The suspend feature is wildly important for me.
If I had to boot a game and shut it down each time, I’d only pickup the device when I had set aside time to game.
Since I can suspend and resume whenever, I pickup my steam deck all the time. I can play in the car and just suspend when we arrive or I can play for a few minutes while waiting for a meeting to start.
I can play while my wife gets ready.
Sometimes meets get canceled or there is traffic, so gaming sessions can really stretch out into a longer play time.
If I couldn’t suspend, I wouldn’t have played in those moments.
I feel like this really the killer feature.
I’ve seen a ton of digital ink spilled on all manner of positives, such as how amazingly-portable it is, or how it’s been doing wonders for the advancement of Linux gaming.
But, I’ve yet to see anybody—outside you—speak about how amazing the suspend/resume is. And, that for me, is the reason why I play on a SteamDeck almost exclusively these days—even though I have a small collection of games I can play on Mac. I have such small windows of opportunity, and appreciate I can still play a game, even for a little as a few minutes.
Yeah same, being able to stop playing immediately is huge for me. There are a lot of games I would struggle to play through without it.
Diablo 4 not playing nice with suspend (due to the always online requirement) was the main reason I couldn’t get into it and didn’t buy it after the free to play week ended.
I used to like suspend. How is your battery life while suspended? If I left mine in suspend for more than a few hours, it’d die, or I’d pick it up and there wouldn’t be enough battery to continue playing without also charging.
Mine just lasts literally weeks, but I never tested it. It is so worry-free that I sometimes go multiple days without picking it up and when I finally do it has like 85% of battery and I don’t remember how much it had when I suspended it so I never even think about it. The TLDR is that the suspend in Linux works magically.
Unlike the Switch, which drains 70% of the battery in 3 days of standby. Every time I pick it up I have to charge it, it feels like such a chore that the SD has taken its place completely.
I kinda regret having bought a Switch.
You’re talking about sleep/suspend directly from playing a game?
It seems to be a hit randomly and depends on the game, but I only play around the house, so it’s never been a big deal. I also try not to suspend unless I’ve saved already just in case, but I’m willing to take the risk.
My experience with suspend has not been good - causing glitching and requiring shutting the game down and reloading from a previous save whenever I suspended in a cut scene. As a result I haven’t used it much due to those first couple of trials; maybe it’s better now.
I have noticed a slight reduction in framerates when loading back in from a suspended state but only on certain games. Namely High On Life
I never considered one of the windows-based portables. In fact when I saw that the steamdeck was linux based and was well received, I jumped.
Once I saw how well it worked, I stopped dual-booting my laptop and get to live in linux all the time.
If the article is correct and the market is starting to push this way, that is great news for linux, linux-gaming, and everyone.
Yeah I am baffled at this point anyone at all would consider a MSFT portable PC.
Linux has finally actually arrived, Proton works amazingly well compares to just a few years ago and honestly Valve as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals has a shockingly good track record for solid build quality, even if some of their devices are not super popular.
Oh right did anyone mention you can emulate basically anything other than current gen consoles on a Steam Deck, and the operating system is not going to fight you on that?
I think a lot of people would be more interested in the SteamOS over windows on handhelds if they got to try SteamOS first and see how smooth it is. But without full knowledge on it, a lot of them either assume they’ll like windows more because they already know how to use it, or they assume it’s steam UI only with no desktop mode (even if people won’t actually use desktop mode much, they want it as an option).
I am shocked, shocked I tell you that MSFT using PC Gamers still have not realized they are MSFT fanboys basically exactly the same way you had console fanboys a decade ago.
But, but, they spent so much time learning how to do so much weird esoteric bullshit to make Windows actually run games well, and nearly none of that translates over to a Linux system!
You mean my decades of mastery of an increasingly enshittifying Operating System is… worthless?
That a better alternative exists if I would only take the time to do literally any work to learn something actually out of my comfort zone?
…
I think the modern equivalent of Socrates getting old and complaining about the youths being disrespectful and dancing too lewd of dances is basically people who styled themselves as early adopters and technologically savvy in their childhood and early adulthood, and then just entirely gave up on that while basically simultaneously still claiming to be tech savvy but also being inherently afraid and dismissive of any /actually/ useful new tech innovations.
Gaming has been literally the only thing keeping me on windows for at least a decade now, and with SteamOS/Proton reaching their current levels of compatibility I finally feel like I can make the switch with my next PC and not have to worry about it.
I could put linux on my current gaming tower, but I’ll fully admit that it’s just easier not to. It’s a comfortable shoe at this point that I can’t be bothered to change while I already have it. Though if my hand was forced and I had some kind of catastrophic drive failure and lost my OS volume linux is probably what would go there in its place.
There are two other “PCs” in my home that I own, my Steam Deck and a NUC that I use as a home server. Both run linux.
I’m fortunate in that basically nothing I play uses invasive anti-cheat garbage, which is still a huge compatibility problem. It has skeeved me out on windows for a long time, and I’ve avoided games that use many of them. I had many friends disappointed that I wouldn’t join them in Star Wars: The Old Republic back when that first came out precisely because I wouldn’t tolerate how invasive the anti-cheat was.
But there are lots of gamers for whom Proton still isn’t enough. A single game they want to play that won’t run is a dealbreaker. Or the only game they want to play won’t run. An OS that won’t run the game(s) they want to play isn’t fit for purpose for them, and those people are a huge proportion of gamers.
I’m glad that Linux is getting backing from a huge company in this way. However, at its core the steam deck is a Linux based device with a heavily tailored UI running on known hardware with 1st party drivers. Consumers have been using Linux in this way for years without realising it. Sure, this one gives you far more control than you normally get but (in my opinion) the problems with Linux desktop come from support for a wide range of scenarios and peripherals. That hasn’t improved enough for me to switch last time I tried.
I just realized something…
At some point, Valve will release a Steam Deck 2 - It will be slimmer and even better than the first. Maybe in a couple of years I am guessing
Then that will be it because other companies will be releasing cheaper devices with their Steam OS. Steam simply cannot compete with them on price, and the feature set (other than faster chips) will mostly be locked in.
In short, there will be now Steam Deck 3 - Gaben strikes again
I have a feeling that the steam deck 2 will be on par with PS6 given how the steam deck is on par with the PS4 now and can play some PS5 games.
Steam can definitely compete with them on price. It runs steam out of the box; and they can expect to make some sales on that. OEM margins are already razor thin, and Valve has a major leg up on them.
Hear me out… Half Life 3 will be released but it won’t be a game it will be a handheld console
As much as I love Valve I think it’d be weird for a 3rd party handheld to boot directly into the Steam UI. I get that there aren’t any viable alternatives atm, so I guess this is where we are. Wouldn’t hurt with a more store-neutral solution, in the end.
If I am not mistaken, you /can/ have that be a thing, as I am fairly sure the actual SteamOS is open source and Valve would /probably?/ allow that to come stock on a potential alternate handheld…
But kind of their whole thing is it is optimized for the hardware set up they are using.
So… you could theoretically have an or multiple competing Not Valve but Yes SteamOS Decks, but from the standpoint of the economics of building a market viable gaming machine, Valve would still probably have a serious edge in that market for a while.
Almost like Valve actually understands the entire tech industry better than nearly any other tech company or something.
I’m fairly sure valve has openly said they plan for SteamOS to be used by other handhelds
Had not heard that, interesting!
I am really hoping some wizard makes Steam OS work on the Legion Go.
Valve promised quite a while ago that they’d release a public version of SteamOS and they haven’t yet. Until they release it, the ball’s on their court.
