I have a 512GB version. The cost for that one was split between me and my brother and we both have our accounts on it. That was soon after the release and took 6 months to arrive. 2 months ago I bought a 256GB version that only I paid for so I can bring it to the dorms since I’m a college student now.
While it is indeed linux, the core file system is locked down and cannot be accessed without running a bunch of commands. That isn’t recommended either, mainly because steam deck updates will lock the file system down again, and you risk breaking your system. Because of that, the only kinds of applications you can run are flatpaks, which are installed in the user’s home directory and are sandboxed. You can install such apps via the discover app.
If the app you want to run doesn’t offer a flatpak version or an appimage (which is essentially the same thing as a portable .exe file on windows), then you are out of luck.
When it comes to android apps, normal linux does not support them natively. First of all, android runs on an entirely different CPU architecture called ARM, so it needs to be translated to x86 first. Second of all, the kind of linux that runs on android is heavily modified and afaik isn’t the same thing as normal linux, so there may be some translation going on as well.
If you want to run android apps on linux, you will need to use an app called waydroid, which does all of this for you (the ARM translation is done by libhoudini, which you will need to install manually, but it shouldn’t be too hard). Unfortunately I don’t think they offer a flatpak version.
Furthermore, waydroid runs on a rendering method called wayland, which I’m not sure is turned on in the steam deck’s desktop by default, so you will need to figure that out. Most people still use the older rendering method called X11 on other linux distros.
The UI you boot into, called gamescope, uses wayland by default so you should be fine there, but I’m not sure about the desktop session.
Tbh I don’t think running android apps is worth it on the steam deck. It was a major pain in the ass for me on Fedora 38 to set up, didn’t work for the game I wanted due to anticheat and who knows how the controllers work there. I couldn’t figure out how to bind keyboard keys to specific screen locations, so I assume controllers are going to be even worse.
I dunno man, seems like the problem is between the keyboard and the chair this time.
Ah I see. That makes sense.
Maybe a little but I doubt it would be noticeable. Most of the latency usually comes from the internet service provider transfering the data over the internet. At least that’s the case for me. I don’t really notice much of a difference with ping when I’m on wi-fi vs wired.
Tbh the protocol for enabling HDR on normal desktop environments on linux isn’t even finished yet. Not sure what valve is using to enable HDR on the steam deck but I’m not surprised it doesn’t work everywhere. I think in 2-3 years there will be plenty of games where this will work out of the box.
I prefer 16:10. If a game doesn’t support it and just displays at 16:9 I just don’t care about the bezels, simple as that. The amount of space you lose is very small compared to displaying old stuff like 4:3 aspect ratio on a 16:9 display.
If I didn’t already have a steam deck, then I would go for OLED. The thing that would need to happen for me to upgrade from my current steam deck though would be a second USB port on the bottom, maybe a bit more RAM (apparently there are games that get close to the limit when setting 4GB VRAM in BIOS), 24GB would be plenty imo, and much higher performance while still being as power efficient.
VRR I probably wouldn’t notice, eGPU I don’t really care about and USB4 too since I don’t use the steam deck docked. I mostly use it on a train or in my bed where I probably won’t be bringing any monitors.
Honestly from my experience the only thing about proton you need to know is how to switch versions, add launch arguments and how to find tweaks you need to apply for your game to work properly (you can find that out on protondb)
Sometimes you might need to install a custom version of proton called ProtonGE, which has some additional tweaks that some games need to work, so you could learn how to do that too but most games usually don’t need it, so you can figure that out once you encounter such game.
You don’t need to know much about Linux when using the steam deck. There may be some times that you might need to open up a terminal to set something up like cryo utilities and steam deck plugins but you can just follow a guide, you don’t need to understand what the commands do.
To me it definitely helped with stutters in No Man’s Sky, but besides that I’m not quite sure what effect it has.
The only major thing I would personally want is a bit more RAM. 24GB maybe. Some games need both lots of VRAM and lots of normal RAM. This is especially important when you set UMA bufer size to 4GB.
It’s not that important for me though. Not going to be a deal breaker even if they stick to 16.
For me, both have their advantages.
I like playing games on my steam deck when in a bed or on a train, where getting a keyboard and a mouse is either a pain or impossible.
When I’m at home or in the dorms (I’m a college student), I usually play on my laptop.
Though considering you can play on your steam deck in the same places as on your laptop + the other situations I mentioned, I guess SD is better? I dunno, I don’t really see it that way.
Probably not. The main benefit for the steam deck is that it is very portable. For this you sacrifice upgradeability and connectivity. The steam deck only has one usb-c port. Yeah you can expand your ports using a dock but it still isn’t as good as having a desktop computer.
If you don’t plan on making use of the portability that the steam deck provides then there probably aren’t many benefits for getting it compared to just getting a desktop pc or a laptop.