soulsource
I own one, and am really happy with it. There is some jank to expect though:
- The official system image is based on Debian Unstable. This means that you frequently get broken updates (for instance, currently waybar is broken, and just a few days ago, boot got broken by a buggy initramfs).
- At least for some SoMs there are also Debian Stable images available, which are, well, stable.
- I am running Gentoo on my Reform, and once one gets past the initial setup (kernel config is a challenge) it works pretty well. I have written a blog post about installing Gentoo on the Reform.
- DPMS off might not work reliably (depending on SoM). I got it working well on my BananaPi CM4 SoM by changing sway config though.
- Suspend-to-disk (hibernate) does currently not work. Last time I tried it, the system continued just fine, but froze a few seconds later.
- No clue if standby works. I don’t use standby.
- Some other issues exist with the Banana Pi CM4, but there are workarounds: https://community.mnt.re/t/tracking-known-issues-and-solutions-with-the-bpi-a311d-upgrade
- There are probably more issues that I cannot remember right now.
That said: Now that I have Gentoo running on it, and found workarounds for the most annoying issues (except for the suspend-to-disk issue), I am loving the laptop and would not trade it for anything else.
I only use my Steam Deck while I am away from my gaming (Linux-)PC. The reasons for this are that for me a big screen wins compared to the small (and relatively low-res) display of the Steam Deck, and also the games I usually play play way better with mouse and keyboard than with gamepad input… Also, the Steam Deck is relatively heavy, so gaming in bed or stuff like that also isn’t that enjoyable…
That said, the Steam Deck absolutely shines in situations where I cannot access my gaming PC. I usually take it with me when I go for a longer train ride, and also brought it along for vacation.
Compatibility wise I am in the situation that all the games I ever tried are working on the Steam Deck, but that’s mostly because I have been using Linux exclusively for decades, and have made it a habit to check if a game is going to work before buying it. Though, in recent years that habit slightly changed, thanks to the work Valve has put into WINE development. While back when I switched to Linux most Windows games would not run via WINE, nowadays one can expect that almost all games do. It is still a good idea to check protondb first, of course. Also, there are still a few games that need tinkering to get them to run, and protondb usually has some info on how to do that.
One negative point I have to mention is battery runtime. It strongly depends on what one is playing, but very demanding 3D games can drain the battery in 1.5 hours. However, I am talking about the old LCD model here, the newer OLED models run longer with one charge (though I don’t know how long actually).
Another negative is the display resolution. Most games don’t mind running on 1280x800, but some do. This can lead to illegible text, broken UI, or, as is the case with Stellaris, a different UI that is less convenient to use.
And last, but not least, performance. The Steam Deck GPU is just enough for the built-in display’s resolution, and also only under the assumption that games are reasonably optimized. I have not yet been in the situation that I would have gotten unplayable FPS, but I have heard a lot about games only running with 20 FPS, and needing upscaling… So, basically don’t expect it to run Crysis (yes, I know that joke is old, and that the Steam Deck can run Crysis just fine).
Xbox Series X/S.
It isn’t even particularly bad by itself, but compared to its predesessors (Xbox One and Xbox 360) the Xbox Series X/S gamepad is a clear step back when it comest to build quality (just try pressing the D-Pad buttons without thinking “this is cheaply made”), and that comparison is what makes me hate it.
And what adds insult to injury is that the quite expensive Elite version of the controller is just as cheaply built as the regular model…
I would be very surprised if they wouldn’t fix all 50 filesystems.
In all projects I have worked on (which does not include the Linux kernel) submitting a merge request with changes that don’t compile is an absolute no-go. What happens there is, that the CI pipeline runs, fails, and instead of a code review the person submitting the MR gets a note that their CI run failed, and they should fix it before re-opening the MR.
Truth has been spoken.
Except that Kotlin is functional (just like Rust, C++, Visual Basic, JavaScript,…). It is, however, not Pure Functional (like Haskell or Lean4 would be - if you haven’t checked out Lean4, I can recommend it, great fun).
(Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_by_type#Functional_languages)
Oh, and just in the moment I hit send, I remembered another gem from the olden times:
Unreal World: Basically the survival game. 99% of today’s survival games are just a pale shadow of this. I mean, nowadays there are even “survival” games without hunger mechanics or proper simulation of wounds… No, this is not one of those easy mode survival games. This is Fantasy Finland, and it’s the Fantasy Iron Age. Available for free or, if you want updates faster, also for money on Steam.
I wanted to play Baldurs Gate 3 multiplayer with my wife, but couldn’t convince her. She really doesn’t like turn-based combat, and the game has too much dialogue for her taste…
So, we are now playing Palworld instead. It’s a lot of fun in multiplayer, but still quite grindy.