I'm an Arch user, and have been for quite a long time. But I'm starting to grow increasingly worried about the sustainability of their distro model. Honestly, this obsession with dynamically linking everything and updating as soon as possible is a huge house of cards waiting to fall under its own weight.

Why are we okay with the basic model for Linux dependencies being to have *all* the system's dependencies share the same global namespace, while a bunch of overworked (and often underpaid!) enthusiasts make sure that updates happen in lockstep and nothing breaks. Of course things are going to break randomly during updates! There's not enough people willing to donate their time to QA test all of this.

Keeping all this machinery working sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and for what? So that our things break randomly every now and then? So that we can feel good about "memory reuse" while in practice all software we use is Electron crap that happily spins up a chromium instance per window?

The only seemingly valid argument supporting all of this rube goldberg machinery is that we want system updates to automatically patch our applications when a CVE is detected in a system-wide dependency like glibc. But that's (1) Much less of a concern for desktop Linux, which are rarely open to the wide internet in a way that most common exploits could be achieved, and (2) Sysadmins and anyone deploying software on servers are moving away of this traditional distro model in favor of Docker precisely because distro updates break things and environments are non-reproducible.

Anyway... I won't side with Epic on this because they used a deprecated function long after it was documented as such and that's not good practice, but things that work should keep working after an update, I'm tired of this.

At least now we have Valve carefully curating the system updates on Steam OS, so there's less of an incentive to boot up windows when some game stops launching after an upgrade.

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Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: setzer22But the connotations of calling a company a "copycat" are quite negative

Well, I'm not the one who said it, but I have no issue with calling GPD that. They are a shit company and they are literally jumping on not only the "Linux bandwagon," but specifically SteamOS, after spreading outright lies about Steam Deck. I have no sympathy for them.

The whole situation about GPD was childish and a bit of a PR disaster. I wasn't aware of any outright lies though. IIRC GPD's crimes against humanity amount to using a bunch of videos without permission or giving credit, blocking Liam on twitter when he called them out on it and claiming that GPD devices are better because they run Windows and you can pirate games on them.

I won't defend them, because they did something stupid, but I'm still happy they are betting on Linux. I wouldn't get so mad over childish community manager drama. I'll save my anger for Microsoft's years of monopolizing the desktop PC market, or Facebook's (Meta :sick: :sick:) aggressive tracking and privacy-invasive practices.

Needless to say, there are other companies like OneXPlayer or Aya Neo which also seem to be betting on Linux and have had no PR twitter drama that I'm aware of. Specifically the upcoming Aya Neo Air looks like a legit competitor to the steam deck if they can keep that price tag of ~$500!

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Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: setzer22

Quoting: Craggles086and with the copy cats coming out trying to emulate what Valve are doing with the SteamDeck, maybe one or two will have another go with the PC too.

Never heard of Steam Deck copycats. There's a bunch of companies working on handheld PC systems but those have been around for years prior to the Deck's announcement.

Look back through the archives a couple of weeks. One of these companies (which previously shit all over the Deck for reasons including "it runs Linux so it will suck") has recently announced plans to install SteamOS on future handhelds, and another has announced its own rival Linux-based gaming OS.

I see. I thought you meant copycat as in "offers a handheld PC console form-factor", not as in "offers a linux gaming device".

Valve has indeed popularized (even enabled, to some degree) Linux gaming. But the connotations of calling a company a "copycat" are quite negative, almost makes it look like a bad thing that other companies with years of experience in the "PC Gaming Handheld" market are following up on Valve and start considering offering Linux gaming alternatives as a 1st party supported thing. I, for one, am pretty excited about that :)

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Quoting: Craggles086and with the copy cats coming out trying to emulate what Valve are doing with the SteamDeck, maybe one or two will have another go with the PC too.

Never heard of Steam Deck copycats. There's a bunch of companies working on handheld PC systems but those have been around for years prior to the Deck's announcement.

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I went through RMA for an unrelated reason and had the chance to speak to valve about it. Their policy is to not even look at the unit you send and just ship a brand new one to you, box and all.

So, for anyone considering opening up your deck to fix fan noise, I strongly encourage to just send it in and reroll, honestly.

They promised me they're not throwing away those bad units into to the garbage, they told me they would look into it "at a later date", but who knows.

Anyway, spare parts are always good! Not gonna argue with that. $25 is cheaper than I expected, I've seen way worse (but also cheaper).

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Quoting: GroganI'd put money on the next version of DirectX not being easy to translate into our APIs, too.

GPUs have evolved to become more general-purpose over the years, and the current generation of APIs (Vulkan, Metal, DX12) all work under that premise and introduce very similar concepts.

If Microsoft made a very different API today it wouldn't only be moving away from Vulkan, it would be moving away from modern GPU architecture, and that's unlikely to happen.

What I'd be more worried about is companies like Nvidia introducing proprietary extensions that are gated off in their Linux drivers, and that is already happening today.

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I didn't have any doubts the Steam Deck, a regular Linux machine is capable of doing gamedev. Now, Unity on Linux... That's another story. It runs, until it doesn't and then you need to hunt down answers on the Unity forums, where developers don't seem very keen on supporting or even acknowledging Linux as a platform.

Luckily we have Godot :) So I'd encourage anyone looking to develop games on their Steam Deck to pick that up instead! It's a very fun engine to mess around with, and it's free and open source.

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No wonder why this laptop looked familiar! The chasis for this is identical to the Slimbook PRO X15 I'm using right now! :huh:

This led me down the rabbit hole of research and turns out there's a bunch of laptop manufacturers (including Tuxedo and Slimbook) are selling the same computer from a Chinese manufacturer called TongFang: https://www.hk.tongfangpc.com/thin-g-series-2/ [External Link] (Note that their SSL certificate seems to have expired, so your browser may freak out when you click that link). I've also come to learn System76 is doing a similar thing with a company called Clevo.

All in all, I honestly don't mind at all. It's great that these companies are putting in the effort to sell laptops that "just work" on Linux. Especially when they're smart about it and don't pick NVidia for a Linux-oriented product.

I'm super happy with my laptop, zero driver issues, everything working out of the box with *my* OS of choice (Manjaro, currently) and a whooping 8-10 hours of battery life (or more like 6, when doing intensive work)! So I can only expect the offer from tuxedo to be *very* similar :grin: Needless to say, it's more than capable for gaming! Nothing too impressive, but if the steam deck has taught us something is that gaming it not about the maximum power throughput, it's about the comfort :)

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The music of this game is amazing, but after countless runs, introducing your own custom music can be very refreshing :grin:. This was already supported on Linux if you didn't mind editing game files, but now with a native file picker it should be incredibly easy to do so!

The first level of this game while playing "Maniac" by Flashdance fits so well it feels like the game was designed for it :)

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I always get a sentiment of "us vs them" when the Steam Deck is covered in these articles. Rightfully so, perhaps, since Valve is the first company to really put the effort to support Linux handheld PC gaming. But I wouldn't call the competition's prices "ridiculous". The price point of many of these devices is not so bad once you factor in some hidden costs in the steam deck. If I had to choose I would say I still prefer the deck overall, but not by much. It's not like competition is 2x more expensive as some make it out to be.

When compared to the Steam Deck, GPD and Aya Neo ship similar hardware, but their machines often come with 1TB storage and a screen protector. If you factor in the cost of a 500GB SD card plus the d-brand screen protector that's easily an additional 100 bucks on top of the $650 of the high-tier deck. And there's also the dock hasn't been released yet, but I bet that's going to be another $80 on top at the very least. All things considered, that's slightly over $800.

If we're talking about the cheapest Steam Deck model, now that's an entirely different thing. But I've seen too many people complain about the price of the competition while getting the highest tier of the steam deck because "64 GB is not enough" to be a bit skeptical once I hear those comparisons.

GPD Win 3 shipped for $900 during the indiegogo campaign with screen protector, 1TB SSD and **dock included**, so if you're going for the "full premium package", you can really see how the Deck is not that much cheaper, all things considered.

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