Windows is a choice. Vendors don’t have to choose it.
Windows plays every PC game in existence and plays them better though. It also allows you to use the device as a pc replacement via displaying the screen on a tv/monitor. It’s the best OS to go with imo.
If you’re building a high-powered machine, maybe, but one of the points of these handhelds is that they don’t have a chunky GPU, a case full of fans, and an always-available power supply. Ignoring the points others have made about suspend/resume, Windows is a bit bulky and bloated, and running it on hardware that wants to be performant and power-efficient is apparently not that practical.
Windows plays every PC game in existence
There’s a surprising amount of older PC games that don’t work on Windows anymore, but work fine on Linux. I remember trying to play New Vegas a few years ago on Windows 10 and needing four separate mods just to get it to play properly, and even after all that it would still crash every 15-20 minutes. I’ve since played it all the way through on Fedora and SteamOS with zero tinkering and no crashes.
It also allows you to use the device as a pc replacement via displaying the screen on a tv/monitor
you can do this on steamos
you can do this on steamos
Not with windows you can’t, which is the OS the overwhelmingly large majority of people want to use.
There’s a surprising amount of older PC games that don’t work on Windows anymore, but work fine on Linux.
There’s more that work and work better on Windows than Linux than there are the other way around though.
the overwhelmingly large majority of people want to use
you state this as fact yet my experience has been that people hate using windows for its UI on handhelds and only tolerate it because everything’s made for it. that’s not a shining point for windows, quite the opposite.
the steam deck surpassed a million devices sold - so while over 50% of people probably still want windows, i wouldn’t say its an “overwhelming” majority. tons of people clearly like valve’s take on linux even despite its limitations
Not with windows you can’t, which is the OS the overwhelmingly large majority of people want to use.
Most people don’t replace SteamOS on their device so I don’t think that’s true. Plasma is a perfectly suitable replacement for Windows unless you really need access to Adobe products or something.
There’s more that work and work better on Windows than Linux than there are the other way around though.
True but It’s a number that is shrinking every day. We are down to about ~100 games at this point that explicitly cannot work? I play a lot of games and I can’t remember the last time I tried to play a game and it didn’t work because I was on Linux.
Windows makes deck more like a laptop. No comfortable ui/sleep, so it’s like steam deck with everything good taken away but with compatibility.
I’ll take compatibility over sleep mode tbh. Most people play their steam decks at home anyway, so battery life isn’t an issue.
The ROG Ally isn’t like a laptop at all either. The difference is that you can use it as a PC if you want, unlike the steam deck running steamOS.
…I can use steamOS like a PC if I want. It’s an arch-based KDE desktop with steam on it. I can do whatever I want to do.
When was the last time you used Linux, 2008, lmao?
I don’t get it
Right! SteamOS with sleep/resume, gyro, touchpads and back paddles are my absolute baseline for handhelds now.
I can’t wait to see some REAL competition.
I’ve said it before, but what makes the Deck unique is the holistic experience it brings. Like a really good chili, it’s a culmination of all the ingredients, particularly the below;
- SteamOS out of the box
- Steam Input in combination with the extensive inputs on the Deck itself
- The ability to easily change core hardware settings via the options menu to influence performance or battery life
- The extensive third party support via software and peripherals (cases, skins, accessories)
- Price point
- Well documented upgradability (SSD replacement, thumbsticks, etc)
I’m all for better screens and hardware, but they always come at a cost to battery life. Not that the Deck has a huge battery life to begin with, but the reason it is passable is due in large part to the hardware it comes with.
The Ally may be beefier spec wise, but at detriment to battery life. Not to mention the Windows OS and lack of inputs (both trackpads and two extra back buttons).
The Legion Go at least accounts for the input selection and has a unique controller setup, but I’m curious to see the battery life to performance ratio. Again, Windows will still be a detriment overall.
Really what it comes down to in the handheld space is finding something that has no compromises from the Steam Deck and an overall increase to performance without affecting battery life so negatively that it becomes a glorified docked laptop.
If I never got a Deck to start, I may have jumped to the Legion Go on account of not having realized what SteamOS brings to the table, and being enticed the beefier specs and control scheme.
However - after having a dual boot setup on the Deck with both SteamOS and Windows, I find myself more and more trying to get games working on the SteamOS side versus the Windows side. This is due to the overall “streamlined” experience of just booting up Game Mode, selecting a game and going off to the races.
Conversely, when I’m on Windows, I can get games operational and semi streamlined via playnite and Glosi, but it still feels clunkier and more obtuse. I pretty much only use Windows for games that I have a single player server running on for some emulated MMOs and that’s about it. If I could get the servers running properly on SteamOS, I’d make the switch in a heartbeat. It’s just trying to find a way to get them running on it with the associated databases/libraries that won’t get it wiped upon update to newer versions.
I’m all for better screens and hardware, but they always come at a cost to battery life. Not that the Deck has a huge battery life to begin with, but the reason it is passable is due in large part to the hardware it comes with.
I honestly think the low-res display is the Deck’s “killer feature”. Everyone else trying to achieve 1080p or better on such a small display is ruining any potential battery life optimizations for something which is not really all that painful to lose anyway.
Agreed. I’d prefer the lower red and higher battery life. I looked into the “DeckHD” screen, but the biggest buzzkill with that was the custom BIOS flash that you had to do. To your point though, the higher resolution would come at cost to battery life too.
What I want is a screen, same resolution, but increased sRGB coverage, everything the same beyond that.
I wouldn’t be surprised in the upcoming few years Microsoft starts implementing an handheld mode for Windows
Exactly. I’d be more interested in that Lenovo console if it ran Linux or if someone gets it running SteamOS.
This is the smallest obstacle, IMO. You could get rid of (or leave a small dual boot partition of) Windows, and use one of the good Linux distros tailored to a Steam OS-like experience, like Chimera or Bazzite, and just keep ticking along without missing a beat.
I love my Deck, but I’m already researching the process of eventually transitioning off of it simply because the screen is too tiny for my 40s eyes, and I don’t get to use it handheld as much as I’d like. This upcoming wave of Deck-like handhelds with 9 and 10 inch screens will be looking very good in this upcoming year.
If it doesn’t work out of the box, it’s a failure of a device.
Ignoring drivers not being available.
Unfortunately it doesn’t really work that way. Those distros need to be adjusted to work properly with the hardware. For instance, if you got a ROG Ally and slapped Chimera on there you would have no sound, no WiFi, and you have to manually adjust the resolution for each game.
This would be a fairly trivial task for Asus or Lenovo, so I don’t really understand why they don’t do it, but they don’t.
Many of those “Steam Deck killers” market themselves that they use Windows to have better game compatibility though, average casual users don’t notice the different on Windows and on Linux. Also it seems like currently only Valve is the only one being interested on Linux gaming and taking serious, if any measure to improve Linux gaming. Even GOG with their anti-DRM stance (which may align more to Linux users) and Epic Game Store with their anti-monopoly stance (which also align with many Linux users too) haven’t done anything to improve Linux gaming or even port their store/launcher to Linux, and many manufacturers and machines don’t support Linux adequately or maybe even not at all (especially gaming machines). So it wouldn’t be so surprising though
Nobara Linux has a Steam Deck edition (basically with gamescope-session and KDE), and I believe it includes patches for complete compatibility with the ROG Ally.
Have you actually installed chimera on the rog or are you just dredging up old linux problems that aren’t true anymore like how Nvidia fanboys say AMD drivers don’t work on Linux to this day despite AMD having higher compatibility?
