I have both. The deck is not going to be great for anything PC. It’ll be great for optimized gaming. Period.
I have actually had a few Beelinks. I immediately put linux on them, as I can’t stand using windows. For linux, they work great. Mine is my main rig / torrent server / Jellyfin server. It works great for all of those.
There are different Beelinks, they do not all perform as well as others. I went the AMD route, as they play nicely with linux. The intergrated AMD gpu + cpu are also supposed to have a synergy (not sure the industry term for this) that intel + nvidia do not.
The Beelink, when not taxed, can spool down to less than 10 watts, which is incredible. The fan is not loud, even when taxed. I honestly don’t even notice it ever, even a foot away.
I found the Ser5 wasn’t capable of running even simple games well. The ser6 most certainly does. I tried both Windows and Linux, and the 6 was better. IF you can afford the Ser7, I’d say go for that. There is also the pricey GTR series, which is their premiums.
Also, consider Minisforum. They’ve got the best specs of any miniPCs, but pricey as fuck.
I've been using a Steam Deck as my only PC for almost a year now, for work (graphics design, web dev, illustration, some Blender) as well as play ofc. Aside from my suboptimal dock options (Valve doesn't sell any hardware in my market) It's been a very smooth experience, and I've not even had to disable immutability at any point.
I would like to support the point that Game Mode is one of the most important features the Deck has, and losing out on it by installing Ubuntu feels like a loss.
But I would also like to note that Steam OS now has Distrobox built in: for most use-cases you can just set up all the software you need inside an Ubuntu container without much hassle.
Ultimately though, the form factor is the main difference. If I only needed to keep it docked all the time a Deck would not make much sense. But I love shifting to my bed after a workday and playing anything and everything I would have needed to sit at a desk to do before!
I had to look up beelink because I had never heard of them. They look cool.
It sounds like the decision is:
Do I get a gaming device that can do light computing?
Or
Do I get a light computing device that can do gaming?
As a steam deck owner, it would probably get by doing the things you mentioned and it would probably be a more stable/easy gaming experience. But I personally wouldnt want to use it as a computer. As soon as you want to do anything non-super-basic it’s gonna be annoying since it’s an immutable distro and not set up the way most Linux distros are. A dock would solve the port issues. But You also said you are going to switch to Ubuntu and at that point…
The beelink would give you a little more flexibility and if they games you play already run on Linux, then it’s gonna be pretty easy to get it working (assuming beelinks hardware is all 100% Linux capable.) I’d go with that. The only benefit of a steamedeck is steamOS and the backing of valve to make sure it’s going to work and the portability. You plan on getting rid of the first benefit and don’t seem to care about the second.
Yep, I was leaning into the Steam Deck this morning when some folks said I could do it without a dock, and having it in my hands for gaming would be nice, but I’m now going to the Beelink camp simply because I don’t want hassle when I use it as a regular PC. and for the same price I get more capabilities with the Beelink.
The Deck would be fine for what you want, but the Beelink more capable. The Deck would be more portable and therefore useful in that capacity, but it’s all subjective. If you don’t care about the screen, get a refurbished first-gen for a discount, or take your chances and find a used one on eBay. I’ve okay things about the ROG, but SteamOS makes Deck a no-brainer in my mind.
The deck shines with its default OS, and while installing other OSs is possible, it’s probably not gonna be a great time. Though you may not need to, as the deck’s desktop mode is pretty capable for light browsing/working. Especially now with the addition of the nix package manager.
As for the dock stuff, you’re not wrong, but a dongle would work just well as a dock, so if you want to wall mount it, you just need to leave enough space to hang a dongle to it.
Overall, a beelink would probably work best, and give you fewer headaches if a desktop is what you’re looking for, but the deck has the portability/handheld factor. It’s really gonna be up to your needs, which one is better.
Thanks. I will look into the Deck’s default OS more closely to see its advantages and disadvantages. I don’t want to spend too much time fiddling around with stuff so if I can keep that that’d be great. The handheld aspect would not be its primary use but it definitely is a big plus. To top it off, it seems that using a stacked dongle like these for HDMI/USB ports/charging would do the job of the dock, that would seal the deal, I think. Should this dock be enough in terms of battery for charging, HDMI, an external disk, and a couple of Bluetooth joystick receivers? www.amazon.ca/…/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2SDJV6TQJWS5M&…
The Steam Deck only has a single USB-C port on it, so you would need the dock for USB-A ports. The good news is that the existing USB-C port is on the top of the Deck and the dock connects via a short cable. You can use the dock as a stand but it’s not required.
Some players provided feedback indicating the continued preference for a Windows operating system.
Interesting that it wasn’t something like an “overwhelmingly majority” of player feedback calling for Windows that prompted the change, just some… At least they will continue to provide HoloISO from their website and officially support it.
Some players could mean the large majority. Without any quantification a meaningless metric.
Plus it makes sense. The type of person who wants Linux on something like this is probably more than happy to install linux on it. Vs the average Joe who doesn’t want to futs with the quirks of running games through proton/is just used to windows probably doesn’t want to or doesn’t even know how to.
Sadly it cannot yet. The engine immediately crashes upon starting it up. Current focus is more on getting Unreal Tournament v436 and Unreal Gold v226 (and Deus Ex whenever it gets some attention) running.
Never noticed while gaming for months in high refresh rate screen. I don’t think it’s worth switching to KDE. I’m currently on KDE because I was convinced by others this VRR issue was a problem but honestly there is so many things wrong with KDE I wish I did not switch
Can you elaborate on the issues you have with KDE?
Perhaps you should test Plasma 6 in a KDE Neon live environment, and report any bugs you may find, especially one’s particular to your hardware configuration, that way your particular issues would get patched.
You can also help by making suggestions for general improvements too.
No idea where to report this but this is the list I keep. Some already have reports I could find as far back as 2012.
default screenshot tool does not copy to clipboard (as soon as app closes(which is immediately after the screenshot is taken) the clipboard data is lost)
fix is to keep the app open until after pasting which adds just so much overhead for no reason
display scaling does not work (125% causes all fonts to be fuzzy)
alt tabbing does not work as expected (shift-tab should go back in the alt-tab menu but it does not (apparently only with SOME keyboars??? since 2012: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294249))
while alt tabbing: every other screen disappears which makes me motion sick
while alt tabbing: clicking the screen you want to go to cancels the alt-tab and you land back to where you started ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? This one makes me unreasonably angry every time it happens.
almost every theme breaks krunner (background somehow shifts when hiding??)
default settings app is junkware
side bar behaviour is terrible unless you have it wide enough for it to go double sidebar (eg: when on home in sidebar: search > click on group > click on back > click remove search > puts you in the group again?????)
crashes when changing mundane settings
every single screen looks different, no consistency across the app
it is using some custom text selection logic or SOMETHING because double click text selection in text fields does not select per word
mouse up outside popup while selecting text closes the popup?? (mouse up next to a button that you mouse downed on correctly cancels the mouse click without closing the popup)
many apps show the wayland icon in task bar (every bugreport to kde is just replied with "yeah that's the apps fault" but it works in gnome)
The screenshot issue maybe fixed, have you tested it recently? I assume you mean Spectacle with Klipper. If it’s still happening, it’s likely something simple like the screenshot is being wiped out in Klipper storage when the Spectacle window is closed instead of sticky around.
Perhaps a miss-configuring of the distro you’re using or a bug in Spectacle or Klipper itself.
I’d recommend testing it with the latest version of Spectacle on Plasma 6(for latest Klipper) and checking what’s happening in ~/.local/share/klipper/history*.lst
Then open a bug report on your findings if it’s still happening.
Scaling causing fuzzy font is a known issue related to DPI, it’s supposed to be getting fixed in Plasma 6.
This alt tab (Activities) bug was closed with “Needs Info”, you should probably open another one and provide the missing info using the old bug as reference.
Perhaps they could add/obey an animation, like slide-behind or genie. Might be worth opening a bug ‘suggestion’ report.
That’s a bug for sure, test in Plasma 6 and open a bug report if it’s still there.
I’ve personally never had any issues with theming Krunner, perhaps worth testing in Plasma 6 and opening a bug report.
Default settings app is getting a rework in Plasma 6, try it out make suggestions on how to improve it.
That’s the app not obeying the .desktop rules, it’s a design decision taken as to prevent a particular vulnerability where a malicious app could switch icon extremely rapidly causing all sorts of issues and allowing for potential arbitrary code execution.
Gnome just said “fuck it, we don’t care; won’t fix” and left the vulnerability as is.
In the first forum post, the user having the same problem as I didn’t have base-devel installed and presumably neither did I. I go to intall and it returns this error:
archlinuxfr.db failed to download error: failed retrieving file ‘archlinuxfr.db’ from repo.archlinux.fr : The requested URL returned error: 404 error: failed to synchronize all databases (failed to retrieve some files)
The second forum suggest that I have to compile ZMusic. I do that and get this error:
fatal: destination path ‘ZMusic’ already exists and is not an empty directory. mkdir: cannot create directory ‘ZMusic/build’: File exists VGM/GYM: Nuked OPN2 emulator will be used CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:230 (message): Could NOT find PkgConfig (missing: PKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE) Call Stack (most recent call first): /usr/share/cmake/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:600 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE) /usr/share/cmake/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:99 (find_package_handle_standard_args) thirdparty/fluidsynth/src/CMakeLists.txt:157 (find_package)
– Configuring incomplete, errors occurred! make: Makefile: No such file or directory make: *** No rule to make target ‘Makefile’. Stop.
I find the comments in the AUR package page the best source of information to debug AUR issues.
Anyway, if you don’t want to use exactly that AUR package, there are multiple ways to install gzdoom witch some may be easier to install. You many different packages come up when you search gzdoom.
And what comes to other options, for Steam users there is luxtorpeda that integrates with Steam. Lutris users have their gzdoom runner. For the rest there is flatpak version available.
This is a kinda off-topic recommendation, but might I suggest you try out KDE Plasma 6 in a KDE Neon live environment and test out the improved VRR and such; reporting any bugs you may find.
It’d be very helpful to making sure KDE Plasma 6 is as stable as possible on launch for everyone.
Not a lot of testers have a VRR monitor to test, and various hardware configuration can yield weird bugs not fond on other systems.
Thanks.
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