ive fucked up both my shoulders at work and holding anything longer than half an hour gets painful. the deck is the best device ive found in that regard. i love my deck. i 100% say get one, well as long as its officially sold there or if you can get a good portion of the cost back by selling it.
I don’t think it’s a dumb question and I don’t fully have the answer. I know Lutris seems to be massively more customizable to get games running. You have runner scripts created by the community as well.
At this point though I’ve added games to Steam as a non-steam game and it works when I couldn’t get it working via Lutris. I’ve basically given up on Lutris personally and just use Heroic for GOG and Epic games and Steam for everything else.
Personally I prefer adding non steam game option. Or better yet, using nonsteamlaunchers to manage all my third party titles under one prefix.
But the point of lutris is to give you more control over where you prefix is, manage your proton version, custom scripts, intall dependencies, and one click installs for most launchers and games that may require workarounds.
That’s kind of a basic summary of it, someone else may be able to go into more depth, I haven’t used lutris in quite some time.
I've officially reached the whatever you call the phase where you spend all your time on the Steam Deck tweaking emulators, setting up roms, tidying everything up and not play any of it.
I don't find it too heavy nor that it puts any strain on my wrists, if you're playing for extended periods it's more comfortable to rest it on your lap like others have said anyway.
As a counterpoint I love the ergonomics of the Deck. My fingers are quite long and with the Switch I always ended up getting the pins and needles in my pinky and ring fingers, that and pain in my palms where the console would sit, all thanks to the Switch's flat design with straight edges (even though they’re slightly rounded).
With the Deck I haven't had that sort of issues at all, not even during longer sessions. It's so well designed in that aspect.
My steam deck has become an RPG machine for laying in bed. Wife and I tend to go lay in bed right after dinner, and since she falls asleep quick, I game. Always play a bit of ESO, and I'm currently playing Chained Echoes, which is a great modern take on 16bit RPGs. The writing is a little rough since it was made by one guy (he's German) and translated to English by his composer but it's got a really fun battle system and a great aesthetic.
This is the way for me as well. Long story-driven RPGs, particularly older titles, really shine in a mobile format due to being able to play in any position on any furniture, and the small screen hides the dated graphics. I've been going through all the Final Fantasy series, and the Pixel Remasters of 1-6 were fantastic on the Deck.
I think the only thing you need to consider with Steam Deck is little things like installing Proton-GE for greater game compatibility. SteamGridDB Decky plugin for non-steam games so they have all the nice artwork etc.
I will say though, I upgraded my 64GB eMMC Steam Deck to a 1TB SSD a few months ago and this OLED Steam Deck is super goddamn tempting.
I would look at it as "maybe consider later", but the limited edition look is sexy. I'm not going to actually do it (I basically locked that in by buying a PS5 today) any time soon, even though I didn't regret the upgrade with the switch at all, but it's definitely a tempting upgrade.
God damn is the controller an even bigger upgrade than I expected, though. The precision vibration is way better than the switch and the triggers are legit as hell stacked with it. Astro's playroom shows it off really well.
To get lower input latency ensure your PS5 is connected via a network cable, then the only wireless hop is via the Steamdeck. Gets to be pretty reasonable input latency then, best with 60fps games.
PS5 remote play is actually the primary reason I started looking at larger handhelds. I have been using a Retroid Pocket 3+, but the tiny 720p screen is starting to hurt my eyes at night. I had looked at the steam deck already, but I wanted something with a more ideal screen. The timing of the OLED couldn’t have been more perfect for me.
I still haven't found my favorite way to manage 3rd party games. Heroic seems to be more solid than others but only supports GOG and Epic.
Lutris is very hit or miss for me. It's been useful for some games in my Amazon library.
I've also tried Bottles and it seems overcomplicated unless there was something that I was missing. It might be useful for certain use cases, but may not be necessary.
I used to game on Arch Linux for years. Ever since I got my Steam Deck, I stopped using my laptop. Specs may be slightly worse, but I'm no longer tied to my desk and can play more. So worth the money.
I've had the exact same experience. My desktop can play at higher framerates, with better graphics on a larger screen - yet here I am playing on the SteamDeck. Also love the sleep/wake. Being able to have a 30 minute game break and pausing it whenever is so good.
GameImage basically just lets you fuss with getting the games working on Desktop first, then turn that into an AppImage file that you can just copy straight to the Deck.
The only time I find it kind of cumbersome is when I'm trying to kind of lounge or slouch out on the couch and I'm propping my elbows up against something. That's because the propping combined with the muscles in my arms gripping the thing is causing poor circulation.
Simple fix, don't do that.
Otherwise the biggest issue is posture. Hunching over a screen for prolonged periods is gonna be bad no matter how light the thing is.
To put it another way, I have a gaming pc and I haven't used it to game since I got my steam deck a couple months ago.
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