I was out of country for the past month. I have access to two monitors, and I brought a keyboard, wireless mouse, and a small JBL speaker. It has been a pretty good experience. I have edited documents, images, and created PDF’s. I can connect to jobs that require windows with a web browser to Azure Virtual Desktop. I have streamed live events, worked on my home servers, and it is always snappier than a windows machine. With a click I am back in handheld gaming mode playing SNES games, or Elden Ring.

  • azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    47·
    2 years ago

    I like how Valve not only pushed Linux gaming, but also introduced some people to desktop Linux. I see many comments of people realizing It’s not all that scary and sort of useful after all and it can even show some advantages, like the said snapiness. Being realistic I don’t expect the platform to ever go truly mainstream, but enlargement of the niche is very much possible.

    • CommunityLinkFixerBotBEnglish
      8·
      2 years ago

      Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !unixporn@lemmy.ml

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    The versatility of deck is just too good. If you don’t mind, do share a picture of your setup. I would love to see the steam deck in action at work.

      • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        Thanks for the picture. This looks sick!

        Apart from the versatility of the device itself, I feel a lot of this is enabled by remote apps, containers and systems which improved by a lot due to the pandemic. :-)

        Also, nice to see you mention CalDigit. I plan on using CalDigit TS4 with the deck to connect it with my desk setup. I have to dig a bit on the support/compatibility.

  • kiddblur@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    This is basically my plan too (minus the travel). I realized my gaming PC was only used for discord, Spotify, and web browsing since I spend exactly zero minutes per day in my office outside of work hours.

    So today I decided tonight move my desktop down to the living room so I can play PC games on the couch (mainly games that don’t run well/look good on deck)

    But that leaves me without a discord/spotify/browsing PC (I keep my work and personal usage completely separate), so I’m just going to dock my steam deck to my monitor instead. Upside is much lower power usage too

      • kiddblur@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Honestly there’s juuuuust enough latency and occasional streaming artifacts that it just got on my nerve. I’m super sensitive to stuff that that. Also my internet generally is good enough, but my actual LAN isn’t great, because I’m too cheap to upgrade my networking equipment. I’ve got gigabit fiber to the house, but I’ve got a rats nest of cat6 through my walls, a bunch of unmanaged switches, and a mesh WiFi setup, some with a wired backhaul, some wireless (because I wasn’t able to get Ethernet to those rooms), so things like game streaming just don’t work that well for me.

        Plus like I said, it just feels less wasteful to put my PC where I’ll actually use it. And it’s not like I’ve abandoned my steam deck; I’m just not using it to even try to play big AAA 3D games anymore because I don’t need to

  • worfamerryman@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for this post. I have been considering getting a steam deck to replace my PC. I would use it in desktop mode for PC tasks. I’m already on Linux, so it wouldn’t really change my work flows.

    I think the cpu is about the same or better than my i7-8700. The gpu is only a slight step down from my rx-470 4gb.

      • garrett@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        You can install and use a standard distribution through Distrobox, which has a few initial steps to install, but once it’s there, you can dnf/apt/zypper/apk/pacman/etc. install any packages completely in user space. (And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox containers lets you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.)

        https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/

        And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox container sets it up so can you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.

        https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-export.md

        But, you probably want to not have anything private on your Steam Deck, as there’s no encryption, so anyone can take your Deck and copy files off of it. To solve this, you’d want to either have an encrypted loopback file that you use like a pluggable disk (there are some tools for this; “Plasma Vault” is even built into the KDE desktop that powers the Steam Deck’s desktop mode, but requires a little setup) or you could run a Linux distro (or other OS) within a VM in GNOME Boxes (available as a Flatpak without having to do anything special). The Plasma Vault solution is more lightweight and integrated, once you install the encryption support it needs.

        https://github.com/popsUlfr/steam-deck-tricks#encrypted-vaults-with-plasma-vault-and-gocryptfs

        https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes

        FWIW: I used my Steam Deck as a desktop when traveling a few months ago and have been using Linux (with GNOME, not KDE — but both are great) for decades.

      • worfamerryman@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        That’s for the heads up. I didn’t know that it worked that way. I think that would affect me to some extent as I use some things that are not flatpaks.