Valve Announces Steam Deck As Portable SteamOS + AMD Powered Portable PC

I hope Valve did some Microsoftery and it runs Windows like a second-class citizen. Nothing malicious, just business. At least the OpenGL drivers will be pure shit on Windows.

If Windows doesn't work ideally, then that'll get rid of what little interest I have in it. I feel Halo MCC would be great on this and would likely be the first thing I'd try, and EAC doesn't work on Linux. Most of the games I have have some sort of anti-cheat or Xbox sign-in, and I don't want to mess with this on Linux.

It's supposed to be a handheld gaming console, not a tinker box. I can buy a laptop and toss Linux on it if I wanted to gamble how my games will work And alternatively, if I want a handheld gaming console that'll just work for games no questions asked, I can buy a Switch. I don't think Valve would waste time with this if they weren't confident in it, but I really question how well this will sell.

...Though I think Linux's eGPU support is still rather flaky, isn't it?

A few years ago I had a Macbook Pro 2014, and an eGPU (TB2) worked best on Linux with the highest performance and least amount of hacks. I needed a 3rd-party app for it to work under macOS. And it didn't work at all on Windows.

[trizio]

In before Half-Life: Lamarr, Steam Deck exclusive, is announced.

it sounds good, but this thing is ugly, too big, and how the heck is supposed to dissipate all the heat? Also, text is going to be unreadable unless developers work on it.

[AHOY]

Any confirmed features to be Linux exclusive? Will it really be able to run Windows on day0 with all drivers and stuff? Being a custom thing.

I hope Valve did some Microsoftery and it runs Windows like a second-class citizen. Nothing malicious, just business. At least the OpenGL drivers will be pure shit on Windows.

[scirocco]

700mb is absurd! There are desktop systems requiring a 10th of that and with at least double the functionality.

Even the Windows NT 4.x shell (20mb) puts this to shame in terms of functionality.

Right then we have very different perspectives of what functional is, xfce is the only other option I can think of that is ok if you tweak it alot compared to gnome and kde. And its like 50 mb lighter. The rest have their problems and takes a ton of tweaking to get usable, not to mention really bad 4k support.

[leech]

Exactly, thunderbolt/USB4 would be an adequate solution. Honestly I would be more than happy to buy one of these for 300-400, buy an eGPU dock for 300-400 (I still dont exactly understand why they are this expensive but whatever not the point), which is at the price of higher ranged PC's minus GPU anyways, and then use a used, or even new GPU. of course it would be pricey, but it doesn't matter. people already are willing to spend thousand dollars on a PC anyway. but at least it gives us an upgrade path. which is more important than actually doing it, because at least it gives the end user an option to make up the short comming themselves. which it will have plenty, especially as it ages. (Particularly in gpu obviously)

Seriously, why are eGPU dicks so expensive? I still have my Asus one, but it was a chunkc of change for sure. It is pretty much a PSU, Dock and PCIe slot all in one...
The method of sticking a GPU in the Atari VCS seems to be cheaper, although it is a lot cludgier!

[Quackdoc]

The dock wouldn't have to do anything, really, and an egpu of any appreciably greater performance would make for an extremely expensive dock. Making two kinds of docks isn't necessary either. A thunderbolt port would really be all that's needed, Valve official dock wouldn't really be necessary at that point because you're already breaking main hw spec, and it would be a very niche market anyway. Idk what it would take to implement thunderbolt on that thing though, so maybe not worth it... I kinda doubt it wasn't considered at some point during the dreaming phase.

Exactly, thunderbolt/USB4 would be an adequate solution. Honestly I would be more than happy to buy one of these for 300-400, buy an eGPU dock for 300-400 (I still dont exactly understand why they are this expensive but whatever not the point), which is at the price of higher ranged PC's minus GPU anyways, and then use a used, or even new GPU. of course it would be pricey, but it doesn't matter. people already are willing to spend thousand dollars on a PC anyway. but at least it gives us an upgrade path. which is more important than actually doing it, because at least it gives the end user an option to make up the short comming themselves. which it will have plenty, especially as it ages. (Particularly in gpu obviously)

[Quackdoc]

Better performance means more heat, less battery and louder fans. This already will perform better than the Switch. The Switch upscales when you plug in a dock, no reason the specific dock for this couldn't do the same. Though I think it'd need thunderbolt2 on it to support eGPUs, that'd be the best way to 'get more game'. Though I think Linux's eGPU support is still rather flaky, isn't it?

Upscaling was fine because the nature of 90% of switch games, this will preform better, but not "Better enough in all likelyness" Linux eGPU is fairly flakey when using it to render the display server (or more specifically when swapping gpu's display server is running on), but thats not really necessary in this case since the iGPU is more than fine for running wayland/xorg, and hot unplug for AMD gpus is in linux 5.14.

[doomie]

Better performance means more heat, less battery and louder fans. This already will perform better than the Switch. The Switch upscales when you plug in a dock, no reason the specific dock for this couldn't do the same. Though I think it'd need thunderbolt2 on it to support eGPUs, that'd be the best way to 'get more game'. Though I think Linux's eGPU support is still rather flaky, isn't it?

The dock wouldn't have to do anything, really, and an egpu of any appreciably greater performance would make for an extremely expensive dock. Making two kinds of docks isn't necessary either. A thunderbolt port would really be all that's needed, Valve official dock wouldn't really be necessary at that point because you're already breaking main hw spec, and it would be a very niche market anyway. Idk what it would take to implement thunderbolt on that thing though, so maybe not worth it... I kinda doubt it wasn't considered at some point during the dreaming phase.

[leech]

No. I want them to not bullshit us. I have very large doubts that plugging this into a TV, most of which nowadays are 4k, but even 1080p will be a good experience in most games. 1.5 Tflops in anemic for this use case, if it was strictly a 720p portable gaming PC fine, for 300 dollars sure. but don't advertised what isn't really capable, then not even give the end user a way to make up the deficiency themselves.

as I said, I was hoping for something more compelling hardware wise. looking at benchmarks of similar specd machines (as I said, you cant do it dead on, but you can get close) its performance over the switch is disappointing IMO. that is all, I already said I expect it to sell, Its fine for the price, the hardware is understandable, but I would absolutely pay more, for a better preforming machine. or at least let us make up for the downsides ourselves.

Better performance means more heat, less battery and louder fans. This already will perform better than the Switch. The Switch upscales when you plug in a dock, no reason the specific dock for this couldn't do the same. Though I think it'd need thunderbolt2 on it to support eGPUs, that'd be the best way to 'get more game'. Though I think Linux's eGPU support is still rather flaky, isn't it?

[leech]

I highly doubt that its going to be single channel memory since that is a massive drop in performance for no real reason

Can't wait for the gnome haters, not too surprised that they went with Arch + KDE plasma. Arch is rolling release which can help deal with the outdated graphics driver problems (i.e. you get kernel updates sooner) and KDE (much to the dismay of others) is actually one the leanest desktop environments when it comes to CPU and memory, that thing is heavily optimized.

KDE is lean for CPU and Memory usage. Less so for it's UI design. It'd almost be wiser to use the Plasma Mobile on the thing, and then detect if a dock is connected, to switch to full Plasma Desktop. That'd be a neat trick, actually. Otherwise, Gnome Shell is probably the superior choice for a small touch screen device. Windows on a small touch screen device is terrible (unless Windows 8.x), so there is that.

Hopefully they have some great developers that'll stick with Arch and do fantastic QA on updates, as Arch does break occasionally.