I never considered one of the windows-based portables. In fact when I saw that the steamdeck was linux based and was well received, I jumped.
Once I saw how well it worked, I stopped dual-booting my laptop and get to live in linux all the time.
If the article is correct and the market is starting to push this way, that is great news for linux, linux-gaming, and everyone.
M500@lemmy.ml 8 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.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 8 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.
makuus@pawb.social 8 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.
Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz 8 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.
BobGnarley@lemm.ee 8 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
lyam23@beehaw.org 8 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?
silentknyght@lemmy.world 8 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.
azenyr@lemmy.world 8 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.
M500@lemmy.ml 8 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.