Whatever. I don’t need it to be better, I just need it to be decent.
Precisely.
I switched to Linux before Steam on Linux was a thing. When it came to Linux, I made a Steam account and bought games. When they made Proton, I bought more games.
I’m not moving away from Linux, so all I need is for games to work well and I’ll buy them. That’s true on my desktop, and it’s true on Steam Deck (even more true since many games are preconfigured).
I don’t think it’s good because of Linux, I think it’s good because Valve invested a lot into it.
I’d say:
- Lightweight (no bloat)
- No licenses
- Easier package management (of preinstalled drivers etc.)
- Easier driver development
- Much more flexible (Bootloaders, Partitions, etc.)
I love how XDA have this article 2 days ago
4 reasons Windows is a better OS for gaming handhelds than Linux
Their take aways are crap:
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Windows offers complete compatibility with all games. I get what they are driving at, but I am amused that I have older games running on Linux that do not run on windows. They should have said most games run on windows, and if you dont mind root kits installed on your computer anti cheat ones do too.
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Xbox PC Game Pass provides access to a wide range of games. If you want a subscription. And a Microsoft account. Or in their case friends. And if you are going to share your pass with a friend, why not just sail the seas and call it a day?
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Windows is more versatile than Linux, allowing your gaming handheld to also serve as a primary desktop PC with the ability to connect peripherals and a monitor, providing a full-fledged computing experience. This adds value to a Windows-based handheld. This one pissed me off. No it is not more versatile. I use the steamdeck as my work computer when I am out of town and I use Linux on the desktop exclusively. I have a full fledged computing experience, thank you very much.
rootkits
And this is the number one reason I don’t use Windows. I don’t feel like I control Windows, and the fact that game devs do really rubs me the wrong way. If I wanted that experience, I’d buy a console.
gamepass
I never saw the appeal. I guess it’s cheaper if you like trying lots of games, but surely not knowing when the game will leave the service would be really annoying. I’ve been in the middle of Netflix shows when it leaves the service, and I tend to binge those, whereas many games can take me weeks or months to get through.
I guess it’s cool when it was $1 or whatever for the intro period, but I really don’t see myself subscribing long term, especially not at the full price. I might do it if I could pick nearly any game on Steam, but that’s not how it works.
versatile
Eh, I actually mostly agree with that one. More stuff works on Windows than Linux, that’s a simple fact of the current state of software.
That said, I have never used my Steam Deck to get work done, I’ve only used it for gaming. I have a laptop for work (much bigger screen, included keyboard, etc), and having to bring enough extra stuff with me to make the Deck work well (monitor, keyboard, mouse) would take up way more space than just bringing a laptop and the Deck separately.
So either way, I think it’s a crappy example. If you’re going to bring all of the accessories for a work setup, you’d pick based on the software you need. I can’t work effectively on Windows, so it’s a no-go for me, but I’m absolutely in the minority. Most would feel more comfortable on Windows than Linux.
versatile
In terms of what your workflow is it really is versatile, although you can get add on software in windows to kind of rig it. Your workflow can be your own - tiling, activities, traditional windows like desktop, or more focused with something like say Gnome.
As for the Steamdeck, I had a USB-C hub for my Pinephone and started using it with the Steamdeck. I found that when I traveled there was almost always a TV or monitor at the destination. Worst case I can use my tablet with steamlink as a monitor. I had always carried a portable mouse for my laptop anyways, so that left me only needing a keyboard. I got a light and small portable keyboard.
I found that a laptop of the same capability to actually play games was big and heavy. My travel laptop was smaller, but I found myself bringing the steam deck along too anyways.
So in the end: Flying, I just play games on the steam deck. When I get where I am going, the keyboard (stored in the luggage, not on me) comes out and I can set up as a workstation either in a hotel or at a clients office, or a remote office quickly. In the case of a remote office I just use their monitors and keyboard - seems like everyone has a spare workstation these days. I put applications that I need to use, sometimes full desktops, into Azure so the deck acts as an RDP client for any windows software. Or remote into the clients provided workstations if they want to provide one - also with the steamdeck.
almost always a TV or monitor at the destination
Perhaps if you always stay at hotels, but if you usually stay with family or friends, your options will be quite limited. It’s also obviously not available in transit (airplanes, trains, etc). I almost never stay in a hotel room for more than an hour or two (aside from sleeping), because I’m either on location or staying with friends/family.
So I honestly never had a situation where I could’ve gotten away without a laptop. Then again, the nature of my work requires a lot of typing, so YMMV.
And yeah, a gaming laptop is a nonstarter for me. It’s too bulky, tends to have crappy battery life, and the ergonomics of actually playing suck. So that’s why I bring a thin-ish laptop and a Steam Deck, the laptop slips in my bag for the day’s work, and the Steam Deck stays in my room for games later (sometimes I sneak it in my bag if I know there will be downtime).
That said, if I’m traveling, I’m not working in an office, it’ll be at a conference desk or a family member’s house, and it’s really hit or miss what amenities I’ll have access to.
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XDA’s article is quite a bit of garbage too. Outside of game compatibility their other reasons are reaching.
Linux has a desktop and can be used as a desktop PC as well and works with a ton of peripherals driver free. That being said Linux has an issue with too many hands in the cookie jar for window managers so you get 2 really bulky fleshed out ones and a whole bunch of others that just don’t hold up without considerable customization by the user which tends to add more bulk and a steep learning curve.
Xbox Gamepass, as great as it is, has a ton of issues with installing/uninstalling software in Windows and the cloud gaming part of Gamepass Ultimate works quite well on the Steam Deck too. Technically you can also dual boot Windows but it’s no at all worth it and has much worse performance.
And then they just kind of silently say that many people don’t know Linux and are familiar with Windows. I feel like anyone coming to Windows 11 from 10 or even 7 might have some idea but they’re going to be just as confused considering the obfuscation Microsoft included in 11. And Steam OS has an easy to use and understand interface that just about anyone can figure out in a few minutes.
I’m just not seeing the huge benefit that XDA claims. Worse performance and battery life, generally a higher cost (Windows licensing), and support is going to be a grab bag for all these Windows based handhelds.
I don’t even see the point in comparing OS, just compare product experience. For example:
- inexpensive for the performance you get
- easy to use to play games
- can use desktop mode for additional value (e.g. install Heroic or other launchers)
- decent battery life
The fact that it runs Linux is largely an implementation detail, until you get to desktop mode.
Compatibility is always touted as the primary reason why Windows trumps Linux for PC handheld gaming, but I’d say that the Steam Deck is probably more compatible with the types of games that I play than handhelds like the ROG Ally. Sure, more games may run outright on the Ally, but how many of those are genuinely playable if they rely on a mouse for control? These are supposed to be handheld PCs but for most of them you’d need to plug an external mouse in and sit at a desk to get the most out of a large number of PC games. Touchscreen control is often awkward at best for management games and games with similar mouse-driven interfaces.
I think the Lenovo handheld has a touchpad from the looks of a few photos, so at least they’ve understood the problem. If you play the sort of games where you’d mostly use a controller anyway you’ve got a lot of good handhelds to choose from. If your game library looks a lot like mine though, your choice is limited.
I don’t game, but if I did, yes, I’d use Linux as my gaming platform. Just way more cuztomizable.
Linux desktop? I feel like a Linux desktop requires too much tinkering. It’s nice for the steam deck because of valve’s direct support for the hardware and os both in hand. If you take a common gaming desktop you’ll probably run into lots of issues like 75% of gaming desktops on steam use Nvidia. 60% of controllers on steam are Xbox which has a bit of setup requirements and sometimes even then the drivers don’t work.
Overall I love Linux. I love it in an environment where it’s directly supporting me and my hardware. I simply do not get that with my common gaming desktop.
I feel like a Linux desktop requires too much tinkering
It depends which distro you’re on and what their priority is. I’m told that Linux Mint is very friendly to users. Ubuntu is also financially invested in making their OS as streamlined as possible. PopOS too.
The more a distro is targeting a specific user experience, the less tinkering it has. You just generally only see those deliberate user experiences in the mobile space (android, steamdeck, etc.) where the user’s expectations are well defined. A desktop could be used for anything, and most people don’t even have a desktop these days, so there’s not a lot of financial incentive to design a user experience there.
But at the end of the day, when someone says they “use Linux”, they almost never mean that they interface directly with the Linux kernel, but that whoever maintains the distro they run happened to choose to Linux.
Mint is the distro I use. I started with it in 2008 after being on some free-only Ubuntu-derived distro for about a year. After that, I went to Fedora, Arch, Manjaro then Fedora, then finally back to Mint recently.
most people don’t even have a desktop these days, so there’s not a lot of financial incentive to design a user experience there.
I don’t know if that’s true unless you separate desktops from laptops. I think most Americans at least have at least one home PC. https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/percentage-of-households-with-at-least-one-computer/4068/ shows this to be true. As well as https://www.statista.com/statistics/756054/united-states-adults-desktop-laptop-ownership/ and I am sure more stats can be pulled up. I guess if you mean custom-built desktop computers that number is probably low but of things that need to run a 32-bit/64-bit desktop environment computer, there is probably one in every house.
Yes, desktops and laptops are two different form factors that address completely different use cases. Laptops made up the “mobile” market before the smartphone era. The power/thermal requirements, as well as peripherals for a laptop all need a completely different solution to create a reasonable user experience. Desktop UX innovations haven’t seen much recently beyond all-in-ones. Most people these days don’t even have a desk they could put it at, let alone enough room at the desk. And the under 18 crowd does everything on their phone or on a tablet, often not even needing a laptop.
Rather than tinkering, I often just omit the games that don’t work well and buy AMD rather than Nvidia. I’ve got a Windows partition, but the last times I’ve booted into it were to update firmware on a fighting game controller and to play Dragon Ball FighterZ, which is basically the only game I have left in my library that I’ll play with friends and won’t work on Proton (online, anyway). Tinkering isn’t even a thing I’m thinking about one way or another, but the nagging and removal of control that Microsoft annoys me with is something I actively seek to avoid. Different stokes, I suppose.
There are a few games where I still hold on to Windows for. I do wonder if I could just use Linux as the host OS and virtualize a windows environment that has pretty good VirGL support.
Prior to Proton, it was a popular recommendation to use GPU passthrough to a virtual machine running Windows, with Linux as the host OS, but I never did it myself. Which games are your holdouts? Live service stuff with anti-cheat?
No, it’s pretty basic but older games like Castle Crashers, Never Alone, and A Hat In Time. They all get about half the FPS they should on proton but also sometimes they’ll launch and get less than 5 FPS the entire time. I just relaunch and they’ll get about half again. At all times there seems to be a latency between my XBox controller to those games specifically where I don’t notice this lag in rocket league.
The controller lag might just be a symptom of the same problem, but it’s strange regardless. Bummer. In my neck of the woods, Proton has been so good that I often find myself not even checking compatibility ratings before buying a game. I’m actually struggling to remember the last time that Proton failed me, since the things it struggles with these days, like certain kinds of anti-cheat or DRM, are the exact reasons I wouldn’t buy a game even if I was on Windows. Kubuntu/AMD, if you were curious.
I use Linux as my daily driver. I use the Steamdeck as my desktop when I am out of the country and on business trips.
The desktop does not require “tinkering” unless you want to. By default it is better set up than windows is. Windows has yet to get a decent file manager for example.
I game on my linux desktop. Its not uncommon and it works great.
I feel like you missed my point. It’s not about the steam deck, it’s about a desktop computer filled with random parts where Linux now needs to support and get all these things working together.
Not really random parts… heck my deckstop gpu doesn’t even need drivers. No tinkering at all. Windows is far worse at having to screw around with drivers.
proprietary GPU drivers ship with windows and are updated via the windows updater.
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I feel like a Linux desktop requires too much tinkering.
That is true, but some people just like to tinker.
Overall I love Linux. I love it in an environment where it’s directly supporting me and my hardware. I simply do not get that with my common gaming desktop.
That is somewhat the beauty of it. I don’t game, I just go to work and go home, so I have some free time to tinker and share what I have done/found/made.
Absolutely and that’s a great way to look at it. If you like to tinker as a hobby then Linux is amazing. I even have a Linux computer meant for tinkering and do enjoy it. That said I switch to my Windows computer when I want to focus on playing games purely because that Linux computer isn’t up to the task even with proton.
I use Windows basically for work only. It’s just easier cuz everything is stacked against Microsoft products.
Or if I’m at home, I RDP to the PC at work and just use that.
Here’s the five:
- Everything you need, nothing you don’t
- Better performance, lighter overheads
- A hidden desktop experience
- Never worry about drivers
- Modify it to your heart’s content
And my response to each:
- Seems kinda hand-wavy to me, so I’ll boil this down to lower bloat (i.e. lower disk and mem usage by the OS)
- This is very much YMMV, and for Steam Deck specifically, it’s comparing a tuned the system to an OOTB experience; surely other handhelds tune their systems too
- I’m pretty sure this is true for other handhelds, but I haven’t used them personally so I don’t know
- This seems very solvable, and not an inherent Windows issue; large enterprises manage drivers and whatnot centrally, surely a handheld can too
- Surely this is true for Windows devices, no? I’m guessing more people are comfortable customizing Windows handheld PCs vs the Steam Deck simply because more people are familiar with customizing Windows than Linux
I just want to say that I have been Linux only for well over 10 years (aside from macOS at work), and I absolutely prefer a Linux-based handheld to a Windows-based one. However, I think this article is vastly overselling what Valve has done on the Steam Deck, after all, this is a pretty serious thing to brush aside:
On top of that, some games will never run on Linux, no matter what. Games like Call of Duty with a custom anti-cheat won’t run, and that’s a symptom of how open Linux is.
The end user usually doesn’t care about how open their gaming-specific device is, they care if it plays the games they want.
I love Linux and my Steam Deck, and I’ll recommend it every chance I get, but overselling it just leads to frustration. If you temper expectations, people will be pleasantly surprised at how good it is.
- Seems kinda hand-wavy to me, so I’ll boil this down to lower bloat (i.e. lower disk and mem usage by the OS)
They pretty clearly say what they mean by that though, unless you only read the headers and not the actual text
- This is very much YMMV, and for Steam Deck specifically, it’s comparing a tuned the system to an OOTB experience; surely other handhelds tune their systems too
They absolutely don’t, is the thing, and the Windows ones largely can’t in the same way that the Deck can, because they can’t change how Windows works beyond the surface, meanwhile Valve is able to write software for Linux like Gamescope, an entire lightweight compositor that lets them have full control over how games are displayed and means they don’t need to have a full desktop environment running, and they directly contribute to and fund development for open source system components (like the KDE Plasma desktop environment that’s used in Desktop Mode) in a way that would be impossible for similar things on Windows
Valve even has their own custom patched version of the Linux kernel in SteamOS, you can’t do anything remotely like that on Windows
- I’m pretty sure this is true for other handhelds, but I haven’t used them personally so I don’t know
You can’t avoid having using the desktop eventually on Windows on a handheld, and it’s always running the background, even if you boot into Big Picture
Even if you’re always running games from Big Picture or whatever, you still need to use the desktop for updates, as well as any settings and functionality that can’t be accessed from Big Picture on Windows (like dealing with Bluetooth devices), as opposed to SteamOS where all of it can be handled directly in gaming mode without a desktop even running
- This seems very solvable, and not an inherent Windows issue; large enterprises manage drivers and whatnot centrally, surely a handheld can too
ASUS already has a solution, like the article mentions, but it can’t be nearly as seamless as SteamOS where they can just push a single system update image that includes everything, and it’s applied all in one go directly from gaming mode
There’s also additional benefits SteamOS can have with its update system that Windows can’t have, like how it has an A/B partition system similar to Android so that a broken update only breaks one partition and it can switch to the other one when that happens, which especially helps if something like a power interruption happens during an update and it doesn’t complete properly (meanwhile on Windows it can be pretty hard to recover from something like that)
- Surely this is true for Windows devices, no? I’m guessing more people are comfortable customizing Windows handheld PCs vs the Steam Deck simply because more people are familiar with customizing Windows than Linux
You absolutely cannot modify Windows nearly as deeply as you can with Linux, and attempting to make any serious changes requires hacky solutions that Microsoft can just break in the next update anyway
Like, you can change almost every single component of a Linux distro, you can rewrite components directly since they’re open source, and there are usually multiple options to pick from for any given piece of system software, such as the entire desktop environment, or the audio system, or even the kernel itself
What’s going to be really neat is if we get Linux handhelds using these new Qualcomm chips that are similar to Apple M series chips in terms of performance and power consumption.
You do realize it’s not that simple, right? That’s arm, not x86 so it would be a different architecture from consoles and pcs. It necessitates using some sort of translation layer like rosetta for mac and that tanks performance. So no, in the short term that wouldn’t be neat.
M1 and M2 chips are so much faster that they outperform native x86 macs running Rosetta https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/m1-chip-emulating-x86-benchmark/
Those are synthetic CPU tests. It’s not a valid point of reference when discussing a cpu+gpu workload for an x86 game. Plus, you’re comparing with 3 year old Intel cpus. The mobile king right now are AMD APUs.
New ARM chips would also need to only emulate the speeds of current x86 chips as opposed to future ones to support the current crop of games. The idea would be that new games would be compiled natively. Most games nowadays use a handful of engines, so it’s really a matter of porting the engine to the new platform. There are a number of architecture differences that make chips like Apple M series and new Qualcomm chips strictly superior to anything Intel or AMD are putting out. This article does a good overview. The gist is that there are two main advantages. System on a chip architecture eliminates the need for the bus, so GPU, CPU, and any other cores can all share memory directly. The other big advantage is that RISC instructions have a fixed sized, you can read a batch of instructions figure out which ones are independent, and then run those in parallel. This approach scales to a large number of cores. On the other hand, CISC instructions are variable length and this makes this approach impossible to scale. AMD discovered that past parallelizing 3-4 instructions the cost of figuring out dependencies exceeds the benefits of running them in parallel.
My overall argument here is that the chip simply has to run enough current games well enough, and that new games would target the chip natively. And I’m going to point out that Steam Deck clearly shows that using an emulation layer as a bridge is a perfectly viable approach.
That’s not really true. It has to run a plethora of games well. Both new and very old. Not to mention emulators as well.
The fact that a different architecture might be a lot better than x86 doesn’t change the fact that pcs and consoles use x86 and that all of the emulators target that architecture as well. I don’t care how much better arm o risc can be, I care about being able to use the games and programs I want to use today. Unless new architectures are powerful enough to run x86 programs decently woth a translation layer, their adoption will not be widespread.
The idea would be that new games would be compiled natively.
They won’t even compile games for Linux as it is, and a lot of the ports we do get are awful ones that run significantly worse than the Windows versions do through Proton, so expecting publishers to start putting all their PC games on a different architecture entirely, just for the sake of handhelds like this, is completely unrealistic
Stuff like Proton (which isn’t emulation in the sense that this would be) has already struggled so much with compatibility over the years to get to where it is now, adding an entire x86 emulation layer on top of that would set things back so far and it would even more of an uphill battle to recover from
If the goal is to run enough current games well enough, then AMD chips are still doing fine at that, and upcoming generations will likely go a long way to improving that
They won’t even compile games for Linux as it is, and a lot of the ports we do get are awful ones that run significantly worse than the Windows versions do through Proton, so expecting publishers to start putting all their PC games on a different architecture entirely, just for the sake of handhelds like this, is completely unrealistic
I’ve been pretty happy with the Steam Deck, and pretty much all the games I wanted to play worked just fine. Steam Deck is also selling quite well, so clearly I’m not an outlier.
And I’ve already explained in detail why RISC SoC architecture is far better than anything possible with x86.
Yeah but that’s only from technical standpoint. Adoption is king and right now we’re pretty far away from ARM or risc being commonplace. Hence, a handheld with a non x86 chip does not make sense now or in the near future. Not to mention that people tend to want to run emulators and old games with these devices and those will never be “compiled natively” for either arm or risc.
I have a Steam Deck and I’m happy with it too, but my point is that the game compatibility would just get even worse if you add on having to emulate x86, because it’s not like x86 emulation would be perfect right away, and the amount of native ports will become even smaller than they already are
Even if the architecture is an improvement, in practice it wouldn’t make any sense right now, and I can’t see an ARM-based Steam Deck or whatever selling nearly as well as the existing x86 ones given the downsides it would present
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