Fwiw, I almost always get some amount of buyer’s remorse when I make a purchase, usually on expensive items. There’s some hidden cost or feature that isn’t quite what I’d hoped for.

Not so with the Steam Deck. It has been virtually everything I hoped for, and not once have I felt like it did or had something I didn’t want. When you pull the trigger, I hope you get the same experience.

Sounds like the perfect use case for an email alias service like addy.io, though, if Revolt is something somebody wants.

I agree that federation would be better, though.

Same. I should replay that one.

• Lost in Play - adorable game about two siblings and their imagined adventure…or is it?
• Tinykin - platform puzzler collectathon with zero enemies. Just cozy vibes.
• Freshly Frosted - Want to feel personally encouraged by a soothing narrator while making donut machines?
• Tiny Glade - make cute castles. That’s it!
• KeyWe - kiwi mail delivery. Literally.
• The Were Cleaner - werewolf janitor.
• Little Inferno - silly game where you burn things to get more things to burn. Also, Sugar Plumps!
• A Hat in Time - puzzle platformer collectathon that’s cute and creative
• Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate - silly point and click adventure. Looks like I’m gonna have to jump…!
• Hidden Through Time - Where’s Waldo but more animated.
• Thomas Was Alone - platformer where Thomas might not be as alone as he thinks (in a good way).

I should also mention that you might want to look into a Deck Saver. It’s a little bit of plastic you can 3D print that fits into the original Deck case, and it will hold your device in place in the event you pick up the case with the lid open.

If you don’t want to bother, I have a rule I follow: if the Deck is in the case, the zippers go shut. First thing. No exceptions.

-I love Gnome, but I’d be willing to give KDE a shot. If I don’t like it, how difficult would it be to have Gnome while keeping the normal Steam OS?

Afaik, not possible. SteamOS uses a mostly immutable A/B partition structure, so while you could likely install Gnome, the next time SteamOS updates, I expect it would wipe out your tweaks (or enough of them to break shit).

-I know that I could wipe Steam OS and get Bazzite with Gnome. Except getting Gnome, what are the advantages of getting Bazzite over Steam OS? What are the inconvenients?

Pros:

• It won’t wipe out your system tweaks at every update.
• It will use the most updated versions of things available in Fedora’s repos.
• A bad update can be easily rolled back.

Cons:

• It’s not like traditional Linux distros, like Workstation, so learning how to work with an atomic distro can be a challenge at first.
• It might not have every patch SteamOS has, or at least not right away. This tends to be minor in practice, but Valve has a vested interest in making the Deck awesome, not Linux as a whole. The community is pretty good at keeping up with downstream patches, though, if any.

Noteworthy:

• It uses Wayland by default. That matters to some.
• Some software cannot be easily installed (like some VPN clients) or installed at all. The more a program has to touch system files, the less likely it is that you can install or use it.
• Updates take a long time due to how the snapshot imaging works.

-I think that KDE is now in version 6.3 or 6.4. What is the version that you now have on Steam OS?

5.27.10. SteamOS uses X11.

-What can you easily upgrade on a used Steam Deck (probably not Oled)?

For the LCD version, lots. From the screen to the shell to the buttons. I vaguely remember there being a fan mod, too. There’s a whole ecosystem of Deck mods out there. You can even remove the screen and controllers entirely, if you’re so inclined.

Yes, you could use it as a replacement for Lutris.

No. It’s an alternative, just like how Bottles is an alternative to either of those. I like Heroic, but use the launcher(s) you like.

People are so creative!

A Valve x Framework collaboration would be awesome.

Sometimes, you just do things because you can.

Here’s the Steam Brick, a very similar project. To quote the maker:

I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could that I didn’t stop to think if I should.

Still, I believe and hope next big SteamOS update will switch to Wayland, leaving X11 behind

Same! This would be amazing, and hopefully their teamwork with Arch will see that happen sooner than later. I noticed that they fixed some CVEs in this latest stable update, so perhaps we’ll see more!

How does this work? SteamOS uses X11, and Waydroid requires Wayland. Xwayland translates X11 calls to Wayland, but I’m not aware of any Wayland to X11 compatibility projects.

Not the person you asked, but maybe they also mean the SteamDB extension?

I’ve experienced similar in 2D games that are more or less fancy Flash games. I wonder if that has less to do with Godot (it might, anyway) and more to do with optimization and LOD.

Either way, I still appreciate the heads up that it’s battery intensive. Good to know before traveling and winding up searching for an outlet.

Have you tried forcing lower TDW? I don’t have the game, but I wonder if that would help

Reminds me of mods like the GameCube Nano. I dunno if it’s possible, but it would be kinda cool if someone figured out how to shrink the Deck further.

I’m not. I’m more hoping for Nintendo to get a wakeup call that improving customer satisfaction and giving them actual value, rather than clawing and squeezing and litigating every dollar possible from their freaking fans, is actually a viable business strategy.

I mean, I know what you’re saying. Nintendo is no slouch when it comes to drawing people in, but they’re no longer the only fish in the pond. Couple that with the general customer satisfaction with Deck-likes and the flat deluge of games to which you have access, and there’s a real chance of people at least thinking twice before jumping on a Switch 2.

Some people won’t care, but Nintendo is going to have to really work to pull others away from all those extras you get by design. Plus, that’s not even getting into how stupidly easy it is to set up emulation, which you have to pay a lot for via Nintendo.

They’ll also have potentially more exposure, as many other companies have and will be coming out with SteamOS handhelds of their own. So if anyone had to choose, it might make more sense to skip the Switch 2.