Alt text: Trojan Horse meme, Steam Deck bringing Linux to Windows gamers
Buddy of mine mentioned how talking about computers with me always eventually leads to Linux yesterday.
I used my deck as my main computer when I was traveling earlier this year (I don't have a laptop). I brought a small keyboard, no mouse, was able to do everything I needed. It's convinced me I can easily make the switch I'm just waiting to move now and get a laptop when I'm out of tarrif-land
Yup. Fussing around in Desktop mode (aka handheld Arch) got me into it. It was weirdly easy to get Phantasy Star Online Ephinea working with luteix, and that game was easily one of my favorite Deck experiences running on 3W of power lol.
Does the steam deck come with socks?
For new users that were otherwise scared of changing their daily driver, it does provide a nice little path for them.
Flip it into Desktop mode some times to get a feel for how different the DE is, play around with some command line stuff. Easy to factory reset, so mess it up if you want.
Then install something like CachyOS Handheld edition after a while to get a less restricted Linux experience, while maintaining game mode et all.
Hell, for the price, it's a great device to use as a dev machine if you do Cachy or similar. I use mine as my daily use "laptop" since my other laptop died, and was less powerful any way.
Woah, Cachy sounds sick! How does the gaming mode perform in your experience? Is it effectively the same as the deck's vanilla game mode? 🤔 very tempted to give it a shot myself!
Admittedly, I don't use game mode as often as most. I do gamedev on this, so it's almost always in Desktop mode, even when I'm actually playing games.
Having said that, the handful of times I have used it on Cachy felt no different at all to SteamOS. The UI is identical. They did a great job recreating the Valve-specific parts of SteamOS that aren't just part of KDE or Arch.
The only downside, and it's just a minor inconvenience for me, is that Cachy doesn't have the option to boot into Desktop mode by default (yet). It always boots up into game mode first.
EDIT: I was wrong, the game mode on CachyOS is actually one in the same as SteamOS game mode. That is something built into a special release of the Steam client for Steam Decks, and Cachy just uses that instead of reinventing the wheel. It should be a direct 1:1 experience when it comes to game mode.
SteamOS desktop mode is just KDE, so you could just make a Live USB of Kubuntu or whatever to try it out on your actual desktop or laptop PC.
I use mine as my daily use “laptop” since my other laptop died, and was less powerful any way.
I just wish it had better IO. Either 2 USB C ports, or even better USB 4 and I'd own one by now.
I got a Steam Deck recently and hadn't dabbled in Linux since the Raspberry Pi 3 like 7 years ago. It's so much easier with a gui instead of command prompts! And now I see what all the fuss over Proton was about - it's amazing how many Windows games just work!
Hint: :q!
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