I do not think Valve is preoccupied of this device, I think they are enthusiastic about it. The purpose of the steam deck was to open a new market to increase the sales on the steam store. Pushing other companies to produce more mobile devices to play PC games was exactly what they was aiming at. The fact that this device runs windows is only a trivial technical detail. It is literally an "Ally" of Valve :whistle:

This ROG Ally is a competitor for Linux gaming but it can also be positive. A new mobile device will keep the moment on the media even for the steam deck. A bigger market means more attention from the developers and the Valve's Steam Deck compatibility evaluation system will push the gamers in our direction. I hope the evaluation system will not be changed to cover the windows devices.

For now Valve has one year head start on the software: UI workflow, performance optimizations, drivers, integration with the Steam environment, the compatibility evaluation system etc... The only advantage (and burden) of the ROG Ally is windows. It has probably been developed in close collaboration with microsoft, I am curious to see how the software will evolve in future (spoiler: not necessarily for the better).

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Thanks for all the answers!

I forgot about the affiliate link. It is incredible it is possible to zero the donation to the publisher and give all to the affiliate partner but it works!
When I tried the first time it wasn't working but the cause was the Firefox add-on ClearURLs that was doing its work removing the tracking parts in the link. If someone uses a similar addon keep in mind that to be able to donate to GamingOnLinux you need to disable temporarily the add-on.

You can donate to GaminOnLinux even on the books bundles!

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: peta77

Quoting: PixelDropCall of the Sea = free on EPIC right now
Control = Has been free on EPIC twice
Hellblade = Has been part of MANY bundles in the past.

Then I have 2 others from other rarer bundles.

If you have been collecting EPIC games, it's an okay-ish bundle not great but okay.
If you have been collecting EPIC + Most all good value bundles for a while then you're almost paying sale prices for the stuff your missing. Which the issue with paying near sale prices on bundled games is you can not return them if you don't like them, so unless you know you're going to like them you're better off just paying the couple extra dollars for return protection. Actually taking the time to returning 1 or 2 games out of 4 during a big normal sale can literally save you more money than buying a bundle where you're only save a few dollars per game.

Or you want the games, pay "sales prices" for them and support some charity organizations with a bundle!

Because that's what these are about. If you're just looking for the cheapest prices, you're not the targeted audience.

That and grabbing free games on Epic, does absolutely nothing to support Linux and Steam Deck gaming. Additionally, there's no doubt many like me not really paying much attention at all to free games from Epic. While the Heroic Launcher is great, much prefer to stick with Steam and get bundles like this.

I have some questions about how this stores work:
How buying bundles on stores like HumbleBundle or Fanatical is supporting Linux?
- installing and playing a game in steam from Linux will raise the sales statistics the developers/publishers have access to? Are we sure "activated games" are handled the same way as "bought games"?
- will Valve get a percent of the cost of the keys in the bundle? You know, bandwidth, infrastructure etc.

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I do not understand if this this simplification will allow both versions of Easy-Anticheat (the Epic Online Services version and the old one, as wrote by the Vermintide2 developers some weeks ago) to work without upgrading the code base?

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Quoting: EhvisI wonder which Mad Max was "verfied". Native standard, native vulkan-beta or proton.

Here:
https://steamdb.info/app/234140/info/ [External Link]
at the bottom of the table there is a "Steam Deck Compatibility" row with this info:

tested_build_id: 1398848

and a link pointing to the page:
https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/1398848/ [External Link]
containing other links.
This may point to what version was verified but I do not know how to track the parent repository/branch/build, can someone help?

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Quoting: AnzaPS: GOG doesn't seem to have Wrath of the Necromancer DLC as separate DLC (it is included in the Necromancer Edition though), which is bit of a shame as that DLC adds more content and has different ending to the story

This one? https://www.gog.com/game/iratus_wrath_of_the_necromancer [External Link]

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Quoting: The_Aquabat

Quoting: stormtux(after switching to "steam beta", enabling "proton experimental" and switching to the "bleeding edge" version of proton experimental...

oh wait so you also have to opt in for the steam beta too?

Yes.

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Quoting: SirBubblesWell, I'm hoping that one day, Space Marine might just work. I loved smashing Ork face, but cracking it and running it the old-fashioned way seemed a hassle.

Yesterday I tested Warhammer 40000: Space Marine and it just worked (after switching to "steam beta", enabling "proton experimental" and switching to the "bleeding edge" version of proton experimental... and checking game files and resetting the proton prefix a couple of times :whistle: ). Maybe now it is not a "just works" situation but the anti-cheat problem looks solved. I even played in a multiplayer coop match, there are still people playing it!.

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From the release anouncement [External Link]:

Please note – the Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition requires Ray Tracing capable hardware as the minimum spec – please check the PC Specs chart for more information.

With my GPU I am out but I am still interested to know if there is any news about a possible official support for linux.

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Quoting: ageresIn order to understand what Valve could intend, people should realize it's a commercial company that exists to make money, not to drive people to go FOSS. I don't believe that Valve advances Linux gaming just because good Gaben loves Linux and us, Linux users. Before suggesting an idea, try to think what benefit can Valve get and how. It should lead to a situation where more people spend more money on Steam.

I agree with ageres and the other that expressed similar concepts before.
Supporting Linux is not the purpose of Valve, it is the mean that allows them not to be cut of from the market by the "walled garden" aspirations of Microsoft. Another goal for Valve may be to be able to keep selling classic old games that have problems running on the last Windows OS versions. I read some old games already run better under Proton than under Windows 10.

This USB bootable Steam drive looks like more a developer tool than a final user tool. I find it difficult to imagine a typical PC user go buy a (high performance) external drive and change the boot configuration of the PC to... what advantage? Run a game they already own with (usually) lower performance?

I think instead of an independent developer that is is evaluating the option to publish a game also on Linux but it knows nothing of this OS. If there was a cheap tool to be connected to their development PC that allowed them to test the game on Linux? Maybe with debug tools already loaded and configured to work with Proton and all the software and services that Valve offers. Maybe even with development environment already installed and configured with plugins, I think for example about Unity and all the games without a Linux version even if in theory it may be supported. No need to change their development environment after all the hours spend in configuring and adapting all the tools to their workflow. This will be an interesting new feature. It may even be useful to big companies for some initial evaluation to support Proton.

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