I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus last year, just an impulse buy because it was on sale dirt cheap. Ended up liking it so much I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks.
Meanwhile, my Deck gathers dust because it’s just too bulky too fill the void left behind by the GBC/GBA/DS I grew up on.
First manufacturer to get SteamOS running on a form factor that fits in my pocket gets my entire bank account. Doesn’t have to be beefy, just needs to run all my favorite 2D indie games.
Ngl, even though I am happy about this, ill prob just stick to bazzite, and just move anything else thats “powered by steamOS” to it as well. And Windows. I am simply too much a sucker for the quality of life stuff on it, like ROM data taken from the file
What makes Bazzite so much better to use on a Deck versus SteamOS? It doesn’t seem any different than just using Remote Play/Moonlight/whatever and streaming from your main gaming rig?
Have you visited their website? It explains what it is and it is definitely a lot more than just a way to stream games from your PC. How did you come up with that conclusion?
That’s the first description on the website. It says it’s a cloud native Linux image that comes pre-installed with all the apps for gaming, e.g. Steam, Lutris, etc. I was asking a question as to why it’s better than SteamOS, as when I see cloud native I just assume it’s something designed for and around streaming. I may be misunderstanding its purpose, but that’s the impression I get from the site.
I want SteamOS on desktop 😅
I’m hoping to build my first Desktop soon and i’m praying that Valve gets an Official SteamOS release out by then. I’d kill to have it.
What are you hoping to get from SteamOS that you aren’t able to get from any other Linux distro?
No system management. A set once and forget it system, ala console style, but with the potential of off the shelf high power components for PC games on the living room is a quality proposition.
Bazzite as HTPC and you can do that already, if you want to test your dream.
I second Bazzite. It’s been a phenomenal experience on my laptop.
Interestingly, I was messing with BoxBuddy a week or two ago, and looking at what distroboxes were available to install, and there’s a SteamOS container on there. Not sure if it’s official or what, but I was able to run games on it (though absolutely unnecessary).
I’m currently running Bazzite but have been thinking about picking up an ROG Ally X for my husband. I think it having steam OS would be better for him in general. Hope this is available soon.
Get him an OLED Steam Deck instead. I don’t know why anyone would get a ROG, especially if you’re just going to put SteamOS on it.
He has the same problem I did. He has games that aren’t compatible with steam os and it’s one of those things where it’s actually easier to dual boot windows than it is to fuck around with compatibility layers for things that don’t run in proton.
He also isn’t a fan of the touchpads. I personally like the ergonomics of the Ally x better but that’s my own preference.
This is cool, more options are better.
It does, however, make me REALLY want Valve to add official third party library support. I have thousands of games on GOG and hundreds on Epic. I don’t need them to officially support all of them, but at least I need a better approach to integrating them than fiddling with Heroic or Lutris in desktop mode.
Playnite integrates all launchers into one with a controller friendly UI but it’s only available on Windows.
Yeah, there are a bunch of alternatives. I don’t even think it’s as much of a problem on Desktop Linux, where having Steam and Heroic/Lutris going at the same time isn’t a big deal.
But all the hoops to integrate other launchers inside Steam Game Mode and the friction in trying to use them reliably in that environment are just not mainstream viable or functional. As long as that works the way it currently does I’ll default my handleds to autobooting into Windows Big Picture instead.
Which, by the way, is totally a thing you can do. People always act like there’s a much bigger gap than there actually is between those two options. You mostly only lose the well integrated display and power controls, which may be a bigger or smaller deal depending on what your Windows handheld uses instead.
The current way to play Epic/GoG/Amazon games on the Steam Deck is
- Switch to desktop mode
- From the app store, search for Heroic Launcher and install
- Launch Heroic
- Put login credentials for Epic/GoG/Amazon
- Wait for your library to get populated
- Install the games
- Add Heroic as a non-Steam application
- Switch back to Big Picture mode
- Launch Heroic
- Play games
While the number of steps seems like a lot, if you compare against the Windows equivalent, it’s not a lot simply because Windows has no Big Picture/console mode. I personally hate the desktop mode in Windows because I’m forced to use the touchscreen constantly.
What would you like to be changed in this process?
I 100% agree with you on your first 2 paragraphs. I really love my Deck, but God damn is it annoying getting things like Battle.net, GOG, and/or Epic games working inside of it in Game Mode sometimes.
Apps like NonSteamLaunchers or Heroic help a lot, but they don’t always work smoothly. Like I had the itch to try out WoW again this week after not playing for numerous years (I’d heard War Within was really good). Getting battle.net installed and working within Game Mode was a major pain in the ass. I’d done it a few months ago for Diablo 4 without much headache, but somehow when I tried launching BNet last night, it wouldn’t. NonSteamLauncher’s BNet integrator also wasn’t working for whatever reason. So I had to do a few workarounds before I got one that worked.
It’s scenarios like that where I truly wish Valve would try harder to work with companies like Epic or Blizzard to get better native integration. I know Epic is a competitor, but really it’d be beneficial for both companies to have good integration between each other. I’m much more inclined to buy games on Epic if I can easily play them on my Deck, and I’m more lore inclined to stay within Steam’s ecosystem if I’m not constantly encountering these annoying obstacles. It will likely never happen, but I can dream
As for your last paragraph, are you referring to wiping your Deck and just installing Windows? I’ve been hesitant to do that due to how often I use the sleep mode function in games. I’ve tried using sleep mode on my desktop PC like that when I can’t save a game and I need to stop to do other stuff, and it’s really hit or miss if a game will resume without issue after waking. Have you had any problems? Also, how is your battery life impacted? The Deck has crazy good battery life, and I attribute a lot of that to how efficient the underlying OS is with power management, but maybe I’m wrong. Also, do you have issues with drivers? The APU on the Deck is a custom AMD chipset, but have people ported the drivers for it over to Windows now?
“Gamers are used to fiddling”?
No. Gamers are largely playing on Switch. And PS5, sometimes.
The residual amount of people playing on PC are annoyed by fiddling, with very rare exceptions.
Hell, I fiddle. I’ve been known to fiddle in my day. And I’m here complaining about the fiddling. I’m a representative of extreme tolerance to fiddling and I’m annoyed.
PC represents more than half of the market at this point, which we’ve seen in investor reports from the likes of Ubisoft and Capcom, even if many PC players are annoyed by fiddling.
I like fiddling. Sometimes i fiddle and then never actually use what I was fiddling with once it’s working. But even I would gladly welcome not needing to fiddle at all.
