be just left as a default for those who like defaults. Yet highly stable too!

Then there's the backend, we had iptables - and sure enough it was "simple" enough. Once you spent months studying the documentation (assuming you didn't just cheat and use something like Shorewall, which admittedly I did on servers for years despite that I RTFM and understood iptables well).

But now we have firewall-cmd that's included across multiple distros by default - that's good from a sysadmin point of view, it means being familiar with a tool regardless of the distro you are using. But of course, it's not mandatory and of course you can drop back to simple iptables if you wish, for example to still run Shorewall on some systems. But firewall-cmd is so simple and easy to use, realistically there's no reason to not use it.

Then there's systemd, this one is controversial. It's a bit like marmite, you either love it or hate it. I admit when it was first announced I had that kneejerk reaction and hated it too. Then I had no choice but to work with it (RHEL, Fedora) and honestly once you figure it out it's crazy simple to use and has some neat tricks up its sleeve.

I mean, some that even apply to gaming. Don't want that wine game (or any app tbh) to access the net? Systemd will fix that without needing to mess about with user groups or firewalls:
systemd-run --scope -p IPAddressDeny=any wine ping duckduckgo.com

Done, no more net for that wine instance. (Yes, this requests password, but the game itself will run as the user that executed it, ofc you want to replace "wine ping duckduckgo.com" with your game launch command.)

It's the simple things like this that I like about systemd, then there's the simplicity of units.

Now, hardware.. oh hardware. Honestly, in this day and age it's quite difficult to find a piece of hardware that doesn't work out the box with GNU/Linux, pretty much most things will work straight away! ( Except nvidia ;) )

This is a huge step away from older GNU/Linux, where the answer to your question of "How do I make wifi work?" was "Don't bother, go get an ethernet cable!"

And look at ATI/AMD now! I remember a time when it was the general advice: Whatever you do.. don't get an ATI card if you want to play wine games! Get a nvidia card, sure you'll need to install the nvidia drivers from their binary file (anyone remember that old blue nvidia TUI install screen?) but it's the only way you're going to get any 3D performance.

But now.. the whole thing is flipped on its head, generally now the advice is to go get that ATI/AMD card, and avoid nvidia if you can.

Other usable things like suspend to ram, suspend to disk - these things used to notoriously hit-and-miss as to whether it worked on your hardware. In my case it wasn't until the mid 2010s that I actually got it working.

And since then? Once again mostly works on any hardware! Albeit I did get a kernel panic during a suspend to ram attempt the other day, I got to see the classic flashing CAPS/NUMLOCK LEDs.. oh I missed seeing that, it has been years xD.

But still, far better state than it was before.

Of course, if we have to talk about games (it is a game website after all).. yup gaming is a lot simpler now too! I was using wine long before valve came along and games that worked were often slow. We had to manually choose our overrides and setup our prefixes manually (some people didn't even use separate prefixes back then, imagine that), later PlayOnLinux helped with this somewhat, but it was still very much hit and miss.

Then valve blasted proton at us and boom.. wine has never been easier.

.. and this is getting all too long... tbh.. I could talk all day about the things that have changed. But if I'll say one thing, GNU/Linux is much more mature now and ready for the general public than it ever was before.

Sure, it has changed. But in my view, it's worth it.

Overall big +1 for GNU/Linux from me.

Oh.. but there is one huge negative too!

I spend too much money on games now!

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Quoting: scaineI'd have to have a style before I could match my (as yet imaginary) Deck to it. Is "geeky, tight, hairy Scotsman" a style?

I absolutely Love the mahogany effect though. Beautiful.

I just got a crazy idea from your description 😂

I'm thinking Tartan plaid style case, with a white indented tux on the left touch pad and a Scotch Malts on the other side, followed by a matrix style wallpaper on the screen, next to a haggis (I really need to get back to Scotland and get another proper haggis)

And now I'm hungry 😂

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I'm still Q3, thankfully I'm no longer "After Q2" - which means I can financially plan for Q3. As such, I picked my self up two new Yubikeys for work using some of my steam deck fund :tongue:. I'll put the money back between now and July.

But like most people, I also use GNUCash to manage all my personal finances with a complete breakdown of my personal income/expenses, such as what I purchased, how much it cost me, how much I've spent through each quarter/year and that goes along with what my savings are and what they are intended for, the savings goals etc etc etc.

I also use it for business accounting, but that's a whole other thing.

But I've been doing it for years, so it's nothing new to me and gives me more reason to love FOSS software :happy:

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Tbh, I'm going to continue supporting GOG and purchasing from them.

I'm sorry but that's my decision. Of course I also use Steam because I support all the work they are and have been doing for the tux community.

Now, technically GOG is still DRM free.

Remember what DRM actually is for a moment:
Digital Rights Management

Aka, controlling what you can or cannot do with the files you've downloaded.

Multiplayer features are not a DRM, even if they require online. Because it doesn't change your rights with what you can or cannot do with the games files.

Now I understand Hitman apparently required online to use some single player features from what I have heard. Technically that was a form of DRM but also not at the same time. Since you could still freely copy and run the game on any computer.

With that said, I noticed earlier someone in the thread mentioned point 2 featuring the text "and downloaded".

This isn't a restriction or threat so to speak, it's just the simple reality. The fact is, unless you downloaded it then nobody can guarantee your access to it. For example if GOG fails as a business, and you can't play the game because you can't download it anymore, that's not a DRM nor GOGs fault, it's just a sad cost of losing a business.

Arguably you don't really have access to the game until you've downloaded it anyway, so it's your responsibility to do that.

Anyway, GOG is arguably our last chance to have games without heavy DRM. So I'm going to support them.

For example, most GOG games for years you could load up in Wine without needing some random NoCD patch. That's a great feature within itself. (Remember years ago, even if you had the CD, the CD check would fail in wine)

Additionally if you use Lutris you really don't need the galaxy client. Now if Lutris didn't require me to open my steam game library publicly, I might use it for my steam games more often too 😀

Unfortunately I prefer having my libraries private, so Lutris's steam integration is a little cumbersome.

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In the UK, the current guestimate is they invited ~150 people to purchase the 512 model, based on those who did/didn't get the email (and the leaked numbers at the time, all those who were above 150 in the UK didn't get an email).

Now consider they've got an estimated 800k orders to process.. don't expect it quickly and stick to those Q1/Q2 times, don't expect it sooner.

Put bluntly, don't expect your decks any time soon. If you're in "After Q2" like me, you're definitely not getting it until at least 2023. With that said, I was in Q2 before being bumped to the "whenever we feel like it" group prior to the delay but I still don't expect it until at least 2023, I'm not holding my hopes up for a delivery this year.

But that's fine, I'm happy to wait until next year :grin:.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: BlackBloodRumQuick question about the deck for those lucky enough to have access..

My understanding is that valve have their own Arch repository for the deck, with all their bits they need. However the OS is "just enough" for the deck right?

Do the repos contain other software or utilities?

As I understand it, yes and no, but somewhat more "no" than "yes". By default you can't do normal installs from normal repos (let alone the AUR), the OS is sort of frozen that way. You can install Flatpaks and Appimages; for the Flatpaks there's a GUI thing.
But then there's like a developer mode or something which gets you the ability to screw it up properly. :grin:

That's interesting - in theory - at least, if the deck has access to and / or installed cryptsetup it should be entirely manageable from the userland.

Aside from being a gaming device, I was / am hoping I could use it in a similar fashion to a portable computer - perfect for international travel with encrypted external storage as a place to store SSH & VPN keys so I can work while on holiday :-).

My phone already has that access.. but the screens a bit small for real work and android isn't ideal. Thus, dock + monitor + keyboard = game on (work).

That's one of my hopes for the deck anyway.. aside from the obvious gaming aspect.

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Quick question about the deck for those lucky enough to have access..

My understanding is that valve have their own Arch repository for the deck, with all their bits they need. However the OS is "just enough" for the deck right?

Do the repos contain other software or utilities?

For example, one thing I would really like to do is enable LUKS support for external storage cards due to international travel... however depending on the level of optimization this may not be there by default. But I wonder could this be done out the box / installed from repos and supported by the kernel/distro? Or will this be a new distro needed?

Apologies if this is a stupid question or has already been asked.

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Thanks for this Liam! I've been looking forward to your posts about this system the most since if I'm honest I don't entirely trust the other reviewers / companies due to their high risk of bias (think sponser influence: say it's good / bad because we pay you!) and possible "blame all breakage on linux" without understanding the system or real cause.

Too many times I've read (on other websites) articles about Linux and they've stated a supposed Linux fact that's entirely wrong while thinking "well if you just did .. you wouldn't have that problem!"

Or blatant falsehoods.. most recent was a win 11 vs linux on a website called Windows Report.. they got Linux all wrong... it was amusing though.

That and I admittedly share the small girly hands issue and I was also worried about that! I have a small phone for this reason, so I can use it 😂

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