[vially]

I'm going to buy this just to support Valve for their continued support in making Linux desktop a viable gaming platform. Their reasons may not be entirely altruistic, but there's no doubt that they had a tremendous impact on the Linux gaming ecosystem.

And it's not just the Linux gamers that are benefiting from their work. They also seem to be doing good work on lower-level parts of the stack (e.g.: graphic drivers, Flatpak, etc) that are improving the Linux desktop in general.

[BatteryMountain]

I'm going to use it as a (mobile NUC with screen + battery) and use it for programming etc.. not going to buy it for gaming at all. Having an amd machine with 16Gb ram + nvme storage + linux - perfect setup for day to day coding!

And will buy it as a thank you to Valve for supporting us all these years. I think this will pay off for them in the long run.

[nsteel]

With a 7inch screen, 2 hours battery life when pushing it, and no keyboard (i.e. extra £££)? I think I'd prefer a mid-range laptop.

[BatteryMountain]

The intention is to use it with a usb-c dock, which I already own. Will probably buy the steam dock depending on what it offers and if it overlaps with my needs. Or if it is just plain sexy compared to the boring old usb-c dock then I'd rather buy that. The intention is not to get work done on a 7" screen, but on an external display + keyboard/mouse.

[FearlessNebula]

If you’re going to leave it docked, why not use a desktop so you don’t have to worry about deteriorating the battery just leaving it plugged in all the time?

[aj3]

Can't imagine coding without a good keyboard though. And mobile mechanical keyboards are too heavy to carry around.

It should be great for debugging random server problems while on vacation though.

[BatteryMountain]

It supports usb type c docks, which my mic, keyboard, mouse already uses to switch between my main rig and a macbook. And I have a bluetooth mouse of that fails.

Obviously not going to try be productive with an onscreen keyboard and 7" screen - will use it with peripherals in those cases.

[swiley]

I code on the train using xvkbd on my pinephone. You get used to it. A good editor like vim helps a lot. You're spending most of the time thinking not typing.

[guidopallemans]

Get yourself a small bluetooth keyboard, there's even mechanical full-size keyboards that can fit in a medium-sized bag.

I got myself an Anne Pro 2 from banggood for 65 euros and I take it everywhere. It connects to my laptop, tablet and phone.

[swiley]

I have a k380 which is about the same size, I stopped bringing it because it's just another thing to deal with.

[pacifika]

It's got bluetooth

[aj3]

All the good mechanical bluetooth keyboards I know are almost as heavy as this console. Is there anything actually portable in this form factor?

[zzt123]

Curious, why the insistence on mechanical for a portal keyboard?

Perhaps I’m atypical, but I type more relaxed, smoothly, and faster on non-mechanical than mechanical.

Point of comparison is 150-175 wpm on laptop keyboards as opposed to 120-145 on mechanical. I’ve owned many mechanical keyboards, including very high end ones, and remain mystified about their aura.

[hawski]

Most programmers out there probably use stock keyboards. It may be not good enough for you, but others could be happy.

[mrzimmerman]

Same. I already have $1,100 saved for a gaming PC, but since that might only buy a GPU right now I’ll just jump into this and hopefully wait out the GPU crunch.

[agilob]

Screen is 720p by default, but it can be used as a gaming laptop, which is really cool. I hope this will be new PSP

[jonny_eh]

I'm very eager to see how it does emulation, especially newer systems like Wii, Switch, and PS2/3.

[rasz]

This thing has GPU 2x weaker than 8 year old GTX 760. You might as well buy one used for $100.

[mlindner]

That's not really true because of the advancements in compute technology and energy efficiency since then. It'll definitely use a lot less energy than a GTX 760 at the very least.

[rasz]

I want you to remember this so you can repeat "a lot less energy" when your game inevitably drops below 30 fps at 800p.

[ineedasername]

For a 7" screen jumping down to 720P is just fine. It's market niche is clearly not to compete with even a GTX 1050, but to be a little less than that to manage most games reasonably well and even newer games with a a minimally playable performance anywhere you go. I'm looking at it as a Nintendo Switch with a massively larger available library that can play most games I already own and don't have to wait & hope for ports when it's already more powerful than a Switch, the most comparable portable device available.

[rasz]

800p, and it will struggle to keep 30fps in games like Witcher 3 on medium settings. This GPU has 750TI performance.

[mlindner]

It's not 800p, it's 720p at 16:10.

[p1necone]

It's almost certainly a 1200x800 screen if it's 16:10. Nobody makes displays with non square pixels anymore.

[pkulak]

Apparently they are working with anti-cheat makers to get those games working on Linux before release? This honestly seems like the best news for Linux gaming... ever.

[Google234]

Source for this? I don’t see how this is possible.

[Sekhmet]

In this video focused on developers (https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Q_C5KVJbUw at 5:54) they mention they are working with BattlEye and EAC to get it working prior to Steam Deck release. In my experience EAC was the reason that many games that were otherwise perfectly fine became broken because of anti cheat. This should make a huge difference.

[Google234]

“Perfectly fine” for cheaters too. that’s the issue with anti cheat on Linux. It’s much easier to verify the integrity of a windows environment.

[aero-glide2]

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/software

[Aissen]

Here is the quote, from this page:

> For Deck, we're vastly improving Proton's game compatibility and support for anti-cheat solutions by working directly with the vendors.

[Google234]

Is it easy for an anti cheat verify that it’s running on an untampered Linux installation?

[ineedasername]

Similar: I have a Hades Canyon GH Nuc because I want a very low profile rig that can run older games on high and new games on low and throw it in a bag w/ power adapter & go. Not only does this accomplish the same thing, it runs Linux and means that if I'm just bringing something along for gaming it's completely self contained.

[aj3]

And it boosts Linux stats among Steam users.

[zzt123]

Specs say it’s a 15w unit (much lower than Hades Canyon), so I imagine the performance will be lacking as it appears to be a Zen 2 based APU.

Would be interesting to see how this does on Zen 4 with the 5nm upgrade.

[ineedasername]

Sure: The Hades Canyon gets (for my benchmarks) something a little bit under a GTX 1060.

The fact that the Zen 2 is 7nm vs the Canyon's 14nm means the performance/watt will be much better. It also has significantly more RAM, and better quality: LPDDR5 instead of DDR4. This also lowers power requirements while at the same time that it improves performance.

But no, I don't think this will be as powerful as a Hades Canyon. Although it also won't have to push pixels to a 2k display like my Canyon does. It doesn't need to be nearly as powerful to provide a similar experience on a small display. (in terms of smoothness. Also higher quality gfx setting will be wasted on this display size, so there's no point worrying about it not running well on "high" textures when the difference between "medium" won't be noticeable on 720p @ 7")

[zzt123]

Oh I agree. I meant moreso that it would be awesome to see a zen4 + rdna3 option one day, if we don’t get zen canceled. If the performance increase from zen 2 to zen 3 could be repeated for zen 4… what a powerful little gamepad that would be!