Boom shoot publishers like Apogee seem to be leaning into the free demo trend. It’s really nice. This doesnt look like it fits that genre, but what’s good for the goose i guess.
Not worth going through the trouble of installing this unless you only have games on Steam. The best thing about the Ally is the compatibility thanks to windows. If it offered better performance, then it would be worth it just to play steam games.
Yes but that defeats the point since you still have to go into desktop mode to install the other games. And more importantly It doesn’t support Gamepass.
For the Ally there’s just not enough benefits to go through the effort, I’ll reiterate.
It’s looking really cool! I also saw some horrible roads in some shots, but certainly looks like it’s moving in the right direction. Would love to visit some day.
Every laptop I’ve bought has come with Windows including gaming ones. Up to really powerful computers. Like having a 4080 in it or down to just integrated. I could be doing nothing and you’ll hear the fan spin up hard on Windows.
On hardware with just integrated graphics, Windows just sucks compared to Linux. Fan spins up but you’ll still get animation hitches as Windows background services are doing something. Switch to Linux and resource usage just matches up really well with what you know you’ve installed and set to run. Just whatever is popular: Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Pop_OS, etc compared to consumer Windows editions.
Plus it’s nice installing an OS and not having to go through pages of telemetry opt-outs, encouragement to buy O365, OneDrive, Copilot+, Gamepass, create online MS account, etc. Windows went from a relatively neutral marketplace, besides the bundled software, to a platform for marketing MS and other companies subscription services
Neutral base of fairly standardized open source Linux operating systems is going to show itself overtime as preferable as these controlled platforms get monetized harder. Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android are all in varying stages of being subscription and marketing data farms
You joke, but half of my Steam library is incompatible with Steam Deck. Like, I fucking hate Windows, but I'm stuck there for gaming, and I don't even play these multiplayer games. I'm talking Catherine, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Under Night In-Birth II… etc. Niche games all of them.
I just checked the games on ProtonDB. Two games are Platinum are one is silver/gold. Essentially very less tinkering.
Steam Deck compatibility is usually very conservative so even though it says incompatible, it will probably work. Nowadays, I just check if the game has some weird DRM or anticheat, otherwise it just works.
Shows one platinum, one gold, and one silver on my end? Catherine is notorious for being difficult to run on Linux, even the comments on ProtonDB say so… IDK if I can consider that very little tinkering.
Plus, that doesn't include docked performance… I need stable 60FPS docked for fighting games.
Like, I see your point that it's almost there, but going full tilt into gaming on Linux RN still feels like a risky investment for both my time and money when my $400 Windows laptop runs everything OOTB.
I made the jump two years ago. I started with a 512GB SATA SSD with Windows and then my main drive on Linux.
There aren’t any games I play regularly that don’t “just work” on Linux, but I also get that can depend on the person. I hope you can get there one day.
I am dual booting Artix and Win 11, and solely gamed on Linux for 2 years before getting into a bunch of games that don't run there, which eventually pushed me to dual boot Win 11.
I'd rather not touch Windows at all though and just hate it any time I have to use it for any reason other than gaming. The flip side is I hated gaming on Linux when I had to use it to play incompatible games.
I'll most likely just wait until my favorite games run on there and move for good. Maybe go for a Steam Deck then too. But RN attempting to go back to gaming on Linux feels like a potential time/money sink for non optimal results, which doesn't make sense when I already have a working setup.
It’s always interesting seeing the different experiences people have. I have way less problems on Linux with games than I do on Windows. Mostly because every time I would boot into Windows, I’d have to spend 15-20 minutes on a good day installing patches for games and Windows Updates.
Hyped about the devices we’re going to see over the next year or so. Should be just in time to replace my first release Steam Deck as a noticeable upgrade.
I just hope that there’s enough movement in the market to not just push more developers to support Linux as a platform, but to disincentivise them from punishing players through lack of anti-cheat / incompatible DRM.
Also, low-key hyped for the (hopefully) eventual Steam Deck 2 once the market has re-aligned to a ‘new normal’ and Valve can once again push the envelope further!
I know the whole “Year of Linux” is a worn-out meme by now; but things are a joke, until their not - best case in point would be AMD CPUs pre-Ryzen compared to now.
Steam Deck sales may not compare favourably to Switch / Console sales - it’s hard to say as Valve are privately owned and under no obligation to publish numbers. But all of a sudden, we can add a not insignificant portion of Windows handheld users to the mix (not 100%, but not 0% either).
Microsoft clearly sees this as an emerging risk, which is why they’re partnering to create an Xbox-branded handheld.
In terms of online representation - it’s also a case of chicken and egg. Online games don’t support Linux due to anti-cheat implementations, so online gamers don’t use Linux. Plenty of single-player offline experiences exist for us!
Agree with all that. “The year of Linux” will be built up to incrementally; and the fact that gaming is so good on Linux pushes that a long way.
The Steam Deck is what pushed me to change to full-time PC Linux myself. Having hardware with pre-installed Linux that works flawlessly has been great.
I only got my deck last year, so it think I can hold off until the Deckard. Kind of okay paying 3 times as much for VR to not have it tied to Meta/Zuck.
Had my deck preordered and am still using it regularly. I’m really happy with it and just recommended the oled to a friend. Just out of curiosity: why would you want to upgrade it already?
I wouldn’t upgrade it now. Knowing me, I’ll probably end up waiting till 2027 and buy a secondhand device from 2026.
I mostly play indie 2D games, so games I want still work fine. The revised Deck has a bunch of improvements I would have liked (OLED, WiFi 6, etc). If there are enough improvements in usability (screen, WiFi, size, battery, hardware power), then I’ll upgrade and give the old device to my kids (who currently use it for more than 75% of the time anyway).
My understanding is it’s mostly just the advantage of not having windows running hogging resources, so it should be a bigger gain for CPU bound games.
**Edit ** There can be performance gains from using vulkan over DirectX too, so there probably are GPU gains as well. It will depend on the game though
Yeah you’re right, I had mostly been looking at the difference between the steam deck and legion Go S on that chart and barely even noticed the difference between windows on the legion Go S there.
Windows uses a lot of power just existing, so you can’t get any of the windows handhelds down to a low power consumption. I remember when the Rig Ally first came out, the verge tested it using 5-8w of power on the steam deck, and using 16-22w of power on the Ally. Some of that is the hardware (the Deck has a really power efficient chip for low power games), but a lot of it is windows.
It just indicates that Dead Cells itself isn’t very demanding, so the power draw in that game converges against idle draw where the issues are most apparent
Do we know if it’s entirely coming from SteamOS? Iirc the advantages it had over Windows on the Steam Deck were not even anywhere remotely this pronounced.
Who would have predicted, a decade ago, that the path to the actual year of the linux desktop would be taken first through the linux handheld gaming PC?
… Also LoL at SpiderMan 2, the only one that does a single frame worse, which basically at this point is just a solid indicator that game is still unoptimized as all hell.
Old man Gabe has been playing the long game, for all these years.
Ex-MSFT employee on a mission to apparently save us all from MSFT this whole time hahaha
It’s not like all the alternatives to Linux aren’t that good. Mac is a walled garden and Windows keeps introducing AI slop feature after AI slop feature that actually publishes your personal information
Every time I look at Macs I just can’t get over how ridiculous they are in terms of pricing. Combined with the inability to upgrade after the fact. Buying one would just doom me to buying another a few years down the line, much better to just never get stuck in the ecosystem in the first place.
Without context that graph isn’t brilliant because it depends on the hardware of the PC. Pretty much every game I run will be better on the steam deck than my PC because my PC is terrible.
This screenshot is also slightly misleading since the color scheme suggests that 5 out of 5 games run better on SteamOS then on Windows. But if you check the numbers it is only 4 out of 5 games.
MS-DOS games are pretty much what GOG built their business on, they still sell quite well. 50’s music is still listened by many (over 57 million views on that one song alone), and often used in movies, though that’s a bit of an odd comparison, almost as if old things aren’t worth keeping around. I mean, people still listen to classical music that’s hundreds of years old at this point, read ancient stories, and look at art from artists long dead. I consider games to be an art form like any other, and worth preserving.
An MMO i played from 1999-2007 shut down in I think 2017. I still remember the landscapes and landmarks and it is really strange knowing the shared experiences in those places are just flat gone. Inscribed items with messages to other players: deleted.
I have emulated the game world but only fragments were saved by collective efforts in the community before shutdown. Regardless there’s simply no people or things to interact with so it feels even more soullessly dead and empty.
Its a depressing perspective sure, but it mirrors real life pretty closely. Nothing lasts forever, buildings change, towns die out. Still a good idea to take some pictures or videos in either case.
I still love Lord of the Rings Online. It still has enough people to feel alive, to the point where they even upgraded their servers recently, and still keeps that old school feel. You can even earn LOTRO points through hunting monsters and quests, so if you put the work in you don’t even need to buy anything.
Do I miss the days before MTX? Yeah, but I feel like they are fairly less greedy about it than other games. Fairly. There’s still the VIP subscription while double-dipping into MTX that rubs me the wrong way a bit, but they still actively try to listen to the players. I’ll be sad when its gone…
Its mostly much older generations that play, though, but that really cuts down on a lot of the toxicity. I’ve had so many polite conversations in world chat with programmers and sysadmins offering advice. One of the most helpful players I met was a 72 year old vietnam veteran. He helped me get started and gave me a ton of gear just for having a nice talk with him.
I love lotro. I played it for 10 years. From release, until mordor.
I was madly inlove with lotro. It was a beautiful game. the only MMO where you actually read lore and quest text and anything else, because of how immersive it was all… and the game was perfect (before mordor). Casual, relaxing, but challenging in all the right places.
and the community was just absolutely amazing. Kind, considerate, helpful, generous. Like you said, i think the average age of lotro players was over 40… Until there was there was some issue with WoW that caused a lot of WoW players to immigrate to lotro… Then chat got less friendly, and more obnoxious, and the community got less kind, and less helpful… cause all the kind helpful people got burned by the jackholes being jackholes… Still a pleasant community overall, but no where near what it was before that WoWpocalypse.
My love and faith in the game changed with Mordor, though… Mordor broke me, It was just so pointlessly difficulty spiked on even the landscape mobs were slaughtering raid-ready players, that most of my kin, myself included, ended up just quitting the game. A few people eventually got the gang back together again for southern mirkwood, but that mordor level of difficulty was still there. No one in the kin, except for the hunters and the champions, seemed able to even 1v1 the landscape mobs. that also reflected group content… no one wanted anything but healers and hunters. was the same with mordor, but even worse with southern mirkwood. Mobs were so dumbly overpowered that only the lotro character equivalent of tactical nukes were wanted in groups… I, sadly, was not a tactical nuke class.
It really breaks my heart. I loved that game. I made great real life friends in that game… I met my Ex in that game (though in retrospect that probably shouldnt be viewed as part of the happy memories lol), Spent so many evenings bullshitting in voice chat while we did instances and group content, or just ground out old content for deeds. Was such a magical fucking experience, that I’ll probably never experience again for the rest of my life. The pre-mordor game was absolute perfection. Especially with the revamps to some less ideal/polished game areas like Moria.
And killed, to me, because devs listened to a vocal minority that wanted moar harderer.
I absolutely love LOTRO, too. I understand what you mean. The endgame content is pretty advanced, but I had this conversation with someone on Reddit years ago.
It doesn’t have to be hard. There is so much content in LOTRO to last you years of playing new classes and enjoying the world. Throw out all of your max level up items, they’re going to ruin the game for you. Just go out adventuring. I’ve had a good time during anniversary helping people through old dungeons (I hate you, Saruman).
The endgame is hard, because half the community beats endgame and complains that there’s no content, and half the community just plays casually. They don’t really have the power to keep pushing out quantity in content, so they have to make ridiculously hard and rewarding content to make up for it. It’s really a lose-lose either way, and they chose to keep the community that has been faithful for years over trying to pull in new players.
It sucks, I agree, but I think I would have made the same choice. I still love playing and wandering around; leveling new classes, and you can now get new titles for playing new difficulty modes they made. You can change the world difficulty starting at level 10, I believe.
Respectfully, I have to disagree with some of what you said… I don’t mind end game being a challenge, or even difficult.
Because the end game has always been in instances and raids. I don’t mind raids being challenging. I dont mind 3/6mans being challenging. Cause they are content you can typically choose to do or not, you need a group to do them, and they have the tier system that lets you select how difficult you actually want it.
Thats a good, healthy system to introducing challenge to the system.
And that meshed very well with the otherwise relaxed/chill nature of lotro. Because before mordor, Turbine/SSG/Whatever they are now, did a fairly admirable job at balancing and spacing out the challenging aspects amongst the fun and relaxing stuff to keep playability and fun high, while keeping a sense of satisfaction by overcoming the challenging bits.
Landscape wasnt a cake walk, unless you were ridiculously overeveled, but it wasn’t a torture session either. Any class could get through their landscape quests with an acceptable amount of challenge.
But then Mordor came in, and you couldn’t solo landscape unless you were one of the chosen classes, with Hunter being the king of them, because their DPS was insane, and they were range, so they could power down anything without taking damage. A poorly equipped hunter was solo survivable, when a very well equipped not-hunter could barely survive, if survive at all.
Mordor landscape wasn’t fun, it wasn’t a challenge. it was just naked brutality for brutality sake. They listened to a vocal minority that hadn’t played the game for long, comparatively, and wanted to turn lotro into a souls-like difficulty game, at the expense of all the people who had made lotro their evening stable for a decade+. and they lost players because of it. It really changed lotro from a fun way to spend an evening, to a way to ruin your evening because you just want to do these handful of landscape quests without having to deal with generic orc 37 that’s as strong as a 3/6 man miniboss (slight hyperbole).
I dont know if they’ve re-balanced the areas since then, or introduced mechanics to take the edge off, or what. I hope they did. I hope they’ve brought the fun and play-ability back so new players don’t hit the same wall that destroyed a generation of players, but no matter what changes they may or may not have made… ultimately, I just cant see myself ever mustering desire to play lotro again… and that saddens me as much as the state of the game that made me quit to begin with.
I don’t want to even think of how many thousands of hours i poured into lotro over a decade of almost nightly play. Thats too terrifying a number to ever think about, lol.
Ohhhh, no no. The raids and dungeons are challenging and ridiculously hard. I get what you’re saying now. It hasn’t been like that since I started up again, which was right when Gundabad released. It’s very easy to solo, and now there’s an NPC that lets you change world difficulty if you want to opt for it, making it so that the hardcore players and the casual players both get what they want.
I hear you. I haven’t touched it in a while because I will literally lose months of my life to it. Its harder for me because its one of my gf’s favorite games and when she plays I can’t help but play.
Technically 100% do, games that require the Internet require the Internet, which means by design you’re relying on someone else hosting servers which means it may not be available, 50, 100, or even more years into the future. That’s not the case with single-player/offline-available games.
As the graph breaks down, some games are patched by companies to allow them to function offline or to enable self-hosted servers. Mostly its fan efforts to reverse engineer the server code, though.
The point of the stop killing games campaign is to legislate by law that going forward, developers/publishers would have to account for a way to allow the player to host a server or patch the game to run offline when they become unprofitable and are shut down.
That’s why the first thing I do when I buy a new game is to turn off the internet and boot the game. If it doesn’t boot or work offline, I refund it. And I just don’t buy games that have Denuvo.
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