This little machine continues to surprise me

It wasn't always that way, but I'm glad proton is great now!

I only read of the rocky starts, i got mine with the recent steam sale at 10% off for the 64GB. Just need to get it a bigger SSD and I’ll be all set!
- I just picked up the corsairs mp600 1tb and an nvme enclosure to clone my drive for about 130 all together.
- I used Linux before Steam came to Linux, those were the good old days where every game required tinkering in WINE. I actually didn't have a Steam account until it came to Linux, and then I played only a handful of Linux-native games (Rocket League was one of them).
  
  When Proton came to Steam, a whole new world opened up, and now I can basically assume a game will work and I'll be right more often than not.
  
  So from my perspective, it wasn't a rocky start at all, but a gradual widening of my gaming library. I've since played a ton more games, so I've rewarded Steam for the effort.
- A 1tb microSD card is a pretty good compromise. Its just as fast as ssd storage and significantly easier to install.

I actually just installed Linux on my gaming PC and it's mostly been a good experience.

Same. I didn't play on a Windows machine for almost a year and half.
Bought a second drive to run Linux on my gaming PC. It's been a month and I haven't had the need to boot into Windows yet. I had some initial troubles during installation but it's smooth sailing since. After owning the Steam Deck for 1+ year and already running Linux on my laptop, it was the last step towards ditching Windows entirely.

Permanently Deleted

Manjaro <3

Ahh, the Steam Deck, the SBC handheld that I can't afford yet.

I just play ports on my switch and pretend.
- I'm thinking of picking up a PS Vita to pretend even harder

I don't have a Steam Deck, but I just made the transition to fully running Arch on my gaming rig. So far everything just works.

Are you guys playing AAA games in Linux? Everything works?
- The only time I've experienced a AAA game not working at launch or shortly after launch is when the developer explicitly goes out of the way to block usage on Linux.
  
  Looking at you Bungie.
- They work in general, especially if the games have no anticheat or 3rd party launchers. As an example, Sonys PC ports work very well on linux/proton. Linux gaming is great nowadays.
- Lets say a major game comes out something like Elder Scrolls VI. Could I play it straight away in Linux or are we talking about older AAAs?

Steamdeck made me sell my desktop! I still have an entry-level gaming laptop if I need it but 90% of my PC gaming is on the deck now

If Linux gets support from Abode so I can ditch Photoshop, I’ll be there.

Adobe may never do this. You might have some luck looking into alternative apps to the ones you work with.

There are some very compelling, cross platform, FOSS alternatives to Photoshop (GIMP, Krita), Illustrator (Inkscape), InDesign (Scribus), maybe premier pro (Davinci Resolve isn't FOSS, but it is cross platform. You can also try shortcut, openshot, kdenlive but they're not as advanced).

One thing I miss, however, is the interoperability between Adobe apps. Like copying a vector from illustrator into an InDesign document. I couldn't do the same between Inkscape and Scribus
- Abode. Think your brain autofilled that.
  
  Abode is an alternative suite being developed by Culture Hustle, the company started by Stuart Semple, and who made the blackest black and pinkest pink paints, aswell as who ported the Pantone catalog after that whole fiasco.
- Scribus can't be a replacement until Master Pages work like they do in InDesign.
If you don't need Photoshop for actual work, then running it under Wine is a viable option. CC 2019 (20.0) works fine for the most part, but you need to install it in Windows first and copy over the installed folder. CC 2023 also works, but there's no GPU acceleration support (yet).
Honestly I hope the next couple of years see more Proton work for supporting Adobe (legit copies or otherwise heheh) so more users can migrate over.

Inkscape has improved a lot with its newest version and I pray that GIMP will speed up dev soon so maybe that'll make up for the lack of Adobe stuff
- Yeah I want Gimp to be good so bad but I've been waiting for like 20 years and it never seems to change...i really want a Photoshop and Lightroom ripoff for Linux.
Imagine paying a subscription; use Affinity Photo and Designer as these are very viable alternatives without the subscription. GIMP is not a good alternative despite it being free :(
- Who said anything about paying? :P
- I agree GIMP isn't great, but Krita is everything I ever wanted. It completely replaces Photoshop for me.
- If you've ever spent any time in Photoshop you know gimp is garbage in comparison. Photopea is better than gimp.
- Affinity is great, I try it every once in a while but it's just not quite there as a replacement for Photoshop for Pro level work.

I just bought a new NVME SSD as I need to reinstall Windows anyway. I am seriously considering at least dual booting Windows and Linux or just going full Linux at once. You guys in here and the Linux community on Lemmy show me that it is possible to escape Windows without too much trouble, even for a Linux newb like me.

Okay, I am not a complete newb, I have set up a few Raspberry Pis and do run a unRAID server, but I have never seriously used Linux as a daily driver on my desktop or laptop.

Dual boot on separate disks is pretty nice. You can even load up your Windows install inside a VM on your Linux drive
- That sounds genius. The new drive is a 2TB NVME and the old is a 1TB NVME so that is totally a possibility.
- How can I do this? I already have Windows on a separate drive. I'm running Linux Mint
- I did that for a while but the other day I wiped out the windows drive and squished the two of them into a single drive with LVM 👍

Yes, join us! But srsly, quite a lot of games work great with proton on Linux. You can always check protondb.com for compability :)

It honestly makes me wonder why i keep using windows on my main desktop if proton allows playing most anything i play

I was asking myself the same question. Then I installed Linux on my desktop and I have never been happier

I'd started dualbooting with NobaraOS about a year ago, and recently deleted windows entirely. I haven't run into a game I want to play yet that isn't compatible.

How is performance compared to windows? After using the Steam Deck for a while I'm interested in making the switch.

I also have concerns how well WakeOnLan works together with remote desktop. I'm currently booting my gaming pc with the click of a button on my phone and then I sit at my laptop with Parsec. If there are good solutions and performance isn't worse I'm probably taking the leap soon. Nvidia GPU btw.
- Performance is usually the same, sometimes even better, and sometimes worse, if any particular game isn't officially supported/optimised by proton developers (but usually not officially supported games work anyway, except for those with anticheat).
  
  Wake on Lan works with TeamViewer/anydesk but only on xorg so far, but you have Nvidia so you are anyway stuck with xorg

Anyone play factorio on this thing?

It's runs really well, actually. I don't have any solid numbers because I wasn't really into that side of it, but I had a fairly large base going, about 20 hours past endgame (no where near a megabase, though) and no performance issues.

I find myself using desktop mode more on the Deck while docked than my Windows computer, that's connected to the same monitor. Still trying to learn how to use programs like Bottles correctly, but once I do, I'm getting rid of the Windows computer.

I love it. It is the best purchase decision I made in years. I am lazy - I prefer to play on Steam Deck than on my gaming laptop.

However, yesterday I tried to play Remnant 2 on Steam Deck. I was not expecting fireworks, but at least decent 30fps. IMO Game is unplayable on SD. Barely reaches 30fps. Fan spins like crazy. It works great on my laptop.

I can't wait for a Steam Deck hardware refresh.

What is this game?

What game is that? Looks like Blizzard game, maybe Diablo? 4? Never seen D4 before.

Yea its D4

I use Proton (Linux) for games where my hardware is overkill or my FPS is good enough.

But in games where the hardware is maxed and the FPS is below my preference. I use windows because there is still sometimes like a 10%-20% loss by running windows stuff from Linux.

In Steam Deck could be different because it's more optimised maybe. There are exceptions that run better on Linux I understand (example: same FPS but less stuttering).

My only issue with Proton are crash and rendering issues related to ray tracing on certain games (probably Nvidia's fault). Also, Halo master chief collection crash after a few minutes gameplay, but that's might have something to do with the game being made by Microsoft. Other than that, it's perfect. Even DLSS is working fine too.

What game and device is this? I need it!

D4 on Steamdeck
- Oh, thank you so much!

How much FPS are you getting?

how’s it run overall?

Diablo 4 runs well 60-40fps in the open world 60fps in dungeons on a mix of low/med settings. I play it at 50fps cap for smoother pacing and it's a great experience.

A fellow druid

It won't play teardown I know that.

Ahah, takedown: red sabre?

Nice! How easy was it getting D4 running?

I have been looking in the steam store hoping it would show up since a lot of other Blizzard games are. Steam makes running games on Linux very easy, what did you do to run it, add battlenet as non steam game?

I’ll find you the guide I used, but in essence yes, you add battle.net as a non steam game. I think there’s a better method than the one I used where you can even have the games separately be added as non steam games as well instead of just the launcher

Man thats great. Im not a devoted player but from time to time I just buy a game to have some fun. Last ones were Hellblade and Witcher 3. Also In thinkng of starting a new build from scratch so I might just jump into Linux and leave Windows behind for good. What is the ideal Linux flavour for gaming? Ubuntu? Mint? Whats it like with gpu drivers and what not?

GPU drivers

If you have AMD GPU, it "just works" with pretty much any Linux distribution since the driver is included with the kernel.

If you have an NVIDIA GPU, you need to install the drivers from your distribution's package manager. That's usually pretty easy, at AFAIK Ubuntu and Mint detect it and prompt you to install them.

Once it's installed, just update your system like normal and you'll always have the latest drivers.

ideal Linux flavour

It doesn't really matter, just pick something you like. If you're using Steam, it's basically the same experience regardless of the distro.

So pick something relatively popular so you have better options if you run into an issue. I recommend Mint, but plenty of others work well.

Cool. I recommend Nobara, its a gaming/content creation oriented distro that works well out of the box.

https://nobaraproject.org/

If it weren't for how good the offering is on Gamepass I would just play on Linux.

You can stream gamepass on the steamdeck
- I hate the input delay on cloud gaming. It's just not something wish to deal with in action games. I used it on my phone to play persona but killer instinct on Streaming is suffering.
- That's true, but even streaming locally from my series x to stream Deck really degrades the image quality and introduces input delay (which of course could also be caused by my network idk) so I'm not too keen on streaming games