So far loading times have been pretty decent on a cheap 256GB SD card and the 64GB model. So it's best to stick with those than to buy an ssd drive and risk it not being compatible (or even worse, working for a while but killing your deck over time).

It's still great that you can do this! Sometimes drives die so it's good that it's not soldered in and easily replaceable.

Still, I think a deck with 1TB storage would be an absolute beast. With many AAA stuff being over 50GB nowadays, 250 feels a bit too limited, having to uninstall games to fit others all the time.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: soulsource

Quoting: setzer22Does this fix the issue of Gaming Mode being stuck at 720p when plugged on an external screen?

Late reply, but I finally got to try this:
Yes. You can set games to render in "Native" resolution (or any other resolution the display supports). I tried it with several games, and found that FullHD is a bit much for the Steam Deck's GPU in 3D titles (for instance Elite: Dangerous makes the fan spin at full speed with FullHD output), but for 2D games (I tried Super Hexagon and One Deck Dungeon) it's awesome.

Glad to hear that. Exciting! :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Does this fix the issue of Gaming Mode being stuck at 720p when plugged on an external screen?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Ah, if only they'd realised 10 years earlier open sourcing their drivers was the right move! :grin: I'll still watch safely from the distance with my full AMD setup. Perhaps in 10 more years after this gets accepted and they've ironed out all the bugs and I can consider buying their hardware again.

I'm sure there's nothing fishy going on here:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Liam Daweonly a very tiny niche of Linux Gamers that actually care what's under the hood.

As a game developer, I wish more devs (and players!) understood the value of embracing open and portable libraries / standards like SDL or Vulkan instead of giving in to propietary M$ crap. And that's my main reason to stand behind and support Linux gaming! Am I a minority? Perhaps, but everyone dismissing this minority's point of view might do more harm than you think in the long run.

Proton teaches developers that it's okay to embrace M$ "standards" and let them be the de-facto rulers of what the PC desktop experience should look like for everyone.

For all it has advanced in the past few years, Linux is still playing catch-up to whatever Windows decides it's the norm. That IMO is a very sad state of affairs. We get innovations in software and hardware years later (if at all!) because all the development and prototyping for games and hardware products is done almost exclusively on Windows aside from a few indie studios.

But yeah, I also like playing games without having to dual boot. It's convenient and I do it a lot, nobody is perfect.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Liam DaweWell, Steam Deck is actually an open platform entirely. The Steam store is its own garden of course, every store is, but the Deck allows you to install anything.

Indeed! Perhaps I focused too much on the negative aspects with my comment, but what I mean is that, as a community, we need to ask for these alternatives :) Theoretically, you can install "anything" on the Deck, because it's a PC, and that's a great step forward. But without real alternatives to Steam, to the average user it might as well be a walled garden.

Currently, the only comfortable way to game on the deck is to go via the Steam interface, and even things like emulators need to be wired as non-steam games or they simply won't work well. We need more Lutris, we need more sc-controller, and we need more of whatever is to come that will help us make our Decks less "Steam" gaming machines and more "Linux" gaming machines.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

While I can totally get behind the sentiment, I think we must be cautious about all this praise about the Deck. The work Valve is doing for the Linux gaming ecosystem is undeniable, but they're acting as a for-profit corporation, and I'm afraid sooner or later their interests might start to deviate from this community. What happens then?

If the year of Linux Gaming is the year we made the biggest step towards having all Linux gaming happening in a proprietary walled garden, I can't help but see that with a bit of healthy skepticism.

By all means let's celebrate the release of the Steam Deck! But it's also important for this community to start thinking about ways to game on Linux without relying on Valve's software and/or hardware. We need ways to use the Steam Deck without steam, or we are at risk of Valve having too much power over Linux gaming. We don't want users to think (quite ironically) that Windows is more "open" in this regard. At the very least, every deck user should start asking *why* the device's controller becomes useless unless steam is open. Adding all sorts of software as "non-steam games" is hardly a workaround.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

My experience with Arch (Manjaro, nowadays) and Linux in general substantially improved the moment I started choosing boring proved technology over the shiny new stuff.

Instead of being mad at Linux about my new fancy bluetooth headset not working, I now just the boring 3.5mm jack. When it comes to graphics cards, I just gave nvidia the middle finger and been happy ever since: No more messing around with their propietary drivers or worry about how easily distros will let me install their crap.

That said, I've also had my share of breakage after an arch update, and after years using it I'm still hesitant to recommend it to my peers for that reason, so I totally see the point.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: pete910

Quoting: setzer22Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it

Can you link to the info/BOM that has that regards costings?

Come on, you know I can't do that. Nobody can, because this is undisclosed private information. If I really had this information (who knows!), it would be a breach of NDA. :)

But my point is that many people seem to agree that Valve is selling the lowest tier at a loss. You may think $400 is a lot if you're measuring against the switch (~30% increase), but fitting an actual PC in this form factor with an x86 architecture, plus all the research work in prototyping and ergonomics, design their custom chip...? And you must take into account that it's their first time doing this (it's not like they had an established process to design handheld consoles like Nintendo).

Moreover, you look at the competition and see no other company out there has been able to sell a similar product at this price point. Are all the steam deck competitors ripping off their customers by charging enormous benefit margins (i.e. selling <$400 hardware for >$1000)? Of course valve has the benefit of having loads of cash and can affort to do mass production, but it doesn't look like they're doing it right now: How many are still waiting on Q2 or Q3 orders? If anything, production looks like it has been quite slow.

All these things add up, and honestly from the outside it seems like a huge risk for them. Like every other Linux enthusiast, I want them to succeed! But honestly they're either *very* optimistic about their potential sales figures or they're selling at a loss and hoping for a revenue increase from people purchasing more steam games. Or maybe they're doing out of love for the linux community, but I'm not that naive.

But anyway, what do I know about business? I'm just a random dude on the internet! If you believe anything I just said, joke's on you. :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Being a happy owner of several GPD devices (as well as recently a Deck), the first thing I thought when I saw the steam deck announcement was: These guys are screwed.

And I can't help but feeling sad about it :/ The've pioneered the whole handheld gaming thing and made that a reality several years before valve came and announced the Deck. Their products *worked* as a steam gaming device way before Valve even thought this was a good idea, they basically did the market research for them. It's sad to see them now being run out of business by the bigger corporation. Valve is selling the deck at a loss because they can afford it, and that will take care of killing off the "competition". But such is the brutal world of business ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I don't like people abusing copyright law to do stupid things. They are obviously in the wrong about this, but I don't think rehashing what everybody agrees with would contribute much to the discussion at this point.

View this comment - View article - View full comments