I'm curious about the ROG Ally myself, since that's Windows-based.

Unless you don't feel like tweaking the console at all you could just dualboot SteamOS and Windows if you wanted. No worries about being compatible with Linux/Valve standard that way. Or just stream them to the deck from your windows PC I guess, though that might not be great for some games.

The Steam deck is not completely off the table yet, but I wait. I like what the 7000 APUs can do (like run games on fullhd faster) do and also the 1200p screen. The built in keyboard is a nice asset as well. Also it apparently has the better sticks.

The Asus ROG seems to be good as well, currently that would be my second choice, it also has very good cooling compared to the Steam Deck. What's interesting about the Asus is that it has a port for external graphic cards, but probably I would not use that anyway.

To the "you don't need 1080p" faction I say: I am quite sure that Steam Deck 2 will have that and they will promote that with fanfares.

Yeah, but as far as I've seen so far (I haven't tried directly, just some YT and Reddit so let's take this with a pinch of salt) there are a few concerns for me. Some solvable, some not, hopefully just at the moment.

1: On SteamOS the built-in controls work properly only as long as "Steam mode" is running. If you log out, the controls behave differently.
As I don't plan to subscribe to Steam, this means that either I don't have sensible inputs or that I have to configure them myself somehow.

2: Currently no audio from the built-in speakers outside of SteamOS, only through HDMI. I'm following the development of ChimeraOS as it looks like what I'm looking for, but so far they haven't had any luck with that. If Valve is releasing all the SD's drivers there's hope for the future though.

With these issues solved, I guess a SD with Chimera (or another similar distro) would make the perfect handheld gaming PC (now it's a thing, wow) at least for me.
If GOG deserves my money for DRM free games, Valve may not deserve an account but at least a bravo for their push to Linux and the money for at least the cool hardware.

A laptop merged with a handheld console giving the best of both worlds and a transitional system to go between PC and handheld? That is so cool! Affordable numerous PC games and great flexibility of use without being locked out of your own systems basics like with Nintendo Switch. Steam deck is a seriously attractive product for anyone interested in playing games on the go!

That said, I play games on PC when I have time at home and don't play games on to go because I'm busy with the thing I was doing.

Has anyone heard of a Steam Deck 2 in the works?

SO?

Woha, that does sound like trouble indeed.

I thought at least for their own OS they would have included standard drivers for the pads.

I have a SteamController in my basement and it's collecting dust since it only works properly when Steam is running.
And Steam running messes up all my other controllers by default (have to enter Steam to disable all 'features' for every new controller and I have quite a few - the right tool for the right job).


And no sound drivers for other operating systems? I guess on Windows it would work, but it's still a mess.

It doesn't or at least it didn't.

And it would still be a remedy worse than the disease: whether you like Windows or not, it's huge and heavy, and unlike Linux it's not scalable as easily.
I guess that Valve wanted Linux for its adaptability and ease to control without relying on an external vendor, but I'm speculating here.
Hopefully the SD drivers won't be proprietary, but I haven't investigated yet.

Well, this convinced me to not even consider buying a Steam Deck anymore.

Btw, by my experience Windows does not take more resources than a Linux platform with a GUI installed.
Linux has it's downsides as well, at least by now the reduced the lag introduced by the SDL.

MS is working on a handheld UI for Windows as well, let's see how that turns out.
Until then there's plenty of third party applications that can do the job.

ps: I just asked Bing how to turn off Microsoft advertisers permanently and some of the tips were actually useful :D

I bought a bluetooth gamepad that accepts a tablet up to 11" across. I am looking into buying a Surface Go 3 to use with it. It only has an i3 processor and Intel UHD Graphics 615, but for a majority of the games I play natively I think this will be fine. Anything more beefy I can play through Amazon Luna or XBox Game Pass.

Digital Foundry review of ROG Ally vs Steamdeck, for those interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5oHS7CA6Qo


Oof, lack of an instant stop/resume feature seems like a major downside to a windows based handheld. That's a really sweet feature to have.

I have it since May/June last year (more or less) and while I know it's possible (I have heroic) the couple of attempts to run non-Steam games were underwhelming... with SD/SteamOS-mode I just select a game, hit install and it just works... on Linux more so.

Why I got SD? Because I do like Linux and openness and would love for it to get more traction so more game developers/publishers would provide games for that platform.

Would be awesome to have native Galaxy that would also could integrate into SteamMode. Btw https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_gog_galaxy_20_for_linux...

So it seems that now audio works on Chimera OS, so it's likely that other distros will follow as well. I'm pretty glad that the hardware can work without Steam, it's a huge step forward imo.
https://chimeraos.org/hardware/