I mean, I agree that the form factor isn’t what matters, that’s not what I was saying. When you boot the Steam Deck it actively hides that it is a computer. Let’s be real here, all consoles are basically just dumbed down PC’s at this point. They have slightly modified AMD chips with AMD GPUs. The only difference is that you can’t access the file system. You can on the Steam Deck if you want to, but Valve tries to simplify the experience by presenting it as a console. My argument has nothing to do with the form factor and everything to do with the default presentation.

My post was not meant to take away your points, and honestly I tend to forget about the Steam workshop because, as you said, I and many other general PC gamers don’t mod games that much. I’m not trying to be negative about the Deck, just realistic. Unfortunately for me, my general lack of optimism can be seen as inherently negative. The Steam Deck has already succeeded in its goal as evidenced by the, inferior in my opinion, knockoffs from Asus and Lenovo. The main point I was trying to make is the very fact that if or when people try to install a mod they immediately run into the barrier of having to reboot the device. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does tell many people this is not the main way to use the device. Remember that for the general public defaults are the most powerful thing on their device.

For transparency, I have a gaming PC. I have a Steam Deck. I love the Steam Deck to death and would never give it up. For many people, it is the closest thing they will see to PC gaming. I can say without a doubt that the Steam Deck is a PC in the same way a chicken is a wild bird. Can you do 90% of PC related tasks with the Steam Deck? Yes, but with a lot more work, and much more required knowledge. It’s not even because of the OS, which is great because it’s just Linux based. It’s because the Steam Deck does not put necessary parts that average PC users need as forward facing concepts.

The Steam Deck is a console first, and a PC in a pinch and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s the reason I love the device, but also use it less. A good example is modding Elden Ring for Seamless Co-op. You can do it, and it’s not HARD per se, but you may have to find files in the OS to make sure Steam knows to open them, and because of how the file tree works in Linux vs Windows it isn’t really a simple case of “type the file name in search”.

Breaking news, people on the Internet have no concept of nuance.

It was so bad Nilay Patel had to apologize (semi-seriously) about causing a news cycle about a mouse.

The new CEO had the beginning of an idea in an interview. The interviewer tried to push back while still keeping the interview going, but it became messy real quick.

I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say it’s gone “mainstream” since you still have to be moderately nerdy to know about it. I get your point though. This is one of the reasons I am so happy the Steam Deck exists. Before Valve released the Steam Deck nobody wanted to make games for Linux, so Valve said “fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves” and proved it was not only possible, but a better experience overall. While not all games work, having 78-80% of your game library work on Linux, with no Windows OS performance tax, is a great experience. Even with the Proton compatibility layer games generally run faster than on Windows.

I’m at work so I can’t do deep dive searching, and honestly I will probably forget about this by the time I get home, but there are other people I follow who report on this stuff, unfortunately only in podcast format, who have also talked to modders in person. All of them say mods are fine. Take that for what you will.

So, I don’t know how to put this, and I don’t this actually isn’t true . Not sure how this blew up, but yeah.

Reading this hurt me.

There are already people claiming this, but I have yet to see any actual proof of claim. Unfortunately the court of public opinion has already started to turn even without actual proof. Got to love a good witch hunt.

To be fair to Microsoft (I can’t believe I actually typed that) it’s not something they can just fix without splitting Windows into a consumer and business SKU that is significantly different from current Windows. Currently the only real difference is the amount of control the end user has over the platform, but the features are pretty much the same. To make a fully “modern” version you would basically have to build Windows from the ground up to eliminate all the cruft. There is no money for Microsoft in that. Better to focus on business and let the consumer complain.

I mean current version really doesn’t mean anything because people aren’t going to upgrade if the version they’re using is fine. I submit that this is a perfect example of correlation != causation. I may have gotten the order wrong on the not equal symbology since I haven’t used it in a while.

Also, are we talking Linux kernal versions? There are so many problems with this comparison.

You really think Windows 10 has less tracking? This is the thing that bothers me the most in general. People are quick to just accept what they think is the popular view of something without experiencing it for themselves. Especially in the day and age of social media people just say things are bad because someone they know watched a video that says it was bad.

Literally, this whole Windows 11 is bad thing started because some tech content creators pointed out that every other version of Windows is bad (which isn’t even strictly true) and everyone just agreed with them because they “know what they are talking about”. I hold on love for Microsoft, but I also hold no love for Google and Apple because they are corporations and that means you should trust them as far as you can throw them. Windows 11 wasn’t even great in the beginning, but I wanted to give it a shot because I wanted the full experience. I wanted to know what I was talking about when I told people not to upgrade. As of right now the general public (e.g. not a bunch of Linux nerds on the Fediverse) are probably fine to use 11. Would I tell people to go out of their way to upgrade? Fuck no. But if a new computer comes with 11 pre-installed they probably wouldn’t even notice beyond the taskbar placement.

I want to start out by saying I agree with everything you said, but I want to clarify by pointing out that Valve did trying to have a free floating battery but didn’t like how the console felt during testing. While they could have made a compartment I imagine the added weight and bulk (due to the battery shape) would not have been worth it.

I imagine part of that is low production as well since they don’t strike me as a huge company by computer manufacturing standards.

There never was intelligent conversation. People mostly used Twitter to talk about the news. Twitter has gotten worse, but it’s always been full of L takes.

Talk about blowing shit out of proportion. People need to realize that making death threats is a good way to make the bad guys look like the good guys.

NOOOOOOO! This goes against their narrative that they chose to do it! How dare you!

The only thing Apple chose themselves was placing an artificial limit on the port.

But does he go?