There's currently somewhere around 68,000 games on Steam and so it's going to take a long time for Valve to check them all on Steam Deck but here's some recent picks.
I'm close. I was looking at SSDs the other day so that I can install Pop!_OS and dual boot. I used to be at least somewhat interested in the latest version of Windows but I have zero interest in 11.
The future is running Windows in a VM under Linux for the few Windows programs you need. No need to reboot into Windows except for very few exceptions.
I did it a few years ago. Haven't looked back. Once you embrace and get used to using the workspaces and window tiling and you won't be able to go back to Windows clunky window management.
I had the same idea, though I'm a bit apprehensive about it. I'm not that technical, so it's kinda difficult for me. Do you have any resources you care to share?
Reminder to install ProtonDB Badges on your Steam Deck (via Decky Loader). ProtonDB has a vastly larger database of reports, with hints how to improve performance or e.g. fix issues with cutscenes.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe ProtonDB Badge and PowerTools are both plugins for Decky Loader. Still both useful, but PowerTools isn't required for ProtonDB Badge to work
Seems like this could really be a long term hit for Valve, and well deserved considering the effort they’ve put in to make it happen.
I generally avoid praising any company, but they deserve credit for what they’ve done for Linux gaming as a whole, and not trying to lock things down to the degree that other companies would’ve.
Absolutely. I preordered partially because I wanted to support them for everything they've done for desktop Linux gaming (I almost never preorder anything), but it ended up being a better product than I expected so I don't have even a little buyer's remorse.
I'll probably preorder the Steam Deck 2 as well.
Valve has earned my business, and they get most of my gaming money. I started using Steam when they released their Linux client, and I really started buying a ton of games when they released Proton. I've been with them every step of the way, and they've earned every penny I've given them.
It's still not click and play, but most of the time it is. I wish companies stopped shipping game launchers, I've been pulling hairs with 2K, tweaking here and there to be able to launch a game.
Do it. I did it years ago, never looked back, and it's only gotten better since then - Proton has been off like an absolute rocket lately, and publishers considering the Steam Deck a 'first class' target should mean an end to them bundling the broken anticheat that stops 100% compatibility.
Well SteamOS is Arch based but running a LTS kernel with backported changes in a ummutable way with everything sandboxed in Flatpak so it's quite unique but idk why anyone would want to run it on their desktop, if the immutable aspect is so interesting ro you you can try Fedora Silverblue, Vanilla OS and co. but none of those is in a state that I would recommend as "just works" for a desktop experience, if that's the majore goal Debian or Fedora with Gnome are probably your best options.
I see this type of comment all the time on here. I tried switching over completely a week ago and had nothing but problems.
I went with Kubuntu after hearing success stories of gaming on Ubuntu and the great GUI of KDE. R5 5600X and 3080 Ti.
Framerate on Arma 3 was abysmal. It's mostly CPU locked so NVIDIA drivers aren't as critical. Max 30 FPS in a location I'd usually get 75+.
Lutris was unable to install the blizzard launcher. It was giving me an error about using a 64 bit version of WINE instead of 32 despite Lutris pulling the dependencies. I manually installed the supposed packages and had no option to manually select them in the installation process. Lutris automatically selected the wrong one and I gave up after that - about an hour of trying to install it.
Gaming on Linux is nowhere near ready for most people. There's just too much troubleshooting and frustration.
If you only tried two games, one of them was launcher problems on Blizzards end (fuck Blizzard), then you can't really comment on much. ArmA is notoriously CPU entensive, and it may not work well with Linux. Is it marked on Steam as Linux compatible?
There's a bunch that doesn't work for my Steam Deck.
It does open. It does play. But controllers dont map correctly or there's weird layering UI issues, where the game is unresponsive because its waiting for a keyboard event somewhere else, and the player can't actually get there using a controller because the devs assumed people would only use mouse+keyboard. Not even switching controller setups make it work.
Only 13% of my Steam library is verified. That's still plenty of games, but it's a lot more limited than "all games on Steam." More than half of the top 20 games on Twitch are unplayable or run terribly on Linux.
It opens some doors if you're willing to accept "playable" games. That's another 14% of my library. The vast majority are a crapshoot for me on the Deck. Most of the issues revolve around text illegibility and clunky controls.
People said "never buy 1st gen". But I thought the steam deck has been completely solid since launch with no major problems or flaws. (Unlike the ROG Ally with the microSD slot overheating).
I've been very confident for awhile now that I can just buy games on a whim and not have to check if their compatible. I just assume they are. So far haven't had any issues, and if I did, then Steam let's you do an easy auto refund so there's no risk at all.
Even the online game I play that I had to keep Windows around for (Genshin Impact), they randomly made their anti cheat compatible with Wine so I have zero reason to use Windows now. I have no more games anymore that don't work on Linux.
There's just a few super popular shooters with aggressive anti cheats that don't really work. Its always the anti cheats that demand direct kernel access! Which people really underestimate how massive of a security flaw that is, even if you don't care about Linux.