Let's talk about the current state of Gaming on Linux! I was watching The Game Awards ceremony last week, when I realised that more than a half of all nomine...
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Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
there should have been more if not better ways.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such.
Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?
Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.
Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed.
What should have existed then?
Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best?
You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.
They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.
The keyboard is awful, want to type something? You better press on the screen or have physical keyboard. One hand holds the steam deck the other requires touching the screen. Shouldn’t have to come to such annoying conclusions, oh and takes like a good portion of the screen like any android phone. The answer is the deck should not be bigger again the bigger device is the issue not the software offered by another company that only made it for desktop computers. You don’t hear android users complaining about their keyboard.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it. Genshin Impact blocked it, stop with the fake information.
SteamOS is not open source, Proton is a copy of wine. Valve has no business controlling your product but people are okay with it and the whole thing is mess up. A group believes in Corporate than Linux is not the future of Linux gaming.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass. The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself. Making people buy bluetooth devices is just speaking cheap or laziness in the design. You can’t make this stuff up, Valve thought a few extra plastic was too much or something. Oh the controller you know the thing gamers have to play the game. Well can’t recharge and use controllers if you’re using cables and were forced to buy/use bluetooth versions. A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
The “repair kit” is not easy and can break the hardware or system. Oh and Valve clearly never intended to be repaired because the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place. Android batteries and iPhones don’t have such problems but Valve took the cheap way for profit.
I find it a lot better than the Switch, and I’m guessing the other devices have similar issues. The touchpads are about as good as I could expect for a device of this form factor.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it
You can install pretty much any launcher, but games with anti-cheat are likely not going to work. That’s not a Linux problem, it’s a game problem. Linux has solved the technical issues here as much as it can, and even MP games w/ anti-cheat are starting to work on Linux.
SteamOS is not open source
That depends on your definition of SteamOS. The base is all FOSS, so you can grab the graphic stack, kernel, etc and run with it. The UI Valve has made (I.e. the Steam client) is not FOSS, but that’s true of games as well, so I don’t really see what benefit the end user would have if Steam was FOSS but the games weren’t if they had issues with proprietary software.
If you want, you could even uninstall all the proprietary stuff from a Steam Deck since it’s just a fork of Arch Linux under the hood.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass
Uh, what? I’ve never had anything remotely close to the problem you’ve described. I either hold it with one grip, or I grip it on the back of the device. How am I going to break the glass?
Or are you just complaining about the size? I think it’s fine, it’s a lot more comfortable to use than my Switch, and there’s really not much you can do to get that ergonomics in a smaller package w/o sacrificing screen size.
The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself
Just get a USB hub. If you’re going to use it with keyboard and mouse, you’ll want some kind of dock or hub anyway. Any off-the-shelf hub should work just fine, just get something with enough power passthrough so you can charge while gaming.
A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
What do you mean? I mostly use the built-in controller, and my other controllers can charge just fine through a USB hub. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place
Just the battery, and that’s true for pretty much every other small device with a battery. Batteries need to be stable, and the easiest way to do that is to glue it in place. This can absolutely be better, and apparently Valve reduced the amount of glue on the new Steam Deck OLED.
And yes, most Android and iPhones have that exact same problem, phone repair places have been complaining for ages about glued-in batteries. iPhone is even worse in that it pairs a lot of the components to the device, so you need their software to program replacement parts (not sure if it’s available yet, but that was a huge complaint about their repair program). The Steam Deck does no such nonsense, everything is just a standard PCB, though the glue on the battery does suck (again, par for the course for small devices).
Valve took the cheap way for profit
I doubt the Steam Deck is directly profitable. If you look at other devices with similar hardware, they tend to go for at least $100 more than the Deck, and they don’t nearly as much custom software (just an app on Windows).
The consensus in the community is that Steam is investing in SteamOS and Steam Deck in order to sell more games and create a viable alternative to Windows, not to make profit on the hardware. Gabe Newell himself described the price point as “painful”, so I doubt they’re turning much of a profit, if at all.
you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing
How so? They literally hire people to work on Proton. That’s exactly how FOSS should work as it relates to for-profit companies. Source:
Griffais says the company is also directly paying more than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton compatibility layer
So they may not be Valve employees, but they’re paid by Valve (I suppose as contractors?), which is essentially the same thing. So it seems they’re throwing money at the problem, and reserving their internal talent to work on the graphics stack.
I suspect the Steamdeck and Steam machines were the main motivations for Valve to put as much resources behind Proton as they did.
The windows store was. Gabe is playing the long game.
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No they did it for the money, steam deck isn’t a good handheld, it can become outdated in a few years, Linux hacks is a real possibility, etc.
No real reason for Steam deck existence other than money.
Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?
You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.
Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.
What should have existed then?
You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.
OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.
The keyboard is awful, want to type something? You better press on the screen or have physical keyboard. One hand holds the steam deck the other requires touching the screen. Shouldn’t have to come to such annoying conclusions, oh and takes like a good portion of the screen like any android phone. The answer is the deck should not be bigger again the bigger device is the issue not the software offered by another company that only made it for desktop computers. You don’t hear android users complaining about their keyboard.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it. Genshin Impact blocked it, stop with the fake information.
SteamOS is not open source, Proton is a copy of wine. Valve has no business controlling your product but people are okay with it and the whole thing is mess up. A group believes in Corporate than Linux is not the future of Linux gaming.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass. The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself. Making people buy bluetooth devices is just speaking cheap or laziness in the design. You can’t make this stuff up, Valve thought a few extra plastic was too much or something. Oh the controller you know the thing gamers have to play the game. Well can’t recharge and use controllers if you’re using cables and were forced to buy/use bluetooth versions. A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
The “repair kit” is not easy and can break the hardware or system. Oh and Valve clearly never intended to be repaired because the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place. Android batteries and iPhones don’t have such problems but Valve took the cheap way for profit.
You can type on the deck using the touch pads. It’s easy.
Genshin didn’t block it, the launcher is just a Windows-only kernel level rootkit. Like most other launchers that don’t work.
SteamOS it’s planned to be released to the community separately sometime.
Proton is a FORK of wine.
Physical keyboard and mouse is easily done through a dock.
Your whole batteries and controller rant is just wrong and stupid.
Your repair concerns are also wrong and stupid. I replaced the entire shell of my steam deck without breaking any part.
You really seem to hate the steam deck in a way I can only characterize as irrational and pointless.
I find it a lot better than the Switch, and I’m guessing the other devices have similar issues. The touchpads are about as good as I could expect for a device of this form factor.
You can install pretty much any launcher, but games with anti-cheat are likely not going to work. That’s not a Linux problem, it’s a game problem. Linux has solved the technical issues here as much as it can, and even MP games w/ anti-cheat are starting to work on Linux.
That depends on your definition of SteamOS. The base is all FOSS, so you can grab the graphic stack, kernel, etc and run with it. The UI Valve has made (I.e. the Steam client) is not FOSS, but that’s true of games as well, so I don’t really see what benefit the end user would have if Steam was FOSS but the games weren’t if they had issues with proprietary software.
If you want, you could even uninstall all the proprietary stuff from a Steam Deck since it’s just a fork of Arch Linux under the hood.
Uh, what? I’ve never had anything remotely close to the problem you’ve described. I either hold it with one grip, or I grip it on the back of the device. How am I going to break the glass?
Or are you just complaining about the size? I think it’s fine, it’s a lot more comfortable to use than my Switch, and there’s really not much you can do to get that ergonomics in a smaller package w/o sacrificing screen size.
Just get a USB hub. If you’re going to use it with keyboard and mouse, you’ll want some kind of dock or hub anyway. Any off-the-shelf hub should work just fine, just get something with enough power passthrough so you can charge while gaming.
What do you mean? I mostly use the built-in controller, and my other controllers can charge just fine through a USB hub. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
Just the battery, and that’s true for pretty much every other small device with a battery. Batteries need to be stable, and the easiest way to do that is to glue it in place. This can absolutely be better, and apparently Valve reduced the amount of glue on the new Steam Deck OLED.
And yes, most Android and iPhones have that exact same problem, phone repair places have been complaining for ages about glued-in batteries. iPhone is even worse in that it pairs a lot of the components to the device, so you need their software to program replacement parts (not sure if it’s available yet, but that was a huge complaint about their repair program). The Steam Deck does no such nonsense, everything is just a standard PCB, though the glue on the battery does suck (again, par for the course for small devices).
I doubt the Steam Deck is directly profitable. If you look at other devices with similar hardware, they tend to go for at least $100 more than the Deck, and they don’t nearly as much custom software (just an app on Windows).
The consensus in the community is that Steam is investing in SteamOS and Steam Deck in order to sell more games and create a viable alternative to Windows, not to make profit on the hardware. Gabe Newell himself described the price point as “painful”, so I doubt they’re turning much of a profit, if at all.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
How so? They literally hire people to work on Proton. That’s exactly how FOSS should work as it relates to for-profit companies. Source:
So they may not be Valve employees, but they’re paid by Valve (I suppose as contractors?), which is essentially the same thing. So it seems they’re throwing money at the problem, and reserving their internal talent to work on the graphics stack.