I considered Bazzite with Steam Game Mode on a recently purchased mini PC I’m using as a HTPC to replace Android TV. In addition to not working well with a remote, the data Valve collects via Steam is a concern. Not sure I’d consider a proprietary, closed-source front-end as the main UI on a phone to be much of an improvement over Android, though I’m sure Valve’s other related efforts to get Linux working well on a phone that get open sourced would be good.
I picked up a 64Gi LCD model a while back when it was on sale and then added my own 1TB SSD. 256Gi is enough that you hate to remove it and not use it, but also isn’t quite enough space to be practical.
I already don’t trust games and appreciate being able to run them in Lutris as a Flatpak where at least they can be run somewhat sandboxed, in addition to revoking their network privileges so they can’t phone home and spy on me. If a game essentially wants to run a rootkit, hard pass.
Exactly. $500: worth it. $800: now you’re in an awkward middle ground. You can pay half of that for a mini PC with a 780M that has double the GPU power of a Steam Deck or pay a bit more to get a decent machine that can really do 4K on high or ultra.
This article is quite correct. I ended up liking the idea so well that I just got an off brand mini PC with a Ryzen 7 8745HS for $380. The Steam Machine is likely to be like $800 and have a GPU that is 2-3x faster, but possibly a weaker CPU with 6 instead of 8 Zen 4 cores.
Either way, I couldn’t see paying double for couch gaming with half-assed 4k when 1080p upscaled looks fine to my eyes from the couch and a little more money than the Steam Machine would buy a 5080 to replace my aging 3070 and do real 4k / VR on ultra with raytracing that looks great up-close. Unless Valve comes in at like $500 for the Steam Machine, it’ll be sitting in this awkward middle ground where it’s fairly pricey, yet underpowered.
I guess my overall point is that DEs like KDE or Gnome don’t work well on other form factors like TVs, phones, and tablets. Just having Linux on a device without an appropriate UX isn’t that useful. Steam Game Mode acts like a DE for SteamOS that provides a good UX for a controller, but it’s not something I care to use unless it’s blocked from the internet so Valve can’t collect data and spy on me. If Valve makes a phone that isn’t private, the main value would be that the hardware can run Linux, but it would still need an appropriate DE to make it actually usable.