Hey all, I want to upgrade the setup that I use on my RV. I use a Raspberry Pi 3 for basically watching videos and some retro gaming. I want to be able to play more resource-intensive games, although definitely do not require anything AAA in the highest settings - I’m talking about Starcraft 2, Shieldwall, TABS, Humankind… basically anything that runs fine on my 4-year old System76 Gazelle, that has a GeForce GTX 1650 card.
I thought I had to upgrade it to a mini PC and I was looking into some Beelink ones with good GPUs, but then I realized the existence of handhelds like Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally. What appealed to me is their lightness when compared with a mini PC. Right now I have a Command strip on my Raspberry Pi and I just stick it to the wall; I was trying to avoid mounting yet another thing on the shabby wooden beam of the trailer where I have the TV screen mounted. Also it seems that the mini PC fan could be noisier than what I’m used to with the Pi, and the handhelds would be better on that front as well.
However, the Pi and the Beelink seem to be better suited for connections - by that I mean the external USB drive where I keep my movies and series, the joystick dongles for our pair of GameSir T4s… if I understand correctly, the dock is what provides this sort of connectivity to the Deck, which means I can’t just hang it in any way, it would have to be sitting on the dock, mounted somehow to the wall. That is doable, but I’ve read as well that connecting USB drives is not very straightforward (I do plan to install Ubuntu on the Deck and use the software I want, not the interface that comes with it).
I also plan to do some light browsing/working on it when I bring it home, but I’m not too worried about it because if it handles gaming, it handles those.
Am I wrong in any of these things?
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The deck shines with its default OS, and while installing other OSs is possible, it’s probably not gonna be a great time. Though you may not need to, as the deck’s desktop mode is pretty capable for light browsing/working. Especially now with the addition of the nix package manager.
As for the dock stuff, you’re not wrong, but a dongle would work just well as a dock, so if you want to wall mount it, you just need to leave enough space to hang a dongle to it.
Overall, a beelink would probably work best, and give you fewer headaches if a desktop is what you’re looking for, but the deck has the portability/handheld factor. It’s really gonna be up to your needs, which one is better.
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Okay, that’s an interesting opinion. What do you mean by 45% of the Steam Deck experience? And by ‘you could do both’, you mean buy both? lol
I had to look up beelink because I had never heard of them. They look cool.
It sounds like the decision is:
Do I get a gaming device that can do light computing?
Or
Do I get a light computing device that can do gaming?
As a steam deck owner, it would probably get by doing the things you mentioned and it would probably be a more stable/easy gaming experience. But I personally wouldnt want to use it as a computer. As soon as you want to do anything non-super-basic it’s gonna be annoying since it’s an immutable distro and not set up the way most Linux distros are. A dock would solve the port issues. But You also said you are going to switch to Ubuntu and at that point…
The beelink would give you a little more flexibility and if they games you play already run on Linux, then it’s gonna be pretty easy to get it working (assuming beelinks hardware is all 100% Linux capable.) I’d go with that. The only benefit of a steamedeck is steamOS and the backing of valve to make sure it’s going to work and the portability. You plan on getting rid of the first benefit and don’t seem to care about the second.
If I were you, I’d go beelink.
