Steam Deck - SteamOS, Zen2 4C/8T, RDNA2 1.0-1.6 TF, 16 GB LPDDR5 88 GB/s, starting at $399 [2021-12]

I was questioning what sort of operation should reasonably be expected from the Deck when it comes to applications that are not being launched through Steam, and whether Valve has actually addressed this topic given the commonality between the Deck and SC's programmable all-in-one controls, and the fact that the weakest aspect of the SC was its functionality and user-friendliness outside of the Steam environment. This isn't a problem that's addressed by "having Windows drivers". "Having Windows drivers" doesn't grant the ability for your computer to automagically change your device mapping based on which application is launched/closed, or when that app gains or loses focus. The SC is a hassle outside of Steam, not because Valve deliberately makes it a hassle, but because of the nature of what it's trying to do. Having some global Xinput wrapper isn't a one-size-fits-all solution because it would mean unmapping your M/K emulation thus losing the ability to interface with the OS, so whatever system is in place has to be able to juggle the controls based on the context of application and intent of the user. This is even more of an issue with the Deck than the SC, because there's no expectation of the user having a physical M/K connected to recover the system in cases of the emulation layer crashing or getting confused about whether it should be acting as a M/K or controller.

Again: the Steam Controller lacks a D-Pad on the left and an analog stick on the right. Not having the capability of mapping x-input 1:1 is the source of the headaches you mention.

The Steam Deck basically uses a x-input layout plus 4 grip buttons and two touchpads. The buttons are allready there.

As for the system getting confused about not having M+K, the Surface line has existed for almost a decade now.
I've played plenty of games on my Surface Pro without a keyboard connected in travels and I never encountered such an issue while using a x-input gamepad.

If your concern lies on typing games like Typing of the Dead or Scribblenauts then yes, the Deck isn't good for those unless you connect an external keyboard. I don't see how using SteamOS will make it any better though.
 
Again: the Steam Controller lacks a D-Pad on the left and an analog stick on the right. Not having the capability of mapping x-input 1:1 is the source of the headaches you mention..

No it isn't. You could literally have a controller have no buttons, joysticks or anything and it could still be enumerated as an xinput device.

The Steam Deck basically uses a x-input layout plus 4 grip buttons and two touchpads. The buttons are allready there.

Xinput isnt a layout, it's an API. Go look at the dev docs. There are steering wheels and joysticks as part of that API. Its how apps talk to the hardware and vice versa.

Everything you're saying makes it sound like you dont have a clue what you're talking about

I've played plenty of games on my Surface Pro without a keyboard connected in travels and I never encountered such an issue while using a x-input gamepad.

When you're using a surface with an xbox gamepad attached you're not requiring the xbox gamepad to be emulated as a M/K so you can use the OS, it's just behaving as an xinput device from the moment you plug it in until the moment you unplug it. It doesn't need to know the context/application its being used. It doesn't care about whether the app is minimized or not.

Have you used a Steam Controller?
 
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OK, and how is that related to .ini files/custom setups in games?
what I meant is that Steam OS is a totally close environment where you enter Steam's Big Picture and you can't perform any disk operation. It's just like a console or iOS, maybe worse, though it has a browser. This means that you can't edit some ini files or touch some options in games.

On a different note, I've been testing Linux a few days. Pop OS..., I like it very much. BUT, it's not quite there yet, no matter what they say.

It's very easy for a youtuber like Linus Tech Tips to recommend a Linux distro and get away with it.

Trying it seriously is an entirely different thing.

If -like me- you like to fiddle with things it's a fun OS. But you need to take care of many things, and there are bugs -some not related to gaming-.

I haven't been playing a single game of mine 'cos Steam on Pop OS didnt even launch them. If you clicked on Launch, it tried, but then, the green Launch button was there for you to click on, never actually launching.

I found a semi-solution using Proton 6.3 instead of Proton Experimental and disabling Shader Pre-Caching stuff.

RE2R worked after a few days by doing so! However, the game crashed, just because it was using DirectX 12, so the game automatically switched to DirectX 11 -I prefer DX12 version cos 11 sometimes had a bug on my rig when reaching certain area-.

The game also doesnt know the amount of VRAM of my GPU, but well, it works.

Tennis World Tour launched, it got to the main menu, but pressing A to start the game, it crushed and went to the desktop.

My recommendation is that if you have a spare drive to install and try several Linux distros, it's okay to try them and find one that you like, but never expect a streamlined experience as Windows, it's not there yet, no matter what some Linux fanboys tell you.
 
No it isn't. You could literally have a controller have no buttons, joysticks or anything and it could still be enumerated as an xinput device.



Xinput isnt a layout, it's an API. Go look at the dev docs. There are steering wheels and joysticks as part of that API. Its how apps talk to the hardware and vice versa.

Everything you're saying makes it sound like you dont have a clue what you're talking about



When you're using a surface with an xbox gamepad attached you're not requiring the xbox gamepad to be emulated as a M/K so you can use the OS, it's just behaving as an xinput device from the moment you plug it in until the moment you unplug it. It doesn't need to know the context/application its being used. It doesn't care about whether the app is minimized or not.

Have you used a Steam Controller?
you tend to insist bringing up some issue about a device you are not interested in and mentioning something that we dont even know whether it is a factor or not.

I guess Steam is offering a solution for a console/handheld PC which people presume it's open and brags about it's openness offering an open OS and the typical PC philosophy is going to be limited by Steam to a big picture mode and only running Steam games.

There's no way I'd ever touch it if that's the case. I am not going to install Linux on it after my experiences with Linux. Although I am always going to have a Linux OS -maybe not Pop OS- on my desktop computer's NVMe from now on so when maybe who knows if I start to use Linux as my main OS even on the Steam Deck.

But I am guessing it is going to take a while for Linux to fix some issues, plus no GoG no buy, not to mention gamepass PC which has spectacular games this month.
 
what I meant is that Steam OS is a totally close environment where you enter Steam's Big Picture and you can't perform any disk operation. It's just like a console or iOS, maybe worse, though it has a browser. This means that you can't edit some ini files or touch some options in games.

You can just open a terminal and start hacking away if you want to.
 
You can just open a terminal and start hacking away if you want to.
do you know how? With Ubuntu I remember it was something along the lines of using Ctrl + T or Ctrl + Alt + T iirc (never liked Ubuntu tbh).

I am not sure it will ever work given how Steam OS "kidnaps" your machine, even turning the computer off is done through Steam (oddly enough the version I downloaded is not Arch Linux based but Debian based, maybe the one in Steam Deck will be diffetent). The command line is the thing I am most used to in Linux 'cos I had to use it quite a few times in exams.

As for Linux, I've downloaded Arco Linux (not Arch Linux) and Garuda Linux DragonizEd (which some say it is the most beautiful Linux, but well...)

ArcoLinux | ArcoLinux

Garuda Linux | Download

If they turn out to be better than Pop OS I shall settle with one permanently on my computer's NVMe. I am most interested in Arco Linux.

The world upside down. Using a Linux OS on my desktop computer and Windows 11 on the Steam Deck.

Got nothing to lose having a Linux OS on my 256GB NVMe, and Pop OS is the best Linux I've ever used but it doesn't entirely entice me.
 
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Doom Eternal is probably the game that will show the biggest performance difference between Vega and RDNA2. I can see around 30-40% performance difference in most other titles vs 4500u.
 
Doom Eternal is probably the game that will show the biggest performance difference between Vega and RDNA2. I can see around 30-40% performance difference in most other titles vs 4500u.
The difference they showed was 59 fps vs 37 fps which is a 60% difference. Theres likely a small penalty running proton as well. Natively, it probably will be more than 50% faster across a variety of games if you just compare the GPU.
 
The difference they showed was 59 fps vs 37 fps which is a 60% difference. Theres likely a small penalty running proton as well. Natively, it probably will be more than 50% faster across a variety of games if you just compare the GPU.
Reason I said that was Doom Eternal was relatively poor performing game on Vega architecture while it runs extremely well on RDNA2 (even 5700x outperforms Radeon VII on 1080p) I would say 40% is safer bet on most titles.
 
do you know how? With Ubuntu I remember it was something along the lines of using Ctrl + T or Ctrl + Alt + T iirc (never liked Ubuntu tbh).

I am not sure it will ever work given how Steam OS "kidnaps" your machine, even turning the computer off is done through Steam (oddly enough the version I downloaded is not Arch Linux based but Debian based, maybe the one in Steam Deck will be diffetent). The command line is the thing I am most used to in Linux 'cos I had to use it quite a few times in exams.

I haven't used Steam OS, but you can usually get to a terminal by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, or Ctrl-Alt-F2 etc.
 
do you know how? With Ubuntu I remember it was something along the lines of using Ctrl + T or Ctrl + Alt + T iirc
with ubuntu it was click on start menu click on terminal (or system then terminal) not much different from running any other program
 
No it isn't. You could literally have a controller have no buttons, joysticks or anything and it could still be enumerated as an xinput device.
Thus it would be useless for games because they all use the X360 layout. Point being?

Xinput isnt a layout, it's an API. Go look at the dev docs. There are steering wheels and joysticks as part of that API. Its how apps talk to the hardware and vice versa.

It's an API that maps a HID input to gamepad buttons according to the X360 gamepad's layout.
You're obviously conflating X-Input with DirectInput, they're two different things.

Did you look at the X-Input dev docs you're talking about? This is literally the first sentence in the official programming guide:

XInput Game Controller API enables applications to receive input from the Xbox Controller for Windows.

Every steering wheel and joystick that support X-Input simply map all the analog stick/trigger and buttons into X360/XBOne equivalents.

When you're using a surface with an xbox gamepad attached you're not requiring the xbox gamepad to be emulated as a M/K so you can use the OS, it's just behaving as an xinput device from the moment you plug it in until the moment you unplug it. It doesn't need to know the context/application its being used. It doesn't care about whether the app is minimized or not.

I said I used x-input gamepads, I didn't say I used a X360 nor XBOne gamepad. I used several devices, among others a PowerA MOGA Mini, MOGA Hero and a DualShock 4, all of them with wrappers for x-input -> X360 layout. The only one that gave me problems was the original MOGA Mini because, there was no 1:1 match with all of X360 gamepad's buttons and "analog" inputs.


Everything you're saying makes it sound like you dont have a clue what you're talking about
Please spare us the low-key trolling. I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert in the matter but the fact that you're conflating different APIs with different abilities means you need a bit of reading too.


Have you used a Steam Controller?
Yes. It's highly dependent on custom mapping on the enormous majority of games that default any gamepad input into X-Input.

The Steam Deck can have a 1:1 match to the X360 controller because it has 2 analog sticks, 2 analog triggers and 14 buttons (D-Pad + ABXY + RB+RS + LB+LS + Start + Select) in similar places, plus 4 extra grip buttons that can probably be mapped through keyboard bindings. And then the touchpads can just be configured as mousepads.
 
with ubuntu it was click on start menu click on terminal (or system then terminal) not much different from running any other program
sure, but SteamOS -based on the 2015 version and not on arch linux, avoid Steam OS like the plague (not the one of the Steam Deck) enters big picture mode the moment you log in into the OS and even controls the restart and shutdown of the system, i dunno how to leave that interface, and tried several key shortcuts to no avail. Ubuntu yes, while I used it mostly in the terminal for things like Apache or FTP when I was studying and never liked Ubuntu aesthetically wise, I remember that it was easy to enable the terminal.

 
Valve says they're working on Windows compatibility for the Deck, and they're also working with AMD to get Van Gogh's TPM module ready for Windows 11.

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/steam-deck-windows-11-tpm-compatibility/

"There's work looking at TPM just now," Valve Steam Deck designer, Greg Coomer, tells us. "We've focused so much on Windows 10, so far, that we haven't really gotten that far into it. Our expectation is that we can meet that."
(...)
"It's also a conversation that's going on with AMD," Coomer explains, "to make sure that, at the BIOS level, we can accommodate that. So there's nothing to indicate to us yet that there'll be any issues with Windows 11."


Hopefully this puts to rest the assumptions that the Deck will run awfully with Windows and Valve isn't moving a finger to make it work well on the OS.
 
Valve says they're working on Windows compatibility for the Deck, and they're also working with AMD to get Van Gogh's TPM module ready for Windows 11.

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/steam-deck-windows-11-tpm-compatibility/




Hopefully this puts to rest the assumptions that the Deck will run awfully with Windows and Valve isn't moving a finger to make it work well on the OS.
Its not ethical to mention the openness of your device, using an open OS and then forcing users to use your SteamOS. So this confirms the expectations. I mean, the most I use Linux on my PC the most I love it, especially combined with Windows (Office, VS).

But it's not quite there yet, no matter what they say. I've been using and testing Linux for more than a week now, several distros, exclusively.

And yes, most of the games work, but also, there are "surprises" like sudden hangs or the game returning to the OS, directly.., on games that work most of the time. Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, for instance, works fine /but contrary to Windows, which is a rock solid 60fps, the framerate is below 60 fps 90% of the time, though I blame nVidia closed drivers on that.

Performance in some games is better than on Windows, but only some, most of them are more performant on Windows. It's quite miraculous that they work at all in some cases, truth be told, but I dont expect Valve to fix everything, it might be impossible. Supreme Commander Forged Alliance is another example of this. It launches and then becomes just a black screen. There is a fix, but it's a complex solution.

So yeah, I shall be using Linux/Windows on my desktop, but for gaming, since I am going to buy the Steam Deck. I rather prefer Windows 11 by a long shot
 
Steam Deck influence has been essential in achieving the 1% market share of Linux on Steam.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/...t-almost-mythical-1-user-share-on-steam-again

And also increased Linux desktop marketshare:

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

I am one of those --it's been almost a week without touching Windows 11.

But let me tell you, if you believe that Linux is an OS for gaming, you are in for true disappointment. :oops: No matter what they say, but most games dont work and those that "work", yeah , they launch, but you can expect the random hang or the random crash to the desktop.

The only reason to use Linux as a gaming OS, imho, is for ideological reasons
 
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