this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
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While true for those "some usecases", Proton is the simplest solution for most use cases, though. Not because Proton is perfect but because it works best for what the Deck is designed as.
Proton is literally just the windows compatibility layer and doesn’t “work best for what the Deck is designed as”. Feel free to say that about SteamOS, sure. But Proton is literally just a side effect of most software not targeting Linux.
It's not possible to make a Steam Deck equivalent product with Windows, therefore there is no alternative to Proton for making a equally compelling product.
SteamOS is part of the product that is Steam Deck.
Your first statement is essentially factually incorrect, and your second statement is true but I’m not really sure exactly what you mean by it.
Look, all I was getting at with my point is some things don’t work right within Proton, and the solutions to make it do so are really annoying. I still like Proton, I still use Proton, I still prefer Linux (and steamOS).
That doesn’t change the fact that certain specific gaming usecases (like using a version of Mod Organizer 2 with Starfield support that isn’t outdated) are just simpler overall under Windows right now, and relatively painful to get working under Proton.
Edit: It’s a lot of little stuff, like this, that makes various tools crash, that are the most frustrating. I still really admire and regularly use the WINE/Proton projects, it’s just that certain workflows are really complicated or broken in that environment.
Factually? Oh, I see. I beg your forgiveness for thinking that was subjective.
How is “you can’t make an equivalent product using Windows” subjective? My bad on that, I took it as a factual claim because that’s how I read that.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m really no Windows fangirl. I prefer Linux. (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed KDE always felt like home to me) I just think as an enthusiast and user of these products being honest about where they stand is important. And at least for a world where games and their associated tools are made for Windows first, there are still some valid edge cases where installing Windows on a Deck or any other handheld PC makes sense.
So, if we’re sharing opinions, let me get yours perhaps instead of just going at each other with snark? Why couldn’t Windows be used as the base for a handheld gaming device? I could definitely see an argument about the poor UI for handheld usage, but you can set it to boot right into the new gamepad UI which is essentially just steamOS’s game mode environment, which mostly solves that.
It’s definitely not as polished, and there are still some things that aren’t great (the software for using the gamepad itself, for example. It just isn’t as automatic as over in steamOS, which is one of my primary complaints. But that could be addressed by any OEM or Microsoft directly, if they chose to do it. Whether they would, or they’d get it done as well as what’s going on in steamOS is obviously another question.
You said first statement which I thought was the Proton one. It's absolutely not possible to make a Steam Deck equivalent using Windows. It's like using Steam Deck exclusively in Desktop Mode with at best another launcher on top.
SteamOS is just Linux with the desktop environment replaced.
You can boot Windows into an alternative shell.
Do you have any firsthand experience using windows that way? Because I’ve been setting up big screen controller focused HTPC frontends on Windows using that exact method for years.
On a regular version of Windows its impossible replace all functions with a launcher.
Microsoft would need to release the Xbox version of Windows to 3rd parties.
Of course, probably longer than you, dating back to Windows 98 running LiteStep. At some point something from Windows itself will nag. Be it the Windows Firewall displaying its Vista-era confirmation prompt, something in the old Control Panel needing attention (for a handheld gaming system Power Options come to mind), etc. And there are 3rd party things needed for gaming that are not required for your home theater like those monstrosities that are the auxiliary tools for hardware. I'm not aware of a single ROG Ally review that says that Amory Crate is absolutely seamless and that's from one of the biggest brands in PC gaming.