Submitted 2 months ago by pentastarm@piefed.ca to steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
Optionally, what would you have wanted to know before you bought one?
Thanks!
Controversial opinion, but if cost isn’t an issue then a steam deck isn’t a great buy. It fills a niche for sure but honestly a gaming laptop with a gamepad is 100% more useful IMHO.
I struggled to find it anymore portable than a laptop is and worse performance/screen/utility in almost every measurable way.
Agree 100%. Steam Deck is great for people with no money who still want to get into PC gaming. Everyone else should build a PC or buy a laptop.
Hard disagree
It’s great for mobile and couch gaming. Not comparable to a laptop and controller
The multi user experience is really bad if you share any games
Look into framegen. It actually works quite well and can make the difference between 40 fps not stable to 60 fps stable. It will introduce some artifacts, but on this screen size they are quite negligible.
ryokimball@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Also, kinda silly but I regret not switching to Bazzite OS earlier. I still have not done it. In theory it’s got several benefits over stock SteamOS but being comfortable, I haven’t put in the effort to try the new thing.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
What would be the benefits?
I only got interested in it because you could have gnome instead of Kde in desktop mode, but I haven’t heard about other benefits and there are pribably downsides too.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Benefits:
Drawbacks:
There may be other technical aspects that differ, like battery life, but I don’t know enough to say if they are different in practice. Fwiw, I have Bazzite on a laptop and SteamOS on my Deck.
ryokimball@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Main benefit for me is a more traditional Linux environment, whereas steamos basically has a single user without a password and encryption is difficult at best. Great for playing games but not for computer usability. Bazzite also supports full disk encryption, and recently I learned/was told that you can move your SD card between Bazzite devices like Nintendo cartridges to play wherever.
One downside would be arguably less support. It’s community driven so the hardware manufacturers aren’t going to necessarily help you get dysfunctional games working, etc. Not that they’re going to be much help even when you’re playing native.