And it’s a Linux thing, so you can do it with your desktop too!

They’re cute, thematically accurate, and the dynamic nature of them including the alternate version is really really cool.

Microsoft is doing a banging job, two years ago I had only a little bit of Steam Deck in there against Windows. And just mid October I put Linux on the gaming computer…

It takes days to actually drain the battery a significant amount, you’re not going to notice it during the honeymoon phase :P

I noticed it because my Deck lives most of the time on the dock.

A thing about the official dock, maybe it’s just my setup BUT: it drains the battery. It doesn’t look like it, but if it’s off or suspended, the Deck loses charge while connected to the dock, then you grab it to use it (and the battery is like 97%!) but within 5 minutes it’s completely dead. Again, it might be just my setup, but now I unplug the Deck from the dock once it’s off.

The main thing IMO is to get some hands on time with it. Figure what you want, what you like, and most importantly what you would like to see improved… and go from there. See if you prefer to use it as a console, or if you want more of a gaming computer and use regularly the desktop. Maybe you’ll want a dock and how you want it will depend on your needs. You get my point :D

Anyway for the laptop see if you like https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/ specifically the Nvidia one so it has the drivers pre installed. I use it “everywhere”

Lower your expectations, like… drastically. First, this is what I used for my test (quite fun even if clunky, can recommend) and as you can tell, not exactly pushing any boundaries graphic wise. Then I installed SteamVR (obviously!) and https://github.com/alvr-org/alvr to use my Quest 2. In ALVR I set the resolution to the minimum and 60 hz. Once everything was working, I went inside to SteamVR settings and… dragged the resolution to the minimum. Text was still legible in game, everything was very pixelated but usable, and the FPS kept around 60. Do note that it’s enough to give some people motion sickness, not me fortunately, but you really want to target 72 or more. In all of this the Deck was roaring with fury (docked) and as my amusement worn out, I just uninstalled SteamVR and Taskmaster because it’s really not worth it especially since on the other side of the desk I have a gaming computer.

tl;dr works but just barely and expectations needs to be very low. Not worth it aside from curiosity.

Same. I mean… a positive second chance for me, because 20 something years ago setting up Wine to run Quake 3 was an afternoon’s effort, and absolutely not worth it lmao. Nowadays I know that I can just try a game, see if it works. Doesn’t? Let’s try again. Still nothing? Proton GE. Nothing? Ok, doesn’t actually work, unless there’s a solution on ProtonDB. 50/50 it’s anticheat.

Plus… it’s plain fun to get “unsupported” games and running them on the Steam Deck! Yeah, probably there’s a reason, but that time I played in VR using the Deck? Let’s call it perverse enjoyment.

Yes! Been waiting for this impatiently :D

Anyone on stable?

Me :P I looked through all the settings and found nothing, so unless it’s hidden somewhere I didn’t look, it’s not here yet.

Waaaait a moment: “Fixed an issue with taking multiple screenshots if Game Recording is on”

Game recording? Since when it’s out of beta?

If you have other ways to play a game, consider buying it regardless of the rating for the Steam Deck. Sometimes verified games update in a way that makes them way too hardware intensive, others might actually be playable regardless of what they say and the only real way to find out, is to try. For example, I wanted to try it so I setup Steam VR on the Deck, added ALVR, set it to minimum resolution and fps… I mean, Taskmaster VR worked. I had to make the resolution inside Steam VR all the way down, and it keeps a shaky 60 fps (doesn’t bother me, others could get motion sickness) but it was playable. Obviously it was docked, so 100% just curiously as on the other side of the desk there’s my actual gaming computer, but…

My understanding is that oleds are a weird beast. Since there’s no backlight, each pixel can be considered a small colored light, if you have a fully black screen, then it’s essentially off and not using any power. However, there are instances where the peak brightness is limited to a small portion of the screen, because blasting the entire thing of full brightness white would pass the power supply capacity…

That said, let me stress this: it’s my understanding. Not a hard fact, I might be wrong or just basing things on old information.

I am convinced that kernel AC is… mostly on games that have a fuckton of cosmetics. Let’s see, who’s against Linux specifically? Destiny, even if it was in Stadia and that was Linux. Fortnite. Ubisoft has it on juuuuuust a select few games, everything else they’re happy to see on every platform.

They don’t care about cheaters, they’re protecting the micro transactions.

AFAIK Rosetta deals with Intel Mac apps, not Windows. If this handles Windows games like Proton does… pretty big news!

Oh yeah, new tech is cool and potentially useful. My point was that this particular excitement is not too likely to improve anything on the current hardware we have.

The thing with “AI” or better still, ML cores, is that they’re very specialized. Apple hasn’t been slapping ML cores in all of their cpus since the iPhone 8 because they are super powerful, it’s because they can do some things (that the hardware would have no problem doing anyway) by sipping power. You don’t have to think about AI as in the requirements for huge LLM like ChatGPT that require data centers, think about it like a hardware video decoder: This thing could play easily 1080p video! Or, going with raw cpu power rather than hardware decoding, 480p. It’s why you can watch hours of videos on your phone, but try doing anything that hits the cpu and the battery melts.

Edit: my example has been bothering me for days now. I want to clarify to avoid any possible misunderstanding that hardware video decoding has nothing to do with AI, it’s just another very specialized chip.

Uh, I feel like this is better taken with a low level of enthusiasm: reading the article there’s no mention of how it’s supposed to improve battery, it’s mentioned how it’s AI based, and most concerning for us, both the Ally and Go use the Z1/Z1 Extreme… that have a 10 tops npu.

Like, they’re cool and tempting. But not anywhere near the price of a full unit when I have an already perfectly functioning one! If I could say swap the panel on the Deck (with relatively little effort), I would likely consider buying an upgrade kit but that’s not possible. Same thing with the PS5: if I could just buy the new gpu and replace the old one, I probably would. Never mind that it’s an apu so in this instance it’s really replacing the entire guts of the device, that’s a minor detail XD

My record that I’ve never been able to match in Tokyo Jungle was in remote play on the PSP from the PS3. When I got a PS Vita TV I tested remote play, got sidetracked and spent the afternoon playing Destiny. I’ve played a couple of times World of Tanks on the phone with the official app (and a gamepad obviously, I’m not insane lol).

Sony’s very, very good at this. Granted the AMD video encoding is not as good as the Nvidia one annoyingly, but it’s up there as average quality.

Now I will say this… if you ever tried it using WiFi? Yeah, for whatever reason Sony’s WiFi chips are a dumpster fire on home consoles, acceptable on handhelds. That would’ve entirely explained your experience.

Now, if you want actual garbage, look no further than the Xbox: when I got the Series S I tried it wired to my desktop, and it was a laggy, overly compressed mess. Far worse than the time I tried OnLive through a VPN because it was not available in Europe, and that’s an achievement.