I’ve got some points about this one.
- they pitch a “deck that could actually play Fortnite” - game from a company who’s CEO actively hates linux for whatever reason (maybe it kicked his dog, I dunno)
- they talk how games bought on stores other than Steam will be “first-class citizens” which… you can already do on Steam Deck
- they promote being free of hackers/cheaters because of immutable file system… something Steam Deck also has (though they do mention some additional digital signatures)
- they want to be not only on handhelds but everywhere (laptops, tablets, phones, TV, cars…) - pretty ambitious for a company that didn’t deliver anything yet
- it’ll be running on an ARM processor - we’ll see how this works out (has anyone tried making a handheld like this?)
- already mentioned no desktop mode - why is this mentioned as a positive exactly?
- they want help from linux power users (feature requests, contribute code) but they don’t know how open-source they want to be
- they stole Witcher 3 video from some dude on YouTube
I’d like to think these are just screw ups/growing pains but nothing I’ve seen so far gives me any good vibes about it. We definitely need more choice and competition - this however does not look like an honest attempt at that. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Edit: Ah, how could I forget! Kirt McMaster, CEO of Playtron and the man responsible for killing CyanogenMod. Sounds great…
SteamOS isn’t immutable, per se, but since each update is basically a new image and you have to enable sudoing capabilities intentionally, it is basically immutable.
Also, Bazzite exists and is actually immutable, and you don’t lose access to any of the core features of SteamOS (like desktop mode). Dunno who their target audience will be, but it’s certainly not power users.
As far as the arm processor goes, there are a ton of Android handhelds on the market. Obviously an android gaming handheld though is limited compared to something like the steam deck, but ARM processors are a lot more power efficient than x86 processors which is great for handhelds.
There are projects like box86 that are trying to get traditional PC games running on Linux ARM hardware, I’m guessing they’ll be the core of what Playtron is working around.
If Playtron contributes to that project, it could actually be really good for the future of Linux. That said I’m worried that nothing will actually come from this project, or that they won’t upstream their improvements. I suspect the future of PC’s will be ARM or RISC, so any projects that improve ARM backwards compatibility with x86 will be good for the future.
they pitch a “deck that could actually play Fortnite” - game from a company who’s CEO actively hates linux for whatever reason (maybe it kicked his dog, I dunno)
Nah you see, they just don’t have enough programmers. Poor, poor small, 4000+ employee Epic :(((
“Why is Fortnite still not playable on Steam Deck?
If we only had a few more programmers. It’s the Linux problem. I love the Steam Deck hardware. Valve has done an amazing job there; I wish they would get to tens of millions of users, at which point it would actually make sense to support it.”
-Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic.Since when are non-Steam games first class citizens on steam os? You have to enter desktop mode to launch them.
Most of your complaints seem very nitpicky tbh. Valve needs competition badly and I’m glad to see another company entering the Linux gaming space.
You don’t have to enter desktop mode to launch them. You have to enter desktop mode to install them and add them as a non-steam game to your steam library so that they’ll show up in handheld mode.
As another user already mentioned, you only need desktop mode to install/add them as non-steam game.
Other that that yeah, it IS nitpicky and I agree Valve needs competition. It’s just… if your pitch starts with misrepresenting said competition (“Steam Deck is locked to Valveverse”), promising improbable (“Fortnite on linux” when we know the Tim Sweeney hates it and already said supporting linux would be too much work), stealing content to show a proof of concept (Witcher 3 video) and have someone like McCaster as one of the members just doesn’t instill confidence in me.
I really hope I’m being too cautious and cynical about this but it’s on them to ease those worries, not on me to give them the benefit of the doubt.
If anyone is interested in a similar project check out open-game-pad-ui. It features a plug system for stores. Right now there is only steam and flatpak but eventually there could be other stores. It’s really not ready to be daily drive but it is functional.
Right now I just open HGL and hit download and it automatically adds it to Steam. How is this easier?
