It seems sort of a waste of resources to use a steam deck as a stationary device. However, I don't think there is a really large market for a console-like steam machine.
Right; a stationary Steam Machine (upgradable, etc.) would be a desktop PC running SteamOS, which should probably remain outside the purview of Valve's hardware division.
on the other hand something as sleek, cheap and ready to go out of the box as consoles, with guaranteed support for a while AND the biggest library of games on release? that could bring a lot of console people over to "PC" if done correctly. or market it more as a streaming server, that would be cool too.
It would need to be priced aggressively and have competitive specs to get enough volume of sales to justify building. They'd also need a new controller.
But if you want that, wouldn't you just buy a pre built from literally anywhere and install Steam and enable big picture mode? That's really not that hard, I do it on my laptop for when my kids want to play on the big screen.
i havent looked into them in a while but arent they more expensive? reducing cost is realistic if valve could pull off the same punch as a steamdeck by using similar but better powered SoCs, or be able to sell at a loss as a calculated risk to get people spending on steam. sony and microsoft do it and it works.
make it convertible as a computer, like the deck is and as upgradable as possible (at least a gpu slot pls!) and you got an easy low cost linux based introduction to the pc ecosystem. with all money going to portables i dunno if they would do it but it would change that part of the game, it would certainly make it more open.
Their SOC makes sense in the Steam Deck because it's running at a lower resolution. If you try to run at 1080p, you'll get significantly worse performance, and that's kind of the bare minimum resolution for a console.
Valve would need a significantly stronger SOC to run on a home console, and it would likely need to be stronger than what's in existing consoles because they don't get the benefit of devs targeting that SOC.
I'm guessing they'd need to sell for ~$800 for it to make any sense. That's quite a bit more than existing consoles, but it's a competitive price for a gaming PC. And I'm guessing the market for a Steam console is a lot smaller than a handheld.
Would be nice, but I think it would cost Valve more than Microsoft and Sony because volumes would be a lot lower. I'm guessing a small percentage of existing PC gamers would want a console, because a lot of the point of PC gaming is either using what you have or customizing your rig. I'm also guessing the same is true for console gamers, because they already have a console and probably want to stick with the same ecosystem.
I could be wrong, but that's my take. I'm more interested in them refreshing the Steam Link and Steam Controller. I guess they could reuse the same SOC, but that would run really hot, so they'd probably want a check ARM SOC instead.
But who knows, maybe there's a big enough market for it.
The Steam Deck works so well because it's dedicated hardware.
Lots of other hardware would not work quite so smoothly, without direct support from Valve. It's why there are manufacturers that make money selling Linux laptops. They have to choose specific components that are well supported on Linux. Lots of people experience problems with WiFi, BT, Ethernet, audio, fingerprint readers, etc. etc. on Linux.
Not to mention developers specifically targeting the hardware, some even going so far as to have dedicated presets for Steam Deck.
And not to mention Valve's marketing presence.
And not to mention the lack of any official release of SteamOS.
A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don't have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.
I can see a market for it, as a "Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games".
What resolution do you use it at? How do activate FSR on TV resolutions? I've tried it once or twice but my TV is 4K, and that makes the interface and games on the Deck kinda sluggish.
If I'm going to game stationary, something with more than 10W of horsepower would be nice.
I agree that the steam machine was too early. People hadn't been fully disillusioned by the planned obsolescence of their console libraries yet. Today, in a world of $600+ consoles that are impossible to find within 2 years of their release, hardly any worthwhile exclusives, and Nintendo trying to make you repurchase the old games at full price again, a steam console could potentially sweep the industry.
This seems like something people could get working today, and I'd be all about it. Though I believe there are bandwidth limitations that hamstring performance with this setup. And those external enclosures are as expensive as the GPU that goes in it.
I don't know how it could ever start from zero without having to go through a growing stage. I think it was just necessary to have modest expectations, and so far as I can tell, valve partnered with third party vendors and didn't lose $$$ on it.
Moreover, the downstream effect has been to set the foundation for the Steam Deck, which has been a smashing success. It just takes time to build up a mature ecosystem.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but if you're using stock Pop_OS it uses xorg by default as the compositor which iirc has issues with multiple monitors on different refresh rates. You can edit your .config file to enable the Wayland compositor and give it a try and see if it works!
I'd like to add that the current Cosmic DE in use is an ageing fork of Gnome and is going to be replaced with a Rust-based DE called Cosmic (Epoch)soon.
I've never had OP's problem, but another avenue I'd consider is to set display settings in the nvidia-settings app, which can be opened with a GUI from the terminal. These settings are separate from those in the normal settings menu, in ways I don't totally understand.
Popping in to give an update before calling it a night!
First of all, thank you for all the help! I've been reading through all the comments here and trying a few things out. The first thing I tried was switching the default desktop environment from the default Gnome to KDE. I much prefer KDE to Gnome since I have experience with it on the Steam Deck, so this is the solution that I had the most hope for. Sadly though, things are much worse in KDE. Unlike in Gnome, KDE has the terrible screen tearing that was mentioned in X11, but is still similarly unable to support running the monitors at different refresh rates. Since a lot of the comments here mentioned Wayland though, that was my real end goal in getting KDE installed. Unfortunately, witching over to KDE Wayland, things became significantly more unusable and it was about the same experience I had while trying to install Nobara. Both displays were totally unresponsive for seconds at a time and I was only able to interact with things during brief moments when they would stutter along instead. This was pretty painful to log back out of and was an overall mess like a couple of you had mentioned it might be.
I went back to Gnome after this. Since KDE didn't seem to be they way forward, I figured I might as well try enabling Wayland on Pop_OS's built in solution. Wayland support was hidden by default on NVIDIA as mentioned, but one quick config edit later and the option appeared. Things seem to be going much better now! I'm running Gnome Wayland right now and while things aren't flawless yet they're significantly better than before. Both monitors are working at their full refresh rates now without any screen tearing or flickering. As for gaming, so far I only have Helldivers 2 installed running through Proton, and performance is about 8% worse than in Windows on the same graphics settings while on the ship. I am also getting an odd visual bug where the in-game menu looks like it opens and closes very quickly every once in a while. It's not actually open or intractable though, it's more like the game randomly displays a single frame from when I did have the menu open to change the graphics settings. Tomorrow I'll try enabling Proton experimental and see if that fixes anything, and also try installing some more games.
I'll come back again to give an update on how things are going then! I'm still lacking HDR and there are other bugs that look like they need to be ironed out, but I'm much more optimistic about this than I was before. I think I'll keep dual-booting for now, at least while I'm still trying to get everything working properly, and hopefully that next version of Pop_OS brings HDR support. For now, it's at least nice to know that different monitor refresh rates are working.
Thanks for the update. When it comes to dual monitors, I’m in the same spot. Reading through the comment section, I found that Bazzite OS is what might suit me. As for the environment, I was going for KDE; however, after reading your update, I’m sceptical about it.
You will have to use wayland to run monitors at different refresh rates without tearing. You will also need wayland for HDR. It's still not working perfectly yet, but there is a lot of work being put into it.
Exciting. Hopefully Steamlink for Quest on Linuz might be working soon.
Having to install a dual boot to windows again after many years has been such a horrible experience. Modern windows is now just openly hostile to the user, fighting you every step of the way, telling you it knows best and "if you would just submit to it, this whole experience would be better for all of us". Like some nightmare monster created by combining an NSA agent, a control-freak abusive ex, and power hungry dictator, all rolled into one operating system...
Did you give ALVR a try? Some people got it working. I basically don't use my Quest with a pc because Windows. Hopefully things will be perfectly working in a few months, things move fast for Linux gaming right now.
Yeh, tried ALVR but ran into to many issues to troubleshoot that I just gave up. Figured it might only be a few months wait until Steam sorted something out, give how much effort they have been giving to improving the linux gaming experience.
I'm in the same boat, of needing to still use Windows.
Check out Windows XLite. Its a highly customized iso that gets rid of all the bullshit. No automatic updates (they're provided as cumulative installers), no windows defender, no edge, no cortana, no store, no Xbox, etc. Those things are all stil available, too. Also, all the telemetry is disabled from registry and gpolicy, and since no auto updates, they won't mess with those entries to "uh oh we turned on our spying again, and didn't tell you."
Its a massive breath of fresh air, feels like going back to XP and 7, when your fresh install has nothing at all. Not even dot.net and vcredist, which are also available.
I say this "low effort" content encompasses more meaning than what your mind could understand at the moment of your reply or, previously, at the flash of a moment that has passed when you skimmed through it. BUT I see where you're coming from (sorry about that).
Makes sense, except for "one model". I think it would be better to have two options.
One low cost, thinking mini pc with integrated gpu (like steamdeck) for casual gamers, 2d gaming, old game(r)s, etc. Would also be perfect as "home office" PC or media consumption device.
Second one would be bigger and stronger with dedicated GPU capable of "real" gaming and running all the modern games. Yes, powerful hardware is expensive, but serious gaming is no cheap thing...
Yep, I would buy steamdeck for that purpose except I'd feel it could be even cheaper as a simple and more convenient small brick without fancy display and controls.
I appreciate how Valve does this. They ask, they let you know how its used, its not associated with individual accounts, you can view the info submitted before it gets submitted.
See, this is the kind of data collection I'm okay with. When it's to genuinely help make the product I'm using better and not just to line someone's pockets or feed the algorithm.
Valve aren't perfect - they can make mistakes, too - but it fucking shows when someone up top actually cares about what they're doing.
I sincerely hope that Gaben has a worthy prodigy lined up for when he's no longer in charge.
I don't think that's the job of Valve.
They tried to push Linux gaming a decade ago by providing a Linux distribution optimized for gaming and invited hardware vendors to sell machines with that distri.
At that time a gaming optimized distribution was hardly needed, so they were pioneers at the time.
And they still maintain their SteamOS, although it is only supported on Steam Decks.
But there has so many happened since then. Gaming Hardware is working from Day 1 with Linux. Proton - wich is supported by Valve - is supporting latest games on Linux, mostly from Day 1. At least if the developers don't actively sabotage it.
As a result we don't have that one SteamOS distribution which would ultimately put us in dependece from Valve. We have several different gaming optimized distributions that you can use.
It's great that Valve does so much for Linux gaming, but I don't want them to manage everything.
And they still maintain their SteamOS, although it is only supported on Steam Decks.
It's not important, but there is no connection between the original Steam OS and there new one. The original was an Ubuntu derivative, and there new one is an Arch derivative.
I use openSUSE Tumbleweed and it has BTRFS and snapper (snapshot manager) set up by default, with all necessary system subvolumes already created. It’s been a great experience for gaming so far, and actually the best experience with NVIDIA drivers I’ve had! All you would need to do is create a separate BTRFS subvolume and snapper config for your games folder and you’d be good to go, without worrying about any other setup! No need to use EXT4 at all. Additionally, there is very detailed snapper documentation on the openSUSE website.
Since you're on EndeavourOS, I suggest using btrfs-assistant instead of timeshift, since it was created by one of the devs and offers more functionality with snapper. Just create a new profile for your root partition and then configure how often you want it to take snapshots.
You can also install snap-pac so that you get OpenSUSE-like automatic snapshots everytime pacman executes a install/remove/update command.
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