I know this is extreme, but people buying these Xbox handhelds over a Steam Deck are directly harming the future of gaming on PC. It's time that the PC gaming ecosystem breaks free from its dependency on Windows. Proton and SteamOS, combined with the unpopular mess that is Windows 11 is the perfect opportunity to do so.
The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code. Once users are locked in, expect service fees to sharply rise just to use Windows. People should not fall for it. Leave Windows for crusty corporations that love their office 365 employee spy platform.
I love my Steam Deck, but it is really frustrating how many of the games i regularly play can't be played on it - Madden, EA FC, PUBG, all won't run even though the hardware is plenty to play them. The limitations of anti cheat on Linux might be insurmountable
Competitive online gaming is the least strong part of the steam deck. But on the flip side it’s way better for local multi player. You can pack it in your bag with some controllers and plug it in to a friends TV easily.
The tools for owning your Linux OS are strong enough that anti-cheat is pointless because they're just broken all the time and nobody wants a linux box they can't control at all.
> The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code
Defender already forces binaries to be signed by developers that spent money on certs from Microsoft-certified CAs.
Pull those certs, or don't use them at all, and 99.999% of users will not figure out how to run what they want, because the OS will trick them into thinking they're about to get owned by Russian hackers for just thinking about running something that wasn't blessed by Microsoft.
Steam is doing the same thing as Microsoft, between DRM-locking everything so you don't own it, and gatekeeping what titles are actually allowed in their store. They're both locking you into their vision of the future.
DRM is optional on Steam. The dev can opt to not include it, and the default Steam DRM is trivially bypassed anyway.
Valve barely does any gatekeeping that isn't caused by outside pressure, i.e. Visa and Mastercard in the latest instance, which they're atleast trying to fight back against, from what I can tell.
If Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus, what happens when his estate sells majority control to pay the inheritance and estate taxes?
With federal taxes of 40% over $15 million, there's no way his estate maintains majority control, no matter Gabe's good intentions. After that, we can look forward to Microsoft Steam. Or, if the FTC is annoyed, Amazon Steam.
C. And the estate may just want to sell more Steam shares to keep whatever they are intact
D. Even if by some miracle Gabe Newell still owns the required ~85% of Steam to barely squeak by ($16B valuation = ~$5.5 billion tax bill if he owned 85%, leaving him with ~51% after payment), who is taking the reins?
E. I forgot Gabe Newell lives in Seattle. If Washington is his actual residence, then Washington has an additional 35% tax rate on high-value estates. Which makes it completely impossible even with 100% ownership.
I completely agree. I pre-ordered the Steam Deck without knowing if I would actually use it, telling myself that at least I was supporting gaming on SteamOS by providing financial support. I boycott all Windows-based alternatives, even if they are better, because I refuse to use a product sold with Windows.
On the other hand, Linux still lacks a gamepad-focused UX out of the box, which is the real selling proposition of this device. These handheld PC's are not inherently "gaming" machines, they could have all sorts of interesting enterprise-focused uses out in the field if we managed to find a nice way of centering the whole UX interaction on those weird chorded buttons and analog controls.
This is not true of SteamOS and Bazzite. The entire OS is controller supported. I have my desktop running Bazzite plugged in to the TV with no kb/m. Can do everything from updating the system, changing the screen resolution, formatting sd cards, etc with just a controller.
Bazzite does include the Steam frontend but that's a proprietary system, it's not something that the Linux/FLOSS community came up with. The KDE folks are starting to look into remote-control focused media center interfaces that are also applicable to gamepad control (though these devices generally come with touchscreens too, and this creates additional affordances) but that's a bit of a too little and too late situation. We need far more than that to make this novel class of devices usable for genuine production uses.
As for the enterprise part of OP's comment, Bazzite is a community-contributed OCI container (similar to a Docker container) running on top of a Fedora bootc spin with GNOME or KDE. It is trivial for a company to add their own RUN instructions to the OCI Containerfile.
Here's a working one that I prepared earlier that installs 1Password on Bazzite GNOME and Bluefin:
I hardly ever do that, but the one time I did (for Minecraft) I did just drop down to desktop mode and used the trackpad and touch screen. This wasn’t really to do with Linux though. Minecraft does not provide any way to install and log in with controller support.
After I installed it one time, I added it to Steam and could launch and update it with a controller. In theory GOG could integrate with Bazzite to offer a controller friendly store and UI. But considering they haven’t even bothered with a desktop Linux client, I’m not holding my breath.
One disaster for another - why spend thousands on a giant "portable" with a 1-2 hour gaming time before you have to power it off to swap the bulky external battery.
AIUI (I don't have any of this hardware) SteamOS is really meant for the Steam Deck; while there's "basic support" for the ROG Ally, it's not their focus. Bazzite seems to be quite happy to support everything, and AIUI it's frighteningly close to SteamOS (the same customizations, etc.)
It's not "we have SteamOS at home" - it's more like RedHat vs CentOS
This is changing. Valve is actively working with hardware manufacturers to get SteamOS on a number of systems other than the Steam Deck. You can buy a Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS today[1], and Valve will be supporting SteamOS on the Asus ROG Ally in the future[2], whether Asus partners with them or not.
because official SteamOS doesn't support the Xbox Ally X yet. It's safe to assume that official SteamOS will eventually support the Xbox Ally X, but it's not there yet.
Valve moves slowly to add support for more devices, etc, whereas the Bazzite devs can move faster.
e.g.
Bazzite does a weekly release of a stable OS candidate, whereas Valve often takes months, if not up to a year, for to release a stable-channel OS update.
Edit:
Also, Valve tends to wait for proper kernel interfaces for functionality like controlling TDP, RGB, fans, etc. Whereas Bazzite devs are fine with using tools in userspace to directly talk to hardware, etc.
While I do think Valve's approach is better for long-term maintainability, Bazzite will always have the speed advantage because it can hack together a solution via userspace applications.
Not sure what the specific benefits of SteamOS are. It’s forked from Arch, I don’t know what Valve changes. Maybe slightly better hardware support for Steam Deck? I run Steam on Fedora on my desktop and have no issues.
The Xbox runs on a custom OS derived from Windows Core. Not the same as a consumer version of Windows.
[Edit] The answer you’re probably looking for is I/O. The PS5 is much faster than the Series X in terms of getting stuff off disk and actually using it. That more than compensates for the small speed advantage the Series X has.
I consider that the core of Windows (the NT kernel and win32 api) is actually a very polished gem but it is encased in layers of upon layers of barely polished turds ( winui, the win11 shell, the over agressive telemetry, forced ms635 integration, etc..)
I've heard that too. And also Xbox had 2 different DirectX APIs, one more customised to the console, and one that's the standard Windows DirectX which is not as performant. From what I've heard most devs used the latter as it made porting the PC version of the game easier, and sales on Xbox would be tiny compared to PlayStation (1/3rd the install base, sales even less than that due to Xbox users not buying games and just using gamepass) there was less incentive to optimise.
I was so excited for the Series X and it's just another crap-tier wannabe gaming PC, with none of the flexibility. It makes me so sad how miserable the XBox has become. I fucking LOVED the 360 back in the day, I used to run home from school to get on Halo 3 and play with friends.
And granted, those same friends and I still play Halo Infinite, but we're all on PCs. Nobody bothers with the goddamn XBox.
The Xbox died the moment they announced it would require a constant connection to the Kinect, and internet in order to function. Even after backtracking from that, it never recovered. There’s also just a lack of reason for it to exist anymore. The PlayStation fills the need for a high power console, Nintendo offers something portable and gimmicky, what would Xbox even offer here?
These days most consoles run fairly standard hardware and games are programmed to be generic and published on every console.
I have the Xbox Ally, Steam Deck, and original Ally.
The original Ally software launch was a disaster. Unbelievable amount of bugs and overall terrible user experience. After 6+ months of updates it was decent.
I figured, hey, maybe they figured it out in advance this time? So I pre-ordered an Xbox Ally.
It is a complete disaster in terms of software. It took 90 minutes to setup and download initial updates on a Google Fiber connection. Things break constantly.
The other day, I got a new error, "Something went wrong and your PIN isn't available." When I try to click anything, it just goes black. After 6 or 7 restarts, it randomly glitches out and takes me right to desktop without any PIN.
It is just constant bullshit like this. The entire experience breaks over, and over, and over. I hate it so much. Back to Steam Deck.
I don't mean to be rude, but why would you give them even more money after screwing it up so bad the first time? You're just rewarding bad behavior at this point.
OP explained that. The original was stable after 6 months of patches. The Xbox Ally should in theory have that stability baked in. Everyone deserves a second chance. Not so much a third.
It really has. I had always tried to use Linux in the past, but gaming was always a fight, and the OS just never felt like it behaved reliable for daily usage for me, was always some little annoyance or bug or issue I'd run into and inevitably switch back to Windows for the sake of things just working without having to spend hours and days and weeks trying to fix issues. That was 10+ years ago. I finally decided to give it a go again, using an Arch based OS. I figured it's been a while, try something other than debian or SLES that I've been used to. Honestly, I kinda don't notice much difference in overall day to day use between gaming and day to day use on Linux versus previously being on Windows just a month ago. Everything kinda just works. The one thing I do notice is I use significantly less RAM, I seldom exceed 32gb as where I was regularly 40gb+ on Windows, and everything runs much better while I do the same day to day stuff as I always have. It's not a huge performance difference, but if I'm paying attention, yeah, I do notice my games tend to run better, and everything within the OS is far more responsive.
As for all the linux a-holes out there, please STFU, I don't wanna hear "winblows sux" or "this distro is better", it's why I didn't specify what specific distro I use. That toxic fanboyism is what keeps people away from seeing it as a viable usable OS.
My rambling is really just to say: Yeah, linux has come a long way, especially for gaming and day to day use. The work Valve and others have done to make stuff just run and work is astonishing.
This has been my experience. Linux+Steam+Proton delivers a more stable and performant Windows API than Windows. And that was on Windows 10 two years ago. I can only imagine things have gotten worse with Windows 11.
Not to mention for the different games that need different environments/configurations/libraries it's much easier to manage a bunch of profiles than a bunch of windows installations/VMs.
I use Arch pretty much exclusively these days on my desktop, but this isn't quite true. Most of the time, Proton has a small performance impact (around 5% lower FPS), but some games tend to suffer more. For example Helldivers 2 runs around 10fps lower, which is pretty significant since I only got around 60-70 FPS on Windows at 4K (using a 3090).
Still, Proton is an amazing tool and these days it just works so well. The only games that don't work are those that are intentionally broken by invasive kernel-level anticheats. I won't be buying Battlefield 6, too bad for EA, there are now thousands of other games to play on Linux.
The general performance loss with the DX12 -> Vulkan translation on Linux especially with Nvidia hardware recently had the cause identified and will hopefully get solved in the near future. It has to do with descriptors and how Nvidia handles it is the general gist of it. A new Vulkan extension will be developed that more closely resembles how DX12 does things as I understand it, and then Nvidia and others can use that to hopefully solve this once and for all.
Here[1] is the full presentation and the slides[2] from it.
You’re comparing a game running on a compatibility layer, running on Linux to a game running directly on Windows. Not quite what the parent comment was stating.
There are few native Linux games, so performance on Proton is the essential benchmark. Besides, even when Linux native versions are available, the Windows version on Proton often offers a better experience (fewer obvious bugs).
I think grosswait is talking about the dx12 -> Vulkan translation layer. Running Windows games on Proton that use Vulkan get more comparable performance than Windows games that use dx12.
Relative FPS gain is a meaningless metric anyway. Going from 30 to 36 FPS is -5.5 ms/frame, going from 60 to 66 FPS is -1.5 ms/frame.
Taking the average of that is even more meaningless. If they insist in comparing FPS instead of frame times, they should have simply compared the two harmonic means.
The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code. Once users are locked in, expect service fees to sharply rise just to use Windows. People should not fall for it. Leave Windows for crusty corporations that love their office 365 employee spy platform.
Why is it insurmountable? It's not like it's impossible for the companies that produce anti-cheat solutions to get them running on Linux.
Also, the face buttons are just to far to the right. My thumb will begin aching after 15 mins or so. Other controllers are far more comfortable.
To be honest. I like my Playdate more than my Steam Deck.
Defender already forces binaries to be signed by developers that spent money on certs from Microsoft-certified CAs.
Pull those certs, or don't use them at all, and 99.999% of users will not figure out how to run what they want, because the OS will trick them into thinking they're about to get owned by Russian hackers for just thinking about running something that wasn't blessed by Microsoft.
Valve barely does any gatekeeping that isn't caused by outside pressure, i.e. Visa and Mastercard in the latest instance, which they're atleast trying to fight back against, from what I can tell.
With federal taxes of 40% over $15 million, there's no way his estate maintains majority control, no matter Gabe's good intentions. After that, we can look forward to Microsoft Steam. Or, if the FTC is annoyed, Amazon Steam.
B. They are also taxed at 40%
C. And the estate may just want to sell more Steam shares to keep whatever they are intact
D. Even if by some miracle Gabe Newell still owns the required ~85% of Steam to barely squeak by ($16B valuation = ~$5.5 billion tax bill if he owned 85%, leaving him with ~51% after payment), who is taking the reins?
E. I forgot Gabe Newell lives in Seattle. If Washington is his actual residence, then Washington has an additional 35% tax rate on high-value estates. Which makes it completely impossible even with 100% ownership.
Here's a working one that I prepared earlier that installs 1Password on Bazzite GNOME and Bluefin:
https://github.com/lkdm/Phoenix
After I installed it one time, I added it to Steam and could launch and update it with a controller. In theory GOG could integrate with Bazzite to offer a controller friendly store and UI. But considering they haven’t even bothered with a desktop Linux client, I’m not holding my breath.
Also, why didn't they install SteamOS directly? https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...
It's not "we have SteamOS at home" - it's more like RedHat vs CentOS
[1]https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/handheld/legion-go-s/len106g0...
[2]https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/13/24219469/valve-steamos-as...
Valve moves slowly to add support for more devices, etc, whereas the Bazzite devs can move faster.
e.g.
Bazzite does a weekly release of a stable OS candidate, whereas Valve often takes months, if not up to a year, for to release a stable-channel OS update.
Edit:
Also, Valve tends to wait for proper kernel interfaces for functionality like controlling TDP, RGB, fans, etc. Whereas Bazzite devs are fine with using tools in userspace to directly talk to hardware, etc.
While I do think Valve's approach is better for long-term maintainability, Bazzite will always have the speed advantage because it can hack together a solution via userspace applications.
I love it, but there's probably not a whole bunch of reason to run it on things in other form factors.
[Edit] The answer you’re probably looking for is I/O. The PS5 is much faster than the Series X in terms of getting stuff off disk and actually using it. That more than compensates for the small speed advantage the Series X has.
if you polish a turd, it's still a turd.
And granted, those same friends and I still play Halo Infinite, but we're all on PCs. Nobody bothers with the goddamn XBox.
These days most consoles run fairly standard hardware and games are programmed to be generic and published on every console.
The original Ally software launch was a disaster. Unbelievable amount of bugs and overall terrible user experience. After 6+ months of updates it was decent.
I figured, hey, maybe they figured it out in advance this time? So I pre-ordered an Xbox Ally.
It is a complete disaster in terms of software. It took 90 minutes to setup and download initial updates on a Google Fiber connection. Things break constantly.
The other day, I got a new error, "Something went wrong and your PIN isn't available." When I try to click anything, it just goes black. After 6 or 7 restarts, it randomly glitches out and takes me right to desktop without any PIN.
It is just constant bullshit like this. The entire experience breaks over, and over, and over. I hate it so much. Back to Steam Deck.
See the mess on Windows development experience since Project Reunion reboot, or how WinRT transition was completely mismanaged.
But hey Satya got his bonus.
My rambling is really just to say: Yeah, linux has come a long way, especially for gaming and day to day use. The work Valve and others have done to make stuff just run and work is astonishing.
Still, Proton is an amazing tool and these days it just works so well. The only games that don't work are those that are intentionally broken by invasive kernel-level anticheats. I won't be buying Battlefield 6, too bad for EA, there are now thousands of other games to play on Linux.
Here[1] is the full presentation and the slides[2] from it.
[1] https://video.tuwien.ac.at/events/xdc/v/OlwauRVEIGa
[2] https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/402/at...
There is some WIP to address it for Nvidia, but it requires new Vulkan features.
See: https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/402/at...
> Average FPS gain (Linux vs Windows)
> +6.6 FPS (+13.47%)
Taking the average of that is even more meaningless. If they insist in comparing FPS instead of frame times, they should have simply compared the two harmonic means.
“Up to” is the maximum number.
“Average” is the sum of all the data points divided by the quantity of data points.