I love my Steam Deck, but it is really frustrating how many of the games i regularly play can't be played on it - Madden, EA FC, PUBG, all won't run even though the hardware is plenty to play them. The limitations of anti cheat on Linux might be insurmountable

> The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code

Defender already forces binaries to be signed by developers that spent money on certs from Microsoft-certified CAs.

Pull those certs, or don't use them at all, and 99.999% of users will not figure out how to run what they want, because the OS will trick them into thinking they're about to get owned by Russian hackers for just thinking about running something that wasn't blessed by Microsoft.

Steam is doing the same thing as Microsoft, between DRM-locking everything so you don't own it, and gatekeeping what titles are actually allowed in their store. They're both locking you into their vision of the future.

I completely agree. I pre-ordered the Steam Deck without knowing if I would actually use it, telling myself that at least I was supporting gaming on SteamOS by providing financial support. I boycott all Windows-based alternatives, even if they are better, because I refuse to use a product sold with Windows.

If they switch to steamos doesn't that ameliorate the harm?

One disaster for another - why spend thousands on a giant "portable" with a 1-2 hour gaming time before you have to power it off to swap the bulky external battery.

I dont know... price, maybe?

GPD buyers are assuming the risks involved with a high consideration item without brick & mortar returns & support, one might as well wait to see what onexfly comes up with for amd 395. I'm a happy user of several GPD releases, but firmware/driver/software distribution via Google Drive, and having to ship individual replacement components from Hong Kong is reason enough to wait.

AIUI (I don't have any of this hardware) SteamOS is really meant for the Steam Deck; while there's "basic support" for the ROG Ally, it's not their focus. Bazzite seems to be quite happy to support everything, and AIUI it's frighteningly close to SteamOS (the same customizations, etc.)

It's not "we have SteamOS at home" - it's more like RedHat vs CentOS

because official SteamOS doesn't support the Xbox Ally X yet. It's safe to assume that official SteamOS will eventually support the Xbox Ally X, but it's not there yet.

Valve moves slowly to add support for more devices, etc, whereas the Bazzite devs can move faster.

e.g.

Bazzite does a weekly release of a stable OS candidate, whereas Valve often takes months, if not up to a year, for to release a stable-channel OS update.

Edit:

Also, Valve tends to wait for proper kernel interfaces for functionality like controlling TDP, RGB, fans, etc. Whereas Bazzite devs are fine with using tools in userspace to directly talk to hardware, etc.

While I do think Valve's approach is better for long-term maintainability, Bazzite will always have the speed advantage because it can hack together a solution via userspace applications.

Not sure what the specific benefits of SteamOS are. It’s forked from Arch, I don’t know what Valve changes. Maybe slightly better hardware support for Steam Deck? I run Steam on Fedora on my desktop and have no issues.

The Xbox runs on a custom OS derived from Windows Core. Not the same as a consumer version of Windows.

[Edit] The answer you’re probably looking for is I/O. The PS5 is much faster than the Series X in terms of getting stuff off disk and actually using it. That more than compensates for the small speed advantage the Series X has.

I also heard that the PlayStation 5 graphics API's are more optimized to the hardware than DirectX is. Not sure if that's true though.

This was always the case. Ps3 was supposedly more powerful but devs didn’t care to make use of it and just port and move on to the next project. Only nintendo hardware seemed to get special treatment with game design probably because it was like a generation behind in power.

No it's just slowed down by windows bloat. Weaker and mobile devices suffer the most due to aggressive power saving.

I was so excited for the Series X and it's just another crap-tier wannabe gaming PC, with none of the flexibility. It makes me so sad how miserable the XBox has become. I fucking LOVED the 360 back in the day, I used to run home from school to get on Halo 3 and play with friends.

And granted, those same friends and I still play Halo Infinite, but we're all on PCs. Nobody bothers with the goddamn XBox.

What do you mean exactly on this comment? Do you mean a Linux distro like Bazzite or SteamOS which are both using gamepads as its main control?

A Windows 11 gaming PC hooked up to a tv 100% needs a Mouse and Keyboard right now. You can't even sign in otherwise. This might change with their gamemode they are offering on these portables though.

This is not true of SteamOS and Bazzite. The entire OS is controller supported. I have my desktop running Bazzite plugged in to the TV with no kb/m. Can do everything from updating the system, changing the screen resolution, formatting sd cards, etc with just a controller.

I don't mean to be rude, but why would you give them even more money after screwing it up so bad the first time? You're just rewarding bad behavior at this point.

Unfortunately that is what happens when they keep laying off people, and the new interns have hardly done any Windows development.

See the mess on Windows development experience since Project Reunion reboot, or how WinRT transition was completely mismanaged.

But hey Satya got his bonus.

It really has. I had always tried to use Linux in the past, but gaming was always a fight, and the OS just never felt like it behaved reliable for daily usage for me, was always some little annoyance or bug or issue I'd run into and inevitably switch back to Windows for the sake of things just working without having to spend hours and days and weeks trying to fix issues. That was 10+ years ago. I finally decided to give it a go again, using an Arch based OS. I figured it's been a while, try something other than debian or SLES that I've been used to. Honestly, I kinda don't notice much difference in overall day to day use between gaming and day to day use on Linux versus previously being on Windows just a month ago. Everything kinda just works. The one thing I do notice is I use significantly less RAM, I seldom exceed 32gb as where I was regularly 40gb+ on Windows, and everything runs much better while I do the same day to day stuff as I always have. It's not a huge performance difference, but if I'm paying attention, yeah, I do notice my games tend to run better, and everything within the OS is far more responsive. As for all the linux a-holes out there, please STFU, I don't wanna hear "winblows sux" or "this distro is better", it's why I didn't specify what specific distro I use. That toxic fanboyism is what keeps people away from seeing it as a viable usable OS.

My rambling is really just to say: Yeah, linux has come a long way, especially for gaming and day to day use. The work Valve and others have done to make stuff just run and work is astonishing.

We're at the point where the only real holdback for more mainstream games on desktop Linux is the various kernel-level anticheat mechanisms.

I play a lot of older games from 90s and 2000s. They certainly work better on Linux+Wine+DXVK than on Windows.

I use Arch pretty much exclusively these days on my desktop, but this isn't quite true. Most of the time, Proton has a small performance impact (around 5% lower FPS), but some games tend to suffer more. For example Helldivers 2 runs around 10fps lower, which is pretty significant since I only got around 60-70 FPS on Windows at 4K (using a 3090).

Still, Proton is an amazing tool and these days it just works so well. The only games that don't work are those that are intentionally broken by invasive kernel-level anticheats. I won't be buying Battlefield 6, too bad for EA, there are now thousands of other games to play on Linux.

I didn't do any tests myself but based on what I read you still pay a hefty performance penalty when using e.g., a 5090 on Linux.

Relative FPS gain is a meaningless metric anyway. Going from 30 to 36 FPS is -5.5 ms/frame, going from 60 to 66 FPS is -1.5 ms/frame.

Taking the average of that is even more meaningless. If they insist in comparing FPS instead of frame times, they should have simply compared the two harmonic means.

Oh no? only 13.47% on average for a single title?

Thats only 4 generations of improvement for intel CPUs. :(

Yes, that’s how averages work.

“Up to” is the maximum number.

“Average” is the sum of all the data points divided by the quantity of data points.

The claim is “up to” which appears to be true of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.