Valve Left Me Unsupervised: Steam Deck Hardware Review

[Luscious]

This takes me back to when I wrote about gaming on the Atom N570. For all the hate netbooks got back in the day, mine was still able to kick ass in ways no iPad could do.

 

Now I can just imagine over a decade later if Microsoft gave us a similar gaming experience with a compact 8 inch Surface tablet. It's really no longer a question of IF it can be done - the hardware is there. What I want to know is WHY hasn't this been on the drawing board and when will someone have the balls to go forward with it. Remember this is leaps and bounds ahead of anything iOS can do.

 

And yes, that $650 price point for the top spec model is very aggressive - I actually paid about the same for my netbook with all it's bells and whistles back in the day. It was a purchase I NEVER regretted getting and gave me many good years of use and enjoyment.

[Quackers101]

5 hours ago, mahyar said:

the main problem is AAA and anticheat stuff, indie title work just fine (in my experience) 

DRM be damned.

but here you go, some will be supported while others might have to update their game for anti-cheat + proton support.

 

Steamworks, older news

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3137321254689909033

Quote

Our team has been working with Epic on Easy Anti-Cheat + Proton support over the last few months, and we're happy to announce that adding Steam Deck support to your existing EAC games is now a simple process

Related to this, we're going to start submitting Deck Verified test data for tested titles that use anti-cheat middleware on 

Monday, January 24th
 

Any tested games that don't enable EAC/BattlEye for Proton will temporarily have an Unsupported rating until they do.

 

[Alexeygridnev1993]

12 hours ago, mahyar said:

sudo pacman -Syyu 

 

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=wherever

The root filesystem is mounted as read-only, so, that won't work by default. Flatpaks will probably be installable by default in the userspace though.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

12 hours ago, mahyar said:

sudo pacman -Syyu 

 

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=wherever

The root filesystem is mounted as read-only, so, that won't work by default. Flatpaks will probably be installable by default in the userspace though.

[mahyar]

1 hour ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

The root filesystem is mounted as read-only, so, that won't work by default. Flatpaks will probably be installable by default in the userspace though.

what wont work exactly?

pacman -Syyu?

and im positive they will allow root access so your point is moot

[Giganthrax]

While I'm absolutely in love with the Steam Deck hardware (even though I don't need it and will likely therefore never buy it), the one thing I'm really interested in is the new SteamOS. I can't wait to test that thing out on an actual PC once the ISO becomes available. 

[Alexeygridnev1993]

3 hours ago, mahyar said:

what wont work exactly?

pacman -Syyu?

and im positive they will allow root access so your point is moot

You'll need to remount the root filesystem as read-write to be able to change anything outside of the /home , /tmp , /var and /etc folders. Read, for example, on how this is done on Fedora Silverblue.

[SolarNova]

21 hours ago, jakkuh_t said:

~snip~

An impressive looking 'handheld' for sure.

The hype for it reminds me of the original PSP. I bought that thing from japan as soon as it released and got it imported..still remember the bemused faces of my fellow college students when i sat down during lunch playing Ridge Racer on it lol.

 

That said, i have no use for such a device nowadays. but for those always on the go, students, and professionals who's higher end careers have them constantly taking trips to other parts of the country or other countries entirely..something like this would be great.

 

Being an effective 'PC' also puts it ahead of traditional handheld consoles, the emulation side will be much easier to do. My old PSP 1000 was frequently used to create what was known as 'pandoras batteries' to jailbreak the software to run homebrew on newer versions. It was a right pita to get emulation running on those in the early days.

 

Price ..well.. its no handheld console from the early 2000's thats for sure. i cant recall exactly how much by PSP cost me but i think it was around £300.

£400-£650 is a good deal more expensive,,but for what it is ...i think thats a very good price. Thats effectively a budget APU PC .miniaturized into a handheld with peripherals and software included all for at most £650... Not cheap ..but great value.

[szalony9szymek]

forza issue is due to storage, in my pc was similar issue, I reinstalled game onto new samsung ssd (was on hdd before) and it runs fine now

[mahyar]

3 hours ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

You'll need to remount the root filesystem as read-write to be able to change anything outside of the /home , /tmp , /var and /etc folders. Read, for example, on how this is done on Fedora Silverblue.

thats not an issue its just a matter of editing /etc/fstab

[Needfuldoer]

17 hours ago, Luscious said:

This takes me back to when I wrote about gaming on the Atom N570.

Oh man, remember the Nvidia ION?

 

 

[Alexeygridnev1993]

2 hours ago, mahyar said:

thats not an issue its just a matter of editing /etc/fstab

You are right, but that's an extra step compared to just using sudo. Also, you'll probably break your system after the next update from Valve, so, why not just use Flatpaks or AppImages as regular user?

[mahyar]

37 minutes ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

You are right, but that's an extra step compared to just using sudo. Also, you'll probably break your system after the next update from Valve, so, why not just use Flatpaks or AppImages as regular user?

i tend to avoid using either of those things if possible i'd rather use pamac or pacman

[googleuser3212]

Why would you leave Linus alone with expensive tech

[Needfuldoer]

5 minutes ago, fiddleslessless said:

Why would you leave Linus alone with expensive tech

To test its ground impact resistance.

[googleuser3212]

1 minute ago, Needfuldoer said:

To test its ground impact resistance.

Well that makes sense

[Quackers101]

Linus streamed teardown now, very dissapointed in valve over the handling of the battery.

glued down worse than most phone batteries, could have been a lot better. Also even worse than that, glued cables to the battery and sides.

 

 

RIP SD card.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I can't help but think something like this doesn't mean anything if most games people are paying are edging towards live service only. Like yea Valve did push updates to their own titles like L4D2 in preparation of the Steam Deck...and I could play single player on the go... but that game is really best played multiplayer. And in order for me to do that on the go... guess I'll need a pretty beefy phone and data plan to handle that. 

 

With the Switch at least many of those games can still be enjoyed offline and single player. With many Steam games being online only... eh... 

[Guest]

Because the Steam Deck runs a Linux OS under the hood, I wonder if that Linux OS could have a proper desktop (LXDE, Mate, KDE, etc.) installed?

 

Oh! I wonder if you could install Qemu and run Windows inside the Steam Deck?

[Luscious]

13 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Oh man, remember the Nvidia ION?

 

 

Oh yeah, takes me back for sure. But I have to say the most promising platform IMO would have been AMD's Nile. Unfortunately they only made it into the 11 inch models - a 10 inch or smaller Nile netbook would have been THE killer device. Keep in mind as well Intel sat on their laurels with the Atom while Apple was aggressively advancing iOS and their silicon/hardware.

 

I am still amazed though at HOW FAR I was able to push my N570 equipped HP 210 Mini, not just in gaming, but movie watching, streaming, Office, web surfing, Skype etc... and external connectivity. It really was a full blown Windows notebook in the smallest practical size you could want.

 

[Needfuldoer]

My netbook of choice was the dual-core Thinkpad x100e with the Turion Neo X2 L625. It was reasonably quick for the time and had a nice keyboard for a netbook, but that little thing ran hot.

[Lightwreather]

22 minutes ago, Shawn Hopscotch said:

Because the Steam Deck runs a Linux OS under the hood, I wonder if that Linux OS could have a proper desktop (LXDE, Mate, KDE, etc.) installed?

If you have the dock and external monitor, it apparently switches to using a regular Plasma desktop.

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

If you have the dock and external monitor, it apparently switches to using a regular Plasma desktop.

Thanks!

[RejZoR]

Just watched the live stream video for disassembly and I can't wrap my head around the need to glue batteries in so hard. Why? There is absolutely ZERO need to glue it in so hard. Just put a single tiny square of double sided tape in the middle of it and then just use thin foam pads for the back panel to hold it in place so it can't lose the grip from the double sided tape because it's pressed on it by the foam pads. And not to mention it's placed in a L shaped slot with raised edges meaning it can't really move anywhere much as it is. You need minimal effort to hold it in place. Makes no sense at all given they've gone so far to make it easy to repair and then use fuck ton of double sided tape and make it basically irreplaceable battery with that.

[Warxen]

I've got the 256 GB version in pre-order. Although I do wonder if I made a mistake not going with the "Premium anti-glare etched glass" version of the deck.
There are anti-glare screen protectors on the market. I'd be interested in seeing how a good anti glare protector on a glossy screen holds up
against a premium screen without one. I do think others that per-ordered might also have these kind of questions.

As I've not really seen good comparisons yet of both screen types, just a brief one, but no actual comparisons next to each other.
I'm sure you guys can do a nice amazon link on screen protectors that work well with the glossy steam deck, eventually.