The only game I play on Windows nowadays is Rocksmith 2014. That's because, due to the nature of the hardware, it is a bitch to setup even on Windows. Proton just isn't having any of it.
Mine’s 50/50 because I switched mid-year. Might be more soon because I just found out my steering wheel doesn’t support Linux and the fan made drivers don’t support force feedback. :(
Kinda misleading.
First of all, games do not have to be on Steam & launch through Proton to be able to run on Linux. Wine hs gotten extremely good too, even if it may require a bit more tinkering in comparison.
It's also not like this because of the Deck. Proton has been on a good run for several years now, which was very much evident based on the stats on ProtonDB. The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.
Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
there should have been more if not better ways.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such.
Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?
Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.
Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed.
What should have existed then?
Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best?
You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.
They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.
The keyboard is awful, want to type something? You better press on the screen or have physical keyboard. One hand holds the steam deck the other requires touching the screen. Shouldn’t have to come to such annoying conclusions, oh and takes like a good portion of the screen like any android phone. The answer is the deck should not be bigger again the bigger device is the issue not the software offered by another company that only made it for desktop computers. You don’t hear android users complaining about their keyboard.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it. Genshin Impact blocked it, stop with the fake information.
SteamOS is not open source, Proton is a copy of wine. Valve has no business controlling your product but people are okay with it and the whole thing is mess up. A group believes in Corporate than Linux is not the future of Linux gaming.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass. The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself. Making people buy bluetooth devices is just speaking cheap or laziness in the design. You can’t make this stuff up, Valve thought a few extra plastic was too much or something. Oh the controller you know the thing gamers have to play the game. Well can’t recharge and use controllers if you’re using cables and were forced to buy/use bluetooth versions. A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
The “repair kit” is not easy and can break the hardware or system. Oh and Valve clearly never intended to be repaired because the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place. Android batteries and iPhones don’t have such problems but Valve took the cheap way for profit.
What you say isn’t entirely true, just because you can do it doesn’t mean others can. The repair to replace batteries is stick to the hardware. Loosely attached pads that Valve admits they were broken, etc.
Valve is a known liar, we have enough lawsuits where they lied about everything. They lied to AU gov, EU gov, USA gov and user base of TF2. You can not trust them with something like SteamOS becoming Open Source, it’s been a year and refuses to do anything.
Don’t try to think fancy words is better or something magical. Copying a software to only focus on games is still the same function of Wine. Infact Linux users often have better chances at Wine than Proton which disproves it’s a different function.
My point stands has anyone tried to use wireless devices. It’s not fun to randomly get problems that Linux can’t fix. Drivers for the devices are not good enough to be used. Yet you claim there’s nothing wrong with it?!? Oh and we shouldn’t forget how useless it becomes when using portable chargers because unless you’re spending $1000 in a real charger, the average person will have a charger with nearly no speed for depleted batteries. A whole lie people like you claim never happens but science doesn’t care about your own personal opinion.
There’s nothing worth believing or pretending to care about the Steam Deck, stop promoting and protecting the billion dollar company and learn to think for yourself.
Dude no offense but these visual novels/dialogue rpgs all look like something you could throw together in a few hours of Scratch or no-code engines and they all seem like almost exact replicas of each other. I could easily believe this involved 0 coding
Yeah mate Python code for bad copy-paste 2d games is so impressive, that really shows that you can read the low-level code used in things like Proton… LOL what a joke.
Python is literally known for being the easiest and most accessible programming language (that and Lua), EVERYONE can use Python. A game made in a game engine in Python nowadays can barely even be considered code when you compare it to something like C/C++ (which is what’s mainly used in Proton and most other similar types of projects BTW). If you were using it for data science work or something, I could take it seriously, but things like PyGame and RenPy make it so easy that people who haven’t coded in their lives could make what you made in just a few days, or less…
Bottom line is you 100% do NOT know what you’re talking about when it comes to actual software development. Especially since you apparently don’t know what a fork is and just call the open-source development “copying”. You’re spouting a bunch of BS about things you clearly don’t have any knowledge about or experience with and expecting other people to fall for it. It’s insulting you’re trying to act as if toys like extremely simple Python games can even be compared to even somewhat complicated low-level code.
Again with the lies, you think 3D game engines don’t have C++ or something. You are so mad at me for being successful you trying to make other people believe in your fantasy story. Moreover you didn’t even play my games that offered RPG custom code made by me and another guy.
You don’t even know i got banned for making a RPG code for renpy because the creator is a loser who wants pure VN.
Such is you being mad and working to dead at a job. I can take this week off because I own my house and I can do whatever I want. You are nothing to me.
You can’t prove anything and just name calling, it’s just pathetic. I seen better trolling than this. What? Too scared to say mean things after I showed everyone how dumb you sound.
What? I laid out exactly what’s wrong with your logic, renpy can barely even be considered code. It’s easier to use and understand than Scratch. You thinking that making shitty dialogue games with it proves anything at all is sad lol. I could not care if you get 3rd world income from said shitty games, you couldn’t read a lick of real code. Let the adults talk, little guy.
I have nothing to prove to you, you’re the one saying Proton isn’t real software. Burden’s on you, where’s your emulation software? It doesn’t exist, you can’t understand actual software development enough to work on projects like that. But go ahead and continue trying to justify your years wasted doing nothing but making bad ““games”” that are lower than the level of what 9 year olds make, while LARPing as someone even near the level of Steam devs.
You are a delusional, sad little man, and you need professional help. Enough said.
No one said Proton isn’t software, its just a copycat of Proton just like Renpy games are copycats of the original source code. I don’t know why you keep bringing it up, you really are awful at trolling. RPG doesn’t exist in renpy and you think mathematically balanced code is easy enough for people like you. Oh ya almost forgot the game is in android too, not current version of renpy but when 2014 starts out android didn’t exist has a port.
Yes, that’s right im the first of many to have android renpy before google took over. Whatever claim you have is meaningless because HTML wasn’t the way renpy android worked.
It had to be completely coded to android studio. Which let me tell you, requires C at the time.
Too bad you are now dead wrong. Since my android versions are old it just means you can open it up and see the C language or is that too hard for your little brain.
I find it a lot better than the Switch, and I’m guessing the other devices have similar issues. The touchpads are about as good as I could expect for a device of this form factor.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it
You can install pretty much any launcher, but games with anti-cheat are likely not going to work. That’s not a Linux problem, it’s a game problem. Linux has solved the technical issues here as much as it can, and even MP games w/ anti-cheat are starting to work on Linux.
SteamOS is not open source
That depends on your definition of SteamOS. The base is all FOSS, so you can grab the graphic stack, kernel, etc and run with it. The UI Valve has made (I.e. the Steam client) is not FOSS, but that’s true of games as well, so I don’t really see what benefit the end user would have if Steam was FOSS but the games weren’t if they had issues with proprietary software.
If you want, you could even uninstall all the proprietary stuff from a Steam Deck since it’s just a fork of Arch Linux under the hood.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass
Uh, what? I’ve never had anything remotely close to the problem you’ve described. I either hold it with one grip, or I grip it on the back of the device. How am I going to break the glass?
Or are you just complaining about the size? I think it’s fine, it’s a lot more comfortable to use than my Switch, and there’s really not much you can do to get that ergonomics in a smaller package w/o sacrificing screen size.
The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself
Just get a USB hub. If you’re going to use it with keyboard and mouse, you’ll want some kind of dock or hub anyway. Any off-the-shelf hub should work just fine, just get something with enough power passthrough so you can charge while gaming.
A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
What do you mean? I mostly use the built-in controller, and my other controllers can charge just fine through a USB hub. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place
Just the battery, and that’s true for pretty much every other small device with a battery. Batteries need to be stable, and the easiest way to do that is to glue it in place. This can absolutely be better, and apparently Valve reduced the amount of glue on the new Steam Deck OLED.
And yes, most Android and iPhones have that exact same problem, phone repair places have been complaining for ages about glued-in batteries. iPhone is even worse in that it pairs a lot of the components to the device, so you need their software to program replacement parts (not sure if it’s available yet, but that was a huge complaint about their repair program). The Steam Deck does no such nonsense, everything is just a standard PCB, though the glue on the battery does suck (again, par for the course for small devices).
Valve took the cheap way for profit
I doubt the Steam Deck is directly profitable. If you look at other devices with similar hardware, they tend to go for at least $100 more than the Deck, and they don’t nearly as much custom software (just an app on Windows).
The consensus in the community is that Steam is investing in SteamOS and Steam Deck in order to sell more games and create a viable alternative to Windows, not to make profit on the hardware. Gabe Newell himself described the price point as “painful”, so I doubt they’re turning much of a profit, if at all.
SteamOS being open source would solve a lot of problems including the keyboard. Users should be allowed to customize their U.I has any Linux operating system. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t.
Again you should not trust Valve for anything. There’s enough lawsuits to prove they lied to everyone. Gabe is part of the list of liars, claiming better Steam Deck and after a year it’s a joke performance.
I’m not sure how this is implemented, but it’s possible it already is FOSS, since it’s probably part of the KDE ecosystem. I’m not sure though, I haven’t bothered to look since the keyboard works really well for me.
As for the UI, users don’t have the ability to customize the Steam client on Linux because that is proprietary, though running Steam doesn’t prevent them from customizing the desktop. The same is true on the Deck, you can customize anything on the desktop you want, you just can’t customize the Steam client.
joke performance
Citation needed. I have not had any issues with performance, and it’s actually exceeded my expectations.
you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing
How so? They literally hire people to work on Proton. That’s exactly how FOSS should work as it relates to for-profit companies. Source:
Griffais says the company is also directly paying more than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton compatibility layer
So they may not be Valve employees, but they’re paid by Valve (I suppose as contractors?), which is essentially the same thing. So it seems they’re throwing money at the problem, and reserving their internal talent to work on the graphics stack.
What you say is true, but I should credit Valve for making many games “just work” when clicking the play button without involving more steps for the user.
I know some time ago, I had to set up a bunch of wineprefixes manually whether it was using Steam or Wine to play a game, but Steam’s automatic management puts it a little bit ahead now in my view. Even though Lutris makes managing it much easier as well compared to before, it’s still a few more steps that some users would get confused or frustrated doing.
Yup, I ran MtG: Arena since public beta on Linux (way before the Steam release) and it was fine. I would have to manually reinstall every update until someone fixed it in the Lutris script, but the installation process was totally fine. I also installed a bunch of games before Steam was even a thing on Linux and they ran just fine in WINE (old PC game Lords of the Realm II, Starcraft & Starcraft 2, and others).
The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
While true, it represents a greater investment by Valve into gaming on Linux. Before the Deck, there was a steady improvement, but great strides were pretty rare. After the Deck, there was a ton of fixes that landed, especially during the 6-12 months leading up to the launch and the year following (i.e. as backorders were being fulfilled). So they absolutely invested more resources when the Deck launched.
And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.
It’s still hit and miss, but a lot more hit than miss these days. I still run into older games where the Unsupported flag really does apply, but more often than not, Unsupported just means I may need a small tweak to get it to work.
I disagree with it, but the premise is that they cant be upgraded so they are stuck at a set spec, they struggle with heating and dust issues, they make a lot of sacrifices due to needing to fit into a laptop size, and they basically need to be plugged in 24/7 which bites at the portability.
All valid points, but also all acceptable trade offs if you need a portable and flexible machine.
Upgrading or cleaning a laptop means opening up the laptop. Anyone who has opened a tower and a laptop will attest, the laptop is a nightmare to deal with and the tower is much simpler.
Depends on the laptop. For some it’s just unscrewing the bottom. Gaming notebooks aren’t the super slim ones. They tend to be easier to open than their ultrabook cousins.
Even on a lot of non-gaming laptops. I can’t say that I’ve loved the dells I’ve had, but I can’t fault them for their repairability. Cleaning out the fans, swapping memory, storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards, all just a dozen screws to remove the bottom panel and access all of that.
But you can’t upgrade the two most important components: CPU and GPU. So if your gaming laptop isn’t cutting it, you need to buy a new one, you can’t just upgrade the component that’s causing bottlenecks.
So a gaming laptop is likely to be much more expensive than a non-gaming laptop. My E-series Lenovo ThinkPad cost $400-500, which is about half the cost compared to entry gaming laptops. I haven’t once cleaned the fan, and it’s still doing well a few years later (my kids play Lego games and Minecraft on it).
So for my money, I go with a Steam Deck for games and an inexpensive laptop with integrated graphics for everything else. Total cost is ~$1k.
I have both a steam deck and a slim gaming laptop like the ones that company sells. It’s different, while I mostly game on my deck some games just aren’t good with a controller, and since I’ll be taking a laptop with me anyways why not take one that can also play games?
Mostly because battery life tends to suck. I can still play games like Minecraft and most indie games on my iGPU (esp if you go AMD), so it’s not like there aren’t options, I just won’t be playing larger AAA games on it.
I haven’t shopped too much either, but in the past, gaming laptops were significantly more expensive and often had quality issues vs business-style laptops. I quickly checked prices online, and “inexpensive” gaming laptops seem to start around $1k for a 4060 tier GPU. That’s the price of a decent business laptop (should last 5+ years) and a Steam Deck. You’ll probably want to upgrade the Steam Deck way before the business laptop, so it should help with costs longer term (and by then you’ll probably want a desktop PC anyway).
Anyway, that’s my take. I personally don’t see a point to gaming laptops, for the game money, I’d rather have two dedicated devices.
Actually battery life of gaming laptops is really good, because it’s made to hold a discrete GPU which can usually be turned off, I used to get around 6h of battery for day-to-day stuff in my gaming laptop when I recently bought it, I haven’t used it outside of a plug for a while so I assume the battery would be in a bad state today.
I get the point of having to upgrade the whole system every few years, and that they’re more expensive, but if you need portability a desktop is not viable, e.g. I moved countries a few years ago and I’ll move again in a short while, a desktop is just not practical for me. Plus I’ve had my laptop for 4 years, which is much longer than my deck.
So if I want to play games that I have issues with playing on my deck, like Doom or Cities Skylines I play them on the laptop. Granted, I could plug a keyboard and mouse to my deck, but like I mentioned I already had the laptop for years when the deck came out.
It’s only good if you have a massive battery, which means increased weight and size. I can get that same 6+ hours in a much smaller, cheaper package.
portability
I can see that.
That said, if the concern is only moving, a SFFPC can be very easy to pack. Monitors can be a pain, so if I knew I was going to move, I’d just sell those and buy new wherever I was moving. It’s just not worth the hassle unless they’re really nice.
It used to be more interesting back when LAN parties were a common thing, but AFAIK, most kids have moved to online. When I was younger, LAN parties had already switched to retro games w/o servers like OG Doom and Quake with mods, and those can run on a potato.
But honestly, my go-to is a highly portable laptop and a handheld gaming system, either a Switch or Steam Deck. That combo should be cheaper than a gaming laptop and more ergonomic. If you want to play games those systems can’t handle, a desktop PC + portable laptop should be competitive in price (like $1500-2000 combined), and should be cheaper long term.
That said, use what you have. I’m just saying that a Linux gaming laptop is kind of silly since it’s not going to handle many different games than a Steam Deck, and it’s going to be less comfortable to use than a more portable laptop and a handheld PC.
Obviously get what you want, I just don’t see much of a point these days when we have more options.
Yeah, but they’re sometimes the best option anyway. I wouldn’t use one for any length of time for gaming, but I have the luxury of not having to leave home much, and almost never for extended time. Back when I was still able to work, a laptop for gaming would have made sense on the long overnight shifts (the job has lots of downtime, and limited limitations on how it was filled).
Folks that travel a lot are in a similar boat.
Folks that can only have one PC and need it to be portable are reliant on laptops totally.
Yeah, even the best of them aren’t ideal, but they’re sensible for various use cases.
I’m pretty sure an inexpensive laptop + Steam Deck would be about the same price (or less!) as a gaming laptop.
I got my E-series ThinkPad a few years ago for $400-500 (E495, first AMD ThinkPad E series), and my Steam Deck for $530. So I paid about $1k for the pair. Gaming laptops start around $1k and go up from there.
It works well for me, but then I don’t need a GPU for my non-gaming laptop use, so I can get away with it. YMMV depending on what you need the laptop to do.
Lol, funny you mention that, because that’s pretty much my setup: A steamdeck and an XPS 15 that I got used like 5 years ago. The only problem is that I don’t really like single player games, so between steam-Xbox cross play and anticheat it’s hard to find things to play with my Xbox friends. But yeah the steamdeck is an insane bang for your buck
It absolutely makes sense. For us who want to game but also need a computer to do day to day work and meetings. I’m not buying two computers, so what I buy for work is what I have to game with.
Cuz they’re crazy expensive, not very powerful, power through batteries in a matter of minutes, and they require you to carry GIANT power supplies, which makes them poor for portability anyway.
If they don’t use AMD then good luck, Nvidia is historically garbage on Linux. I’ve built my rig to be AMD only for the specific use case of gaming on Linux so it has been a fantastic experience for me.
To be totally honest, I‘ve had to work quite a bit to get my nvidia gpu under control but so far it works. I get weird behavior at times and the proprietary trash of a driver updating is like russian roulette (on ubuntu mind you) but it does perform decent. A lot better than the nouveau driver btw which gave me 10 fps at metro.
I agree with you mostly and went AMD instead of Nvidia on whatever Cyber Monday is now. I just want to point out that the Nvidia drivers made for Fedora also come with a gaming flavor (of Fedora) called Nobara that has received high praise.
The only reason I’m running an AMD card is because of the pandemic. I’ve run NVIDIA cards for over a decade with Linux and it hasn’t been bad. There were times where it was painful but these days it’s pretty easy.
It’s really not that bad. I used Nvidia for something like 10 years on Linux and only recently switched to AMD. I was able to play games just fine, and I only really had issues when I switched to rolling releases (Arch and then Tumbleweed) because sometimes the driver and kernel would get mismatched and I’d either need to rollback or reinsntall the update. I played tons of games in that time.
AMD is a better experience on Linux, but mostly for things like Wayland and driver updates. Actual day-to-day usage is fine with Nvidia, just nothing to write home about.
That said, I have zero experience with laptops, and I’ve heard that can be a royal pain. However, I don’t know if it’s better on AMD, or if graphics switching just sucks in general on Linux.
I don’t think they overstate hatred of windows, they just overstate their willingness to try anything else. I think it’s a matter of Stockholm Syndrome, where they hate their captor, but they’ll also defend it to the death because they’re attached to it.
And there is already a mod that replaces Nvidia Frame Generation with FSR3 in games like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3 and others: github.com/Nukem9/dlssg-to-fsr3/releases
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