Quoting: WorMzyOnly had my deck for ~24 hours, but so far 'stable' has had issues connecting to wifi consistently, didn't log me into steam when I switched to desktop mode the first time (and consequently couldn't use the OSD keyboard to enter my password+steamcode, had to use an OTG connector to hook up a spare USB keyboard), and doesn't always switch between gaming/desktop modes when I tell it to.

Might try Preview. :P

If your issue is related to 5GHz wifi instabilities, the beta OS branch (now renamed "preview") is a good bet to get a potential fix from Valve that's being tested

if you don't want to go to preview or that fix doesn't help, here is my list of common wifi workarounds for the Deck:

1) enable developer mode, then go to the new "developer" tab in steam settings and disable wifi power savings

2) unhide your wifi ssid if hidden (hiding it is well know to not really be useful for privacy nor for security, by the way)

3) if 2,4GHz and 5GHz bands are joined in a single ssid, split them in the router configs and use only one of them

4) choose a fixed wifi channel instead of leaving it in auto (configure the same channel in both the router and the deck)

5) try a different router brand/model or a smartphone wifi hotspot... some people have issues only with certains devices but not with others

6) try an ethernet dongle instead of the deck's wifi

7) try a wifi dongle with well-known good linux support instead of using the built-in wifi chip

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Quoting: ShabbyXWhat I don't understand why is all this PE work is taking so long. You'd imagine they'd have some elf2pe tool that runs on the linker output after they build wine, what's stopping them from running it over everything all at once?

If I understand correctly, it's because those components are being rewritten from linux executables that run against the linux kernel and libs to windows executables that run inside wine

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On Proton's early days, even Windows games that could use Vulkan instead of DirectX, and adopted SDL2, had an easier time running on Proton than proprietary stacks...

Meanwhile a game like Planetary Titan: Annihilation had a linux port go completely broken on linux for AMD GPUs because of a proprietary lib they used for desingning their UI in HTML, despite the lib being available officially for linux when adopted.

This to say:
1) yes, there is a noticeable difference between native linux games and using proton, but being better than proton is as much about

2) proton is complex and frail itself so it's nice to have but not a perfect solution... years of helping people out in the Steam for Linux discussion forum on steam have shown just how much fixing proton back to help can look hopeless for the unlucky, while others can have a flawless out-of-the-box experience... it's great to have, but it would be better to have it as plan B instead of all your plan

3) running well on proton in its early days was curiously tied to the same characteristics that made other games run well as a native linux game: using opensource crossplatform libs and standards... which is waaaaay easier if done from the ground up when you first start developing a game than on after-the-fact porting (which also frequently skips that movement and entails using bundled translation layers akin to dxvk, but frequently worse... like Valve's horrible toGL or PT:A's deathtrap of a proprietary UI lib)

to me that means even if some devs only start to care about making their already released windows games run over proton instead of making them run natively on linux, there is a small step forward for them in acknowledging the platform and in possibly acknowledging the importance of crossplatform opensource libs...

then there are devs who will go for native ports after-the-fact and get burned by their original choices of proprietary libs and standards while porting (in-house or hiring external porting companies)...

some of those have taken from this experience that linux is horrible and not worth it and they didn't give up on much then because linux share was <1%, but if it's >5% it will sting to loose it due to lib XYZ that didn't behave well enough, and next game they make might start differently...

and some already develop their games as cross-platform but didn't care much for opensource libs because they only had proprietary-first ecossystems in their radar like Win10 + Xbox One series + PS4/5 + Switch + Mac, but with linux appearing on their radar they might find it now makes sense to use the opensource stuff that covers more of those platforms at once

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a Collabora dev clarified that Developer Mode does change the system from read-only to a read-write state

https://9to5linux.com/collabora-details-how-steamos-3-0-works-on-the-steam-deck [External Link]
"But Collabora also tells us that SteamOS 3.0 features a Developer Mode that lets experienced Linux users access Arch Linux’s pacman package manager to install various packages and the full power of the KDE Plasma desktop environment. The Developer Mode works by putting the system partition into read/write mode instead of the read-only mode that’s enabled by default for regular users."

I'm guessing that the Plugins developer meant that you don't loose any of the plugins and configs because they are in the userspace, but you'll have to reinstall the Plugins app to get them back to work after SteamOS3 upgrades

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i tgink the last point ShabbyX was trying to make is that those 90% that pirated the game wouldn't necessarily have bought the game instead...

it's one thing to get it for free, another to have to pay for it (and yet another to have to pay a lot, like for AAA games, and for gamers in poorer regions) if you're not that strongly interested

there are gamers who pirate a game to test it, then end up buying it later, or the sequels, etc... I'm not claiming to know if that's proportionally big or small, just that it exists and that we don't know how it affects the "with vs. without DRM" scenarios for a single game

there are also clever f...cks like Blizzard (I have to curse them given the current news), who used CD-key and CD-detection DRM on games like Starcraft, then years later released an official patch removing the DRM features from it (~ 1 decade after the initial sales, iirc?)

mother of all conjectures: would PC gaming even have become such a big thing in so many countries if there was no way to pirate software back when it started?! or would it have been just prohibitively expensive for too long?

ps: from personal experience, demos and a couple pirated games got me into it, now I have several hundred games just on steam, all legally purchased

pps: migrating to linux got me into not risking shady software sources on my PC, and that got me out of viruses and into steam for games

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Does Valve actively give that impression though? By omission, sure... they lack a disclaimer... but is it also actively induced?

I haven't seen any piece of theirs to support that... did anyone?

Sure, they're playing with fire there, because if we're lucky the Deck will bea success outside the Linux audience that has already learned not to expect official support...

But then again, they've at least been clear enough that the certification is done on their end (a "Valve garanteed") and about the criteria they use.

ps: I think it's a victory on its own right that some devs have actively engaged with the certification on a voluntary basis to provide fixes and improvements, ask for recertification, etc, after choosing not to release a linux native version of their game in the first place.

pps: It would be even more awesome if Valve made it POSSIBLE for devs to choose and signal to users that Proton is officially supported and/or that the Deck is officially supported... right now I think this doesn't even EXIST, and devs wanting to provide it would be left to signal the fact as a game news article and as a fixed post in the game's forum, at best.

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My commenting on it might jinx it, but I just have to...

When someone raised the Russia ban issue in this thread I kept reading the comments fully expecting that the whole thing would go downhill...

...but actually this is maybe the least tinfoilhat-ish exchange I've seen in several years regarding such heavy and controverted subjects, plus somehow it stayed reasonably on-topic throughout!

Who are you people, and what have you done to the internet?! :D

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Windows devs have so far refused to implement ext4 support despite it being an open standard... there are 3rd-party apps for that, but nothing great afaik.

PS: as crazy as it seems, WSL2 now supports ext4 despite the host windows OS not supporting it directly.

Yes, sd cards and pretty much any media can be formated as ext4 and then used on linux without any issue. On android, your mileage may vary.

As for mounting the Deck like an external storage via usb on a host computer, this is mostly an android/iOS aberration. In short, the same partition can't be safely mounted on 2 OSs at the same time, and those devices have unremoveable media and aren't ever actually powered off, so one has to actually mount it and serve as intermediary for the other, which carries significant overhead and limitations...

People expect that feature from appliances (what the Deck looks like) while on PC (what the Deck is) we have normal network shares... and those are much superior, but are consistently pushed aside from being an OS feature in android in favour of cloud solutions (same as with microSD slots being ommited in Google Nexus / Pixel phones "because Google Drive")

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For people who are curious to try Warpinator, it already exists as an android app too:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=slowscript.warpinator [External Link]

... and I can confidently say that both the linux and the android apps are very, very, very easy to use, stable and blazing fast for transfers when compared to pretty much any alternative! 10/10!!!

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just like it's possible with the Switch, the Steam Deck can act like the console for a TV + Controller...

...but a fullblown linux OS will shine through on the Deck in several ways where the ususal pared-down closed and console-specific OSs are almost always crap

do you have a PS5 controller? it will work
xbox one controller? works
3DO super nintento bluetooth retro gamepad? sure
a pair of Nintendo Swith gamepads slided together? you naughty heretic, of course it works ;P

a cheap targus usb-c docking station instead of whatever valve promoted but's out of stock? yep!

do you have a wireless keyboard and mouse pair to use via bluetooh or via a specific usb receiver? it will work, and actually many of the games where designed for this even before being designed for gamepads, so you'll be just fine playing, not just browsing the main OS screens

32" FullHD usb-c monitor with audio output? no problem, dude

my desktop died and I need work done ASAP!!! get the main sata3 ssd out of that tower and dualboot the deck from an usb3 casing, quick!!! the Deck is such a pushover I can even use my smartcard reader for secure auth, the printer/scanner and usb digitizer :D

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