cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/3922769
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/linustechtips by /u/RevolutionaryAd8204 on 2024-09-14 15:50:43+00:00.
No joke, I’m tempted to buy a Steam Deck (or true Linux phone) because… It can run a local HTML/CSS/JS app on a browser with filesystem access and audio support. This is the power of having an OS that is not locked down.
Speaking of which, what would you recommend for me to run a local HTML/CSS/JS app on a browser with filesystem access and audio support? (No, Android is too locked down to meet that spec) Other required specs:
- Portable: Can fit in a pocket
- 16GB or more usable storage
- Bluetooth support
- Ideally low-cost
Edit: I figured out a way to do it on my phone! I used the “Simple HTTP server” app to self host the HTML/CSS/JS into http://127.0.0.1:8080/.
I have an Orange PI Pro 5 16GB on a box that smoothly runs a full blown Ubuntu Desktop version and would fit in a pocket though it’s maybe a little too thick (from memory the box it’s about 3x5x2 cm).
Total cost was about $170.
The board itself would fit a thinner box, but you might have to 3D print one.
Mind you, a N100 Mini-PC that costs the same is even more capable as a Linux Desktop, but it’s significantly larger and will definitely not fit a pocket.
You can find cheaper SBCs capable of running a Desktop Ubuntu but in my experience (with a $35 Banana Pi P2-Zero) if you go too far down the price scale Desktop Linux performance stops being smooth, even if the board is a tiny thing.
It was actually quite surprising for me recently when I found out some of these things are perfectly capable Linux Desktops.
I’m not sure if it’s the meme but here (Europe) there is a huge difference in price between the basic 512GB OLED SD and the basic PS5 pro option.
569€ vs 800€.
… and you have to pay for PS Plus repetitively to play games with friends.
Jokes on you I don’t have any friends
I feel like that’s cherry picking, like I’m comparing the cheapest Dutch webshop price for a new PS5 and it’s € 549,99 vs the Steam Deck which is only purchasable through Valve’s store for… € 419?
Wait why tf do people buy PS5’s here‽
I haven’t even picked the LCD 128GB SD…just didn’t pick the option with max storage.
But anyway. This meme is very specific (and pointless) and it is just targeting a minority who would be choosing between a high end console to play at the sofa on the big screen and a handheld to play anywhere.
I think the main SD group of people, is people who want a handheld, and that group of people generally choose between SD, Nintendo Switch, or other handhelds (like the Asus ROG etc).
Some would go with Nintendo because they don’t care about non Nintendo games. But the majority is just looking for a handheld to play games anywhere.
To answer the last question. I have a PC, a PS5 and a SD. So some people who own a SD would buy a PS5. If I’m on my couch I use the PS5. If I’m at the terrace, or on a flight, etc. I use the SD.
I get that but damn, between a Switch or SD who’d choose for a PS5?
I personally already have a Switch (since launch), so many great games on it, which dimimishes the SD’s selling point for me. Those two really do thread in the same waters.
Yeah and recently got an argument with someone saying that the SD was no competitor for the Switch.
In my opinion both are directly trying to fill a market where you can play games anywhere.
It’s true that Nintendo also has their own closed games that can only be played on their hardware (officially at least).
But beyond each console’s game library the need for having a portable console is a more important factor.
Does ps5 even have any games deck doesn’t?
And for those who have not tried it, the desktop.is fully functional (not some half baked version. My son uses the desktop mode as a full school workstation for internet browsing, email, teams, Google docs, etc
More people should thank KDE for the desktop mode.
Indeed… I avoided it for years because I bought into the “it’s too heavy” narrative.
Then I saw a phoronics benchmark sayin it was actually faster and lighter than lxde if you turn effects off
I tried it then and was blown away, never looked back
I don’t know what the KDE devs eat, but they are somehow maximising both features and performance.
Incredible.
I don’t know what the KDE devs eat
LOL loved that
That sells it for me. Steam Deck is in my future. Windows will not be my next OS.
I pretty much only use mine in desktop mode and I’m currently playing world of warcraft on it lol!
To me, it’s looking like a replacement for a PC and a portable device, and does not need to compete against a console. And that’s what I’m looking for. I’m just sick of the rising price of video cards, and the worsening state of Windows. I’ve had plans to upgrade my video card for a while now, and could never justify it. I feel like it’s as viable now to get a Deck and a PS5 Slim or a Pro than to get a PC and another portable. PC gobbles up too much power as a desktop nowadays and too expensive as a premium machine.
It was my steam deck that convinced me to just wipe windows from my laptop and install Kubuntu which is basically the same as steamOS. I had no idea Linux desktop was so good these days. Bye bye windows! I love my steam deck but I also still need a laptop form factor, I can’t always dock it and use it as my PC.
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Thanks to KDE on the SD, I’ve switched my main DE on my desktop. Still have a soft spot for XFCE, but KDE Plasma on the SD was polished and was very “coherent”.
One thing the SD is missing for being a complete “serious” computer is printing support. I’m sure I could it installed, the SD is eminently hackable, but a Flatpak solution or a Steam default solution would really justify using a SD in Desktop mode for school and work.
It doesn’t have cups? You should be able to install it and plasma’s ctrl+p should work with it.
Hi there, just a small correction. Compared to existing linux distros, it’s slightly different. Steam OS is an immutable OS, which means you can’t edit the root partition (Like you can’t edit the C:\ drive in Windows). This is both good and bad.
Good -> Users can’t mess up their device while trying to mess around with it. Updates are smooth because Valve knows the previous state of the OS.
Bad -> It’s bad only for extreme power users as it’s not fully customizable. You can’t run your own kernel, install certain build packages to do some advanced stuff. But this is a tiny tiny bad.
Overall, Steam OS is great and I believe will be the gateway for the general PC crowd.
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I’m using Fedora KDE right now for their Wayland support, because I wanted stuff like FreeSync on my AMD GPU, but I do miss Cinnamon. And Autokey.
I had to use mine as a desktop for two weeks while my PC was undergoing a repair. It was wholly uneventful: installed OpenOffice and had a wholly normal workweek. It’s perfectly fine to use as a regular, boring desktop if you need it to. Absolutely love the Steamdeck. Every gamer should have one.
I’ve been complaining about printer support. It’s pretty much the last piece of the puzzle for a school focused SD.
I used mine for a few months for work. only problem i had with it was it struggled with multiple external monitors. i got it working but i had to fiddle with xrandr everytime i docked it and put it into desktop mode
This was a couple years ago now though, it might be better now.
Not to mention that you can buy the previous version for 300 € and get most of the same value (less storage, gpu, screen, battery)
You can also upgrade the storage and screen if you want.
I bought 512GB OLED and then immediately swapped the SSD to 2 Tb
You cannot put an OLED screen in an LCD model.
They have different internals. The screen upgrades that exist for the LVD are to swap in the anit-glare coated version, or a higher resolution.
Both of those are still upgrades though - they didn’t say “upgrade the screen to LED”. It’s a good callout though!
Ah, I didn’t realise that. But I mostly use my Steamdeck docked for gaming on my TV so personally haven’t bothered looking into a screen upgrade.
It’s probably not worth the effort. It’s one of the more complex mods, and the screen with additional resolution comes with a bunch of drawbacks, and the anti-glare coating isn’t that big a deal.
gpu?
The oled version contains a different soc iirc
It is not “biggest game library on earth” I bet, that would still be a high-end desktop running windows…
You could put Windows on the deck if you’re inclined to do so
I think they mean “console library”
Steam deck has an emulator so it should
But then you are running windows…
Yes, but it has still a bigger game library as steam deck has and thus calling steam deck having “bigges game library on earth” is just bullshit.
But maybe there is a joke in that, that woooshed over me…
Yeah but a Deck is a Pc, which can absolutely run Windows. Therefore, they are the same thing. A high end PC AND a steam deck feature the “Biggest game library on earth”.
Doesn’t even have to run well. The fact that you can attempt to play it in the first place let’s it win the medal.
Any version of Playstation can’t even attempt to play half the games on a deck ;).
steam deck can run windows afaik
Can run most windows games via proton atleast.
While this is technically correct, it still doesn’t matter. I have built my own high end PCs in the past and it is a huge waste. I’m not even sold on the steam deck yet - I do all my non- critical stuff like lemmy on this 10 year old shit tablet running Android 7
Never told that it matters 😇 I game on an nvida 980 endeavourOS PC myself. Steam deck is probably able to run more games than that 😂
At this point, it’ll be easier to count the games that wouldnt work on the steam deck.
Fair, still not biggest library on earth
So what would hold that title?
High end windows laptop
And I see that one can argue that try running it is good enough, but instant crashing file would I myself not call a member of the game library. If that would be the case, any device that is able to download files has the “biggest game library“
The deck can run windows, so if it didnt run in compatability mode in linux itll work in native windows. Now if you were to put a limitation that it must acheive 30fps in any game, you might have a point, but… thats really grasping for straws.
Can you actually use steamdeck as a desktop PC though? Can it drive dual external monitors? Is it a reasonable “minipc” type thing? How much power does it munch on in idle?
Can I maybe put some other linux distro on it? So many questions
In short yes. I use it as a mini pc, with dual monitor set-up.
Can you actually use steamdeck as a desktop PC though?
Depends on how many pixels you “need”. Running high resolution monitors, even for basic stuff can get costly performance wise pretty damn quick, but in my opinion that isn’t really asking the same question as whether the Steam Deck can be a good desktop.
You can absolutely use the Steam Deck as a desktop, I frequently use my Steam Deck in desktop mode… using the onboard controls. The only real limitation of the Steam Deck so long as you don’t expect it to be a top of the line gaming pc, is that most people who buy it are never truly going to be able to give anything else other than a mouse and keyboard an honest go, they are too impatient and won’t believe it can work but the sky is the limit for joystick+gyro input (our touchpad + gyro) for computers/gaming.
How good does it work on an external 4K monitor? Can you watch 4k video? I imagine youtube and browsing reddit or news online shouldn’t be a problem.
Basically I’d like an ultra low power PC for boring desktop stuff on 4k monitor.
That might be a reason to maybe consider some competitors of the Steam Deck that are a bit more powerful (but have their own tradeoffs, primarily that the wholistic experience just isnt going to be as good as the steam deck is right now), I don’t know the Steam Deck might run 4k fine but I’d be hesitant to recommend it, that is so many fucking pixels lol
If that’s all you need, a Raspberry Pi 5 will fit the bill nicely. It’s got two 4K HDMI outputs and it’s roughly on par compute-wise with a higher end Chromebook. You won’t be gaming on this thing – it can just about play a YouTube video at 4K60 – but it’ll gladly handle your desktop stuff. As a bonus it’s about an eighth the price of a Steam Deck.
I have a Steam deck, here’s the answers to my knowledge:
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Yes, you can connect a keyboard and mouse, and even in SteamOS they let you access KDE in a separate “Desktop mode”
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Not sure about multiple monitors but you can connect at least one. There are docks made for it to do just that (the USB C cable has display port support I think)
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It runs a 4 core/8 thread AMD laptop chip so assuming you get a mouse/keyboard it should work pretty well.
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It has a 5W mode in the power settings in SteamOS so I’m assuming around that much at idle.
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You can put other distros on it, it’s completely unlocked. You could even put Windows on it if you wanted. I’m not sure how easy the install process is though since I’ve just left SteamOS on mine.
You can even put Windows on it if you feel like committing blasphemy
Not sure about multiple monitors
Most usb-c ports with DP alt mode support up to 1 monitor at 4k@60Hz, or 2×1080p@60Hz, and I believe 2×1440p@30Hz. It comes down to bandwidth, so I think that as long as you’re fine with one monitor running at a slower refresh-rate or lower resolution, you can have your primary screen displaying in high-res.
Of course, you have to also take into consideration the GPU performance, running higher resolutions will usually degrade performance!
Now I want to get MacOS on one just to make gamers twitch
Not sure if this counts but (Reddit link warning) someone managed to do it in a VM
That’s just as gross as I was imagining 😬
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Yeah, but can any of those play the saves I already have on my computer??
Only issue you’ll probably have is if the cloud saves are for a different OS, so if you’re playing on Windows make sure it’s the Proton version of the game that’s installed on the Deck, if you’re playing a native Linux version of the game on your PC then make sure it’s the native Linux version that’s installed on the Deck (usual defaults to the Proton version).
It’s just an issue with the cloud save feature being too dumb, the path to the save folder isn’t the same on both platforms so it doesn’t sync well (although I think it does on some games).
It is rare to see a game get this wrong, the last one I saw was a Borderlands. If you look at a game’s Steamdb cloud listing, they list Windows’s save location, and then Mac/Linux saves are expressed as a rewrite rule.
Cloud saves on PS are handled quite simply - if you didn’t pay for your very own PS Plus then go fuck yourself. I have lost dozens of Aloy hours on my brother’s PS4.
Midnight Suns is the one I know of, and they fixed it early on. :)
I’ve had to fuck around with my Windows saves (backed to the cloud) when installing the Linux version of Wasteland 2 and the two Pillars of Eternity games and I eventually just gave up and installed them with Proton so it would download the saves to the right place for them to work.
If you play Deadfire on multiple Linux devices you need to install with Proton compatibility otherwise cloud saves don’t work at all because Steam doesn’t back up the right folder (it uses the Windows folder name which has a lower case o in the word Of), that means that if you wipe your hard drive and rely on cloud saves then you’re fucked because Steam will have created an empty folder to backup.
And remember, as I said, the Deck installs the Windows version by default but if you have Linux on your PC then chances are cloud saves between your Deck and PC won’t work unless you force the Deck to install the Linux version of games.
As others already stated, its possible, provided the game itself is compatible with Steam Deck. While there is the Steam Cloud that saves and loads saves automatically (which does not cost you anything BTW), some games do not support the Cloud. As this is PC basically where you have access to the filesystem, you can copy files over. Only thing that is a problem is, that Steam Deck will not get recognized as a drive if you plug it to USB connection. That’s a whole other story, but to answer your question, yes.
Yes, the Steam Deck can use saves you have in the Steam cloud. You can also probably manually copy the files over.
Either through Steam Cloud as others have already said, or something like Ludosavi.
Um… Yeah? You about Steam Cloud, right?
Besides that, if it’s a none-Steam game you could just… Transfer the same file to the Deck. Did with a couple of games through Google Drive.
The Steam saves, yes, the Steam deck would play them just fine.
The difference is that Steam Deck is actually cheap compared to what the competition does. It’s also the first generation of Steam Deck and the upgrade with an OLED (and lot of other stuff too) is actually substantial. And there are multiple versions of the Deck available to choose less drive space. Imagine this was an option on PS5 Professional too. Contrary, the PS5 Professional is the most expensive console compared to its competition. It’s so expensive, that it set a new bar.
That’s the opposite of what Steam Deck does. Steam Deck is the only current generation game console that gets cheaper over time. Also one is a handheld format, which is hard to make cheap, especially because its compatible to PC hardware (and software).
If you think $700 is bad, it’s £700 in the UK… which is $913. 🤢
Also:
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median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)
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median household income, USA (2022): $74,580
A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.
A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.
The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely insane.
The OLED Deck starts at £479. Still a lot but not as egregious. The LCD Deck is currently £262 ($344), which is pretty great.
I don’t remember exactly, but some relative poverty lines start at 60% of median household income.
- £700 / (£32,400 * .6 / 12) ≈ .43, thus 43% of monthly income for a poor household in the UK
- $700 / ($74,580 * .6 / 12) ≈ .19, thus 19% of monthly income for a poor household in the US
I hope median household income is netto, otherwise this is skewed.
If you think $700 is bad
I don’t:
I’m not sure what this proves 🤔
Cool chart.
It really makes the point to me that the PS1 and PS2, when adjusted for inflation, and for relative compute power, were just such a fantastic deal.
I was recovering from some serious console-purchase fatigue, when I bought my PS1 to replace my garage sale purchased Super NES. It was a big deal to me.
I’ve paid PS5 prices (inflation adjusted) for a game system a few times (my first Switch and SteamDeck), but they’ve been a lot more mind blowing than what appears to be on offer today.
Disclaimer: My favorite game is 8-bit, anyway.
Also drives home the point the PS3 was insanely priced.
So the most comparable console there is $456, and this is $700.
That is bad.
The PS5 Pro barely costs more to produce.
$700 is bad. $913 is awful.
Just because the PS3, a console universally panned as being way too expensive, was similar, doesn’t mean PS5 Pro pricing is alright.
Charts like that are great, I love to see them. However, they need to have a year for the inflation-adjusted dollars else it’s nearly meaningless when referred back to.
Anyone know the cost in the US including tax? Don’t they leave that off?
It varies state by state, some like Oregon have 0% tax, but most will be around 13% or so iirc.
No sales tax in NH either.
how does this work if you live close to another state? As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?
Texas has 8.25% but New Mexico is 5.125%
Sunland Park, NM (which is part of El Paso, TX metro are has an additional city+county tax of 2.125% so the taxes are the same as in Texas (the numbers may be slightly off, but the final tax rate is very close to Texas)
To put details to other person’s point: Even if you lived pretty close, for a lot of things, the gas cost would probably offset a lot of the savings. For big things for sure it would make some sense but for other things it just wouldn’t make any sense. You’d have to live right on the border and have a town with stores that carry whatever you’re buying also be pretty close.
Vancouver Washington residents drive to PDX for their jobs, to shop, eat dinner etc…
Convenience. Unless you live right near the border, it’s probably faster/easier to shop in your own state than drive all the way to another.
But if you do live near the border of a state without a sales tax, then it’s pretty common to shop in the neighboring state, especially for larger purchases.
In Washington alcohol is so expensive that any reasonably sized party of alcoholics it’s cheaper to drive across the entire state to buy in Idaho (forgive this disaster of a sentence structure I’m awake like 5hr early because of cats)
As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?
Mostly the states are quite big, so it’s not worth the trouble. But along various state borders, it distorts the shopping experience in odd ways.
I’ve been towns that are missing common retailers entirely, because everyone drives to the next town over (in another state), to avoid a tax.
We also have a rich history of driving across state lines to purchase stuff that’s illegal in our own state. It’s also illegal to bring it back, but the borders aren’t patrolled, so the only way to get caught is to have a traffic violation while doing it.
Or so I’ve heard. I never break any laws, myself.
You still have to waste 30 minutes of your time driving over there. I’m not wasting 30 minutes of my time to save $5
In some cases like that, where you’re in a state that has no sales tax, but near the border of one that does, they’ll actually check ID and charge you sales tax if you’re from the sales tax state.
In most countries it’s the sale point which matters, not which state you reside in, for indirect tax. I would assume it’s the same in the US. For example if you’re on holiday in a different state or country, they wouldn’t charge what you’re charged back home.
Yep, but the states with sales tax get tired of getting cheated out of their tax revenue. The specific example where I saw this was a major hardware store chain in Oregon (no sales tax) right near the border of Washington (6.5% sales tax). They asked everyone “Washington or Oregon” at the register and checked ID for anyone who said Oregon.
Quick search says that Washington considers it a “sales and use” tax, so anything purchased out of state, but intended for use in Washington is supposed to be taxed. Kinda messed up, really.
The highest state sales tax is 9.56%, most states are 6-8%. Though some major cities also have a small sales tax as well.
I live in Washington state and I’m pretty certain the sales tax here is 10% (slightly higher than your maximum figure of 9.56%). It’s a pretty well known trick here that you can account for tax just by decimal shifting and adding (ex: 5.29$ without would be 5.29$ + 0.529$ ~= 5.81$ with tax). Is that 9.56% an “in practice” figure that accounts for rounding down? I’m curious where you read it.
I found it on This website. WA is listed at 9.38%. I’m guessing your county or city has an additional sales tax.
That’s the average local + state sales tax in Washington. State sales tax is 6.5%, local varies from 1.2% - 3.85% (Seattle, for a total of 10.35%)
Thanks for the correction!
The US doesn’t have a national sales tax, so it depends whether the individual state imposes a tax or not.
If you think 26% is bad, in Russia it’s going to be priced at around ₽80-100k(~$883, VAT included), but the median monthly salary is ₽43.500 - $480… That’s well over 100% median household income given that over 38% families only have a single parent. And I’m pretty sure that’s not even the worst out there, think like Argentina has an extortionate import tax or something?
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PS5 Pro - only marginally better than an option that’s only $450.
Steam Deck OLED - only marginally better than an option that’s only $300.
Yeah, I don’t see any reason to upgrade either of mine. Really not worth it.
I think mid life upgrades targeting new customer and hard core types.
Regular folks just buy generational upgrades.
Like, they’re cool and tempting. But not anywhere near the price of a full unit when I have an already perfectly functioning one! If I could say swap the panel on the Deck (with relatively little effort), I would likely consider buying an upgrade kit but that’s not possible. Same thing with the PS5: if I could just buy the new gpu and replace the old one, I probably would. Never mind that it’s an apu so in this instance it’s really replacing the entire guts of the device, that’s a minor detail XD
Sales on PSN are appalling compared to Steam as well. Plus you can also get Steam sales on other sites like Fanatical.
Steam also has better remote play, and Steam custom controller profiles with nearly any controller are amazing.
Also nearly no backwards compatibility issues, whereas PS5 will only play/stream limited games from the past.
PS remote play is fantastic (for what remote play is. Streaming still sucks.)
Playstation Remote Play is garbage no matter the location or setup. I’ve tried many over many years in multiple houses. Sony is horrible at this.
Chiaki for Steam Deck/PC and PSPlay app for Android are insanely better quality for remote playing Playstation.
My record that I’ve never been able to match in Tokyo Jungle was in remote play on the PSP from the PS3. When I got a PS Vita TV I tested remote play, got sidetracked and spent the afternoon playing Destiny. I’ve played a couple of times World of Tanks on the phone with the official app (and a gamepad obviously, I’m not insane lol).
Sony’s very, very good at this. Granted the AMD video encoding is not as good as the Nvidia one annoyingly, but it’s up there as average quality.
Now I will say this… if you ever tried it using WiFi? Yeah, for whatever reason Sony’s WiFi chips are a dumpster fire on home consoles, acceptable on handhelds. That would’ve entirely explained your experience.
Now, if you want actual garbage, look no further than the Xbox: when I got the Series S I tried it wired to my desktop, and it was a laggy, overly compressed mess. Far worse than the time I tried OnLive through a VPN because it was not available in Europe, and that’s an achievement.
I have massively better quality, stability, and latency with the RemotePlay app over the internet from PS5 than I do with Steam in home streaming actually in my house. It’s still not good enough for high precision games, but Steam isn’t close.
PS4 can’t stream for shit because it can’t do the encoding.
PC streaming is extremely hit and miss. I ended up with Moonlight/Sunshine for playing from my nVidia Shield and that works a charm. Steam streaming never quite worked right. There’s a ton of options, and unless you pick exactly the right ones for your setup, it’ll do stupid things.
Steam sales have been crap for years though.
You used to be able to pick up games a year after they came out for like £5 on a flash deal. These days stuff is still full retail price years after launch just so it looks better during the few sales a year. We need to get back to the days of cut price re-releases (Playstation Platinum).
I got a shitload of games from bundles though. That at least is cheap on PC, along with Epic delving into their Fortnite war chest to bribe us with actually free games.
Think the best way to game cheaply on consoles is to pick up physical discs second hand (although a lot of games don’t even launch on disc any more), and be on the higher tiers of PS Plus for all the games. There’s some really good stuff on there, more than enough to keep me busy.
Those flash deals were awesome, I pretty much stopped caring about sales when they ended. Now I mostly use the wishlist and wait for games to come down
The PlayStation store is also a miserable shopping experience. If you don’t know what game you want or just want to browse, good fucking luck finding it there. No screenshots, no gameplay, no user reviews, no related games to compare to, no info about if your friends are wishlisting or playing it. Just a choice of buying the expensive version or the more expensive version, and good luck figuring out which DLC is already included in the deluxe editions.
I honestly realy dont mind lack of info but the loading time is horrendus if you want to browse current sales or just check the game info . And while my internet is not that great there is a day and night diffrence between steam and Psstore.
Shit yeah, no wishlisting, no ignoring, no gifting. Its pathetic.
At least the original PS3 store was decent for its time, but they ruined that.
Now that the Steam Deck and linux gaming has found some success I really hope Valve or someone else revisits the home console market with a similar approach.
You couldn’t really build a PC for the same price as a PS5 with the same performance unless you’re buying used parts in most places but that’s not because Sony is selling consoles at a loss right now like the olden days. A large system integrator like Valve (or xbox if they want to change their formula) could offer similar perf/price without all the downsides of these locked down consoles.
Isn’t that kind of what steam machines are supposed to be?
Honestly I think the trick for valve there would just be to release a build of steam OS people can install themselves into desktops (if they don’t already) and just have folks building their own machine for TV pc use.
That’s always been their plan, but it’s getting hit with Valve Time. My guess is that they won’t do it until all issues the major with NVIDIA GPUs have been fixed, as a public build that doesn’t run properly on a majority of machines wouldn’t go well. The latest driver is pretty good, but the Big Picture mode is still pretty much unusable.
At the very least they’re currently trying to bring official support over to other handhelds, as they’ve already confirmed that they want to official support for the ROG Ally and pushed out a update to SteamOS for the controller support.
Yeah. If Valve releases a remotely viable desktop console OS, I’ll immediately build one for my living room. If for no other reason, to keep the rest of the family away from my SteamDeck.
It won’t have the same performance as a PS5, but the new Minisforum MS-A1 with a user-upgradable CPU is a really interesting proposition. The Ryzen 8700G is pretty good, but I would expect solid upgrades to be available in the next few CPU generations.
I currently have an Nvidia Shield Pro (2019), and it’s fine. I have Moonlight installed and can stream from my desktop PC using Sunshine (I do this on my Steam Deck, too), but I don’t expect that Nvidia will make a replacement, and I don’t know if I would get it if they did.
The software outside of Steam’s big picture mode isn’t ready for a full Linux couch experience, but it’s close. The two projects to watch are KDE Plasma Bigscreen and Waydroid (some people are starting to get Android TV working) which would be a nice bridge to use apps designed for a TV UI until native Linux versions become available.
Since buying a steam deck I’ve spent more money on games I can play on it than I would normally for the pc.
That’s still cheaper than buying a ps5 on its own without the extra cost of games.
If I’m playing modern games on a TV? PS5 easy. But still the pro over the deck.
I love my deck. As the handheld it’s intended to be. It’s not powerful enough for an acceptable experience running a AAA 3D game on a TV screen. You can ignore the resolution and artifacts and just generally low visual quality and poor frame rate on a small screen, because playing the games portably at all is a huge step up. You can’t ignore any part of it on a TV. It’s fine for indie games, older games, 2D stuff, etc.
But it doesn’t have the performance for a good living room experience if you’re looking to play modern AAA games. (Ignoring all their bullshit rootkits on PC that block a lot of multiplayer games out completely, which are the games you have to pay for on PS. You just can’t play most of them on Linux at all.)
Yup. As someone who hasn’t had a dedicated gaming PC in about a decade, I’ve been really happy with the PS5 + Steam Deck combo (well, plus Switch, but that thing collects dust until Nintendo releases a Mario platformer).
I recently got a laptop that’s not made for gaming specifically, but can handle them pretty well (with Proton), and that has scratched any itch I’ve had for PC games that don’t lend themselves to Deck or console (your RTS games and such).
At risk of giving away the game… I think people would be very surprised to see how cheap physical copies of PS4 and PS5 games go for when you catch them on sale.
I love my Steam deck, and bounce between how heavily I use it vs the switch* or PS5 depending on the games I’m into at the moment. But misrepresenting its utility as a modern living room PC doesn’t help anyone and is just going to leave people disappointed.
The PS5 is probably my smallest library (and mostly PS4 games, a lot of which were before I had a PC), but it’s definitely plenty capable and I don’t regret the purchase at all. (The controller is also the coolest non graphics addition to gaming I’ve experienced in a long time).
*The switch desperately needs a 3rd party replacement for the controllers, though, because the joycons are bad brand new.
But misrepresenting its utility as a modern living room PC doesn’t help anyone and is just going to leave people disappointed.
Did I do this?
No, the OP did.
Edited for clarity.
how cheap physical copies of PS4 and PS5 games go for when you catch them on sale.
But them while you can folks, sony et al is working OT to kill this option
Y’all just picky. 720 was fine 20 years ago and it’s fine now.
Black and white TV was fine 60 years ago and it’s fine now
20 years ago was pre-bluray, so the most common video media was dvd with resolution of 720 × 480 (480p). So 720p was really good 20 years ago.
That, and monitor/TV size increased a lot at the time when flat panels became a thing, so you need a higher resolution just to achieve the same pixel density you already had on a smaller screen.
Well also the change to pixel based screens from CRTs meant that you needed higher resolution for the picture to look comparitively good.
