Yeah, I thought about getting the Ally, buying the Steam Deck’s the way to go. Now if only Linux get a bigger market share and more apps, that’d be great.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn’t sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you’d ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
if you have modern hardware and newest nvidia GPU, just stay away from Linux. Windows is still best atm. But, if your newest hardware is ageing, then Linux is the best for that.
Not really true at all. If all you care about is raw performance, then that’s debatable, but if you’re talking ease of use then Linux is fine. Just grab a distro with an Nvidia ISO like pop_os and install, nothing else left to do.
My hardware is 2 years old (ryzen 5900HX and RTX 3070). I use manjaro/Ubuntu LTS and Non-LTS/PopOS/LinuxMint/Zorin/LMDE/Nobara and endeavour OS and it’s freezing quite often and I have to go back to Windows atm. I think Nvidia is main culprit here. If I move to Full AMD or the current nvidia hardware is getting older (more than 5 years old). I might try Linux again
Freezing doing what? I’ve got modern hardware and I’m running nobara and I don’t get any issues except my Taskbar freezes on Wayland. On x11 I have no issues
What nvidia drivers did you used? The open source one or the proprietary one? Because I have the rtx 3070, and I have not experience a problem using the proprietary drivers in plain old debian stable, using x11
tested with proprietary with 525,535,440. it’s awful. But, my other working laptop ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 (Intel) with Kubuntu 22.04 with Iris gpu is perfect without issues.
I mean… if somebody has a gaming storefront monopoly in Windows it certainly isn’t Microsoft. Concern about monopolistic practices is a great catch-22 between the OS dominance of Windows or the platform dominance of Steam, and I’m about as concerned about both.
FWIW, I have both a Steam Deck and a GPD Windows handheld and, being entirely agnostic about that entire conversation I default to my GPD Win 4, because of ergonomics, usability and compatibility concerns, in that order.
This is why I don’t support devices like the ally. I don’t want to give Microsoft another platform to get a monopoly over.
Yeah, I thought about getting the Ally, buying the Steam Deck’s the way to go. Now if only Linux get a bigger market share and more apps, that’d be great.
Steam itself is a proprietary, DRM-ridden quasi-monopoly. Supporting Valve over Microsoft doesn’t make much sense. They’re both bad.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very “consumer first” company. This of course is no guarantee they’ll always be “good”, but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
Valve popularised lootboxes and allowed gambling with marketplace items for quite a along time. Doesn’t sound very consumer first to me.
That’s a good point. I’ve never participated in that so it didn’t really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I’ve interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
if you have modern hardware and newest nvidia GPU, just stay away from Linux. Windows is still best atm. But, if your newest hardware is ageing, then Linux is the best for that.
Not really true at all. If all you care about is raw performance, then that’s debatable, but if you’re talking ease of use then Linux is fine. Just grab a distro with an Nvidia ISO like pop_os and install, nothing else left to do.
My hardware is 2 years old (ryzen 5900HX and RTX 3070). I use manjaro/Ubuntu LTS and Non-LTS/PopOS/LinuxMint/Zorin/LMDE/Nobara and endeavour OS and it’s freezing quite often and I have to go back to Windows atm. I think Nvidia is main culprit here. If I move to Full AMD or the current nvidia hardware is getting older (more than 5 years old). I might try Linux again
Freezing doing what? I’ve got modern hardware and I’m running nobara and I don’t get any issues except my Taskbar freezes on Wayland. On x11 I have no issues
moving cursors and scrolling
What nvidia drivers did you used? The open source one or the proprietary one? Because I have the rtx 3070, and I have not experience a problem using the proprietary drivers in plain old debian stable, using x11
tested with proprietary with 525,535,440. it’s awful. But, my other working laptop ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 (Intel) with Kubuntu 22.04 with Iris gpu is perfect without issues.
I mean… if somebody has a gaming storefront monopoly in Windows it certainly isn’t Microsoft. Concern about monopolistic practices is a great catch-22 between the OS dominance of Windows or the platform dominance of Steam, and I’m about as concerned about both.
FWIW, I have both a Steam Deck and a GPD Windows handheld and, being entirely agnostic about that entire conversation I default to my GPD Win 4, because of ergonomics, usability and compatibility concerns, in that order.