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Comment on Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS - Ars Technica

M500@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The suspend feature is wildly important for me.

If I had to boot a game and shut it down each time, I’d only pickup the device when I had set aside time to game.

Since I can suspend and resume whenever, I pickup my steam deck all the time. I can play in the car and just suspend when we arrive or I can play for a few minutes while waiting for a meeting to start.

I can play while my wife gets ready.

Sometimes meets get canceled or there is traffic, so gaming sessions can really stretch out into a longer play time.

If I couldn’t suspend, I wouldn’t have played in those moments.

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Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah same, being able to stop playing immediately is huge for me. There are a lot of games I would struggle to play through without it.

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makuus@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I feel like this really the killer feature.

I’ve seen a ton of digital ink spilled on all manner of positives, such as how amazingly-portable it is, or how it’s been doing wonders for the advancement of Linux gaming.

But, I’ve yet to see anybody—outside you—speak about how amazing the suspend/resume is. And, that for me, is the reason why I play on a SteamDeck almost exclusively these days—even though I have a small collection of games I can play on Mac. I have such small windows of opportunity, and appreciate I can still play a game, even for a little as a few minutes.

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Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My experience with suspend has not been good - causing glitching and requiring shutting the game down and reloading from a previous save whenever I suspended in a cut scene. As a result I haven’t used it much due to those first couple of trials; maybe it’s better now.

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- BobGnarley@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I have noticed a slight reduction in framerates when loading back in from a suspended state but only on certain games. Namely High On Life
  
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  - Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I was in the middle of Witcher 3 when I got my deck, and pausing during a cut scene (and some are feature film length, it fells like) caused the video to go slide-show and the audio to get choppy, and there was no recovering the game. I basically had to go back to the previous save and play back to that point. PITA. Something similar happened in one other game (can’t remember at the moment) and I just gave up suspend unless it was something simple / mindless like Yoku’s Island Express.
    
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- lyam23@beehaw.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you don’t use suspend mid game, what do you do? Do you shut the device down in between gaming sessions? Or do you just save and exit the game and suspend the OS level?
  
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  - Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Usually I just suspend in-game to the game’s menu, then hardware-suspend. That’s pretty reliable.
    
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silentknyght@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I used to like suspend. How is your battery life while suspended? If I left mine in suspend for more than a few hours, it’d die, or I’d pick it up and there wouldn’t be enough battery to continue playing without also charging.

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- azenyr@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Mine just lasts literally weeks, but I never tested it. It is so worry-free that I sometimes go multiple days without picking it up and when I finally do it has like 85% of battery and I don’t remember how much it had when I suspended it so I never even think about it. The TLDR is that the suspend in Linux works magically.
  
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  - silentknyght@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re talking about sleep/suspend directly from playing a game?
    
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  - Jrockwar@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Unlike the Switch, which drains 70% of the battery in 3 days of standby. Every time I pick it up I have to charge it, it feels like such a chore that the SD has taken its place completely.
    
    I kinda regret having bought a Switch.
    
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- M500@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It seems to be a hit randomly and depends on the game, but I only play around the house, so it’s never been a big deal. I also try not to suspend unless I’ve saved already just in case, but I’m willing to take the risk.
  
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