Disclaimer first: I haven’t played docked ever since I moved to my current apartment, so for about 2 years.

So, for me playing docked was a mixed bag. The main issue was that upscaling from 720p to 1080p (my TV’s native resolution) never yielded a satisfactory image quality. This means, that I only played games docked, that were relatively light on the hardware.

Things that worked well were 2D games, obviously, and light 3D games, like Cassette Beasts or the space-part of Elite: Dangerous (landing in Elite was, of course a no-go at native 1080p).

I also had issues with my gamepad, a DualShock 4, interfering with the WLAN of the deck. If I remember correctly, that has been fixed by a Steam Deck update meanwhile.

I also had severe issues trying to stream from my desktop to the Deck. It hadn’t liked my desktop’s 16:10 aspect ratio. From what I can tell from the current Steam Link Android app, it seems this also has been fixed meanwhile.

For the games that worked fine, I have had a lot of fun playing docked though.

Depends on the game.

Isn’t Sailfish OS already pretty much “a Linux phone that works”?

There was a similar question some time ago, so I think it’s worth linking it: https://lemmy.world/post/19546682

Also, check my answer there for a solution that does not rely on a launcher: https://lemmy.world/post/19546682/12260141

I don’t know if there are direct USB-C to PS/2 adapters, but assuming not: USB-C to USB-A adapter followed by USB-A to PS/2.

small performance hit

How big the performance hit is depends on the game. If the game logic itself is CPU-heavy, the performance hit will be big. If the game spends most of the CPU time in system-supplied libraries or isn’t CPU-heavy to begin with, it’s gonna be small.

The good news is that many VR titles aren’t CPU-heavy.

For $50 I’d get (afaict current prices):

• Hades ($7.49)
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker ($2.99) (make sure to force-enable the Windows build on the Steam Deck, the Linux build has issues with gamepad input on the kingdom management screen)
• One Deck Dungeon ($1.99)
• Slay the Spire ($2.49)
• Wildermyth ($16.24)
• Against the Storm ($8.99)
• Terraformers ($7.99)

This totals now $48.18. If you have an additional dollar to spare, I’d also recommend to get something to scratch that retro-gaming itch:

• The Settlers 2 ($2.73 on GoG - needs DOSBox, for which I’ve written an install guide)

That’s now $50.91 in total.

Oh, and a small follow-up:

I just asked my partner which gamepad feels “better”. She chose the Xbox Series X controller, so maybe my opinion isn’t the most objective one.

There are several small differences between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox Series X gamepad. No single point by itself would be a very big difference, but overall it sums up. I have both gamepads in front of me, and will try to make a comparison:

• The material of the Xbox 360 gamepad feels “better”. I can’t exactly say why, but I think it’s because of its smooth material on the bottom.
• The Xbox 360 gamepad has bigger analogue sticks, with stronger springs.
• Similarly, the triggers of the Xbox Series X gamepad are “weaker” than of the Xbox 360 gamepad.
• I would have sworn that the Xbox Series X controller is a lot lighter too, but turns out, after weighing them both, that the Xbox 360 controller is slightly lighter. It does not feel this way though, with the Xbox 360 gamepad feeling way sturdier and heavier (but, as said, it’s actually lighter?!?).
• The buttons on the Xbox 360 gamepad feel a lot smoother. They don’t make a “cheap, broken device” noise when being pressed.
  • This also applies to the D-Pad.

I think the last point - the feeling when using the buttons and especially the D-Pad - is the most important one for me. On the Xbox 360 gamepad the buttons feel like actual buttons. On the Xbox Series X gamepad they sound and feel like a fidget toy. Using the D-Pad on the Xbox Series X gamepad is really annoying, because of the noise it makes.

What annoys me is that previous generations of Xbox controllers had quite good build quality. The Xbox 360 controller was amazing in that regard, and the Xbox One controller was pretty decent too. The Xbox Series X controllers (and I am explicitly not excluding the “Elite” model) feel like cheap trash in comparison.

The worst part is that it is incredibly difficult (impossible?) to update the controller firmware on anything other than an Xbox or a Windows PC…

Gamedev here: For non-indie projects it’s not up to the devs to decide which platforms get a native build. That decision is made by the publisher, and usually depends strongly on the estimated amount of extra work needed to make a native version. I agree with your statement, that if devs use ARM development PCs, they get a strong argument to convince publishers to pay for a native version, because porting costs will drop to near-zero.

However (there always is a “however”): Many devs cannot switch away from Windows. If one develops for PC only, it’s possible. If one targets other platforms too (think: game consoles), one is stuck with whatever development environment the manufacturers of those platforms support - what is typically Windows and Visual Studio. It is kind of a chicken-and-egg problem. Platform SDKs will be made available for other operating systems or processor architectures once enough gamedevs are using those. Gamedevs cannot yet use those because platform SDKs aren’t available for them…

It’s, to be honest, a frustrating experience… I personally would switch away from MSVC and Windows the moment I get an opportunity to. However, there never was an opportunity up to now… Our previous tech-director was pushing for Linux on dev machines - or rather: “let the devs use whatever they want, as long as it works” - but there never was an opportunity to switch, due to our games’ target platforms allowing only Windows for development…

I’ve never used Heroic, so I can’t say what to expect, but I’ve never had any issues downloading games via the GoG website.

Have you tried that? Maybe it’s faster?

Though, honestly, I think i might just be some outage on GoGs side. If the downloads via the website are slow too, it might be worth talking to their support.

For a typical desktop Linux 12 GiB should be fine.

It depends on what you do with the system, of course. If you regularly compile big and template-heavy C++ codebases, work with Blender,… then 12 GiB won’t be enough.

(What really surprised me was how much can still be done with just 4 GiB of memory. My laptop is currently limited to 4 GiB, and with some effort to set up a minimalist system it’s working surprisingly well. I barely ever hit the memory limit - actually only when compiling big template-heavy C++ codebases 😉.)

There was also an option to just install a Debian chroot on Android, with no virtualization in-between.

The app was called Lil’Debi, but isn’t maintained any more since 2018.

Yeah, I could imagine that it would need to be connected to a USB charger for that…

(I hope they make the suggested version with the eInk display. That way the image would persist even if the power runs out.)

Could be wireless. That would also explain the “battery” mentioned in the poll on shitter.

Signed Kernels are problematic for some users. While the distribution-supplied kernel binaries are fine for most users, there are always those who want to (or need to, due to hardware quirks or bugs) tinker with the kernel compile-time configuration, or the kernel source code itself…

I have to both agree and disagree here.
Disagree because it doesn’t look that bad.
Agree because there is a reason I haven’t used the Deck with a big screen in months.

Two things to add regarding question 1:

The Steam Deck GPU is optimized for the built-in screen, which has 1280x800 pixels. FullHD is more than twice the number of pixels. The GPUs fragment fill rate will therefore not be sufficient to play many games at FullHD native. The Steam Deck has built-in FSR upscaling though, so if you are not sitting directly in front of the screen, it will look OK-ish…

The second thing is refresh rate. On the deck itself you can set the screen refresh rate to 40 Hz. For many, many games the built-in GPU will not manage 60 FPS even at 1280x800, but it quite often manages to do 40, which still feels OK-ish.

Most external screens don’t support 40Hz though, so you will be stuck with either limiting your framerate to 30 FPS, or you will have to live with either tearing or unsteady framerate.