The steam recovery media let’s you reinstall just the OS while preserving user files.

As long as you haven’t done anything too dramatic like converting your file system to BTRFS

Edit: This will downgrade you to a much older version of SteamOS though, from which you would then have to update back to current. This can be a problem because some early issues (like the OLED deck not being able to connect to wifi 6E networks) can make it frustrating to update.

Presumably the hand grips on the deck keep enough of a gap under the deck to keep this from being an issue.

I have both the Spigen case and the JSAUX modcase, and both will fit inside the carrying case. The modcase one has to have the front cover and kickstand removed to fit however.

That said, I usually only use the modcase with front cover now instead of the original carrying case.

You should definitely use OpenMW instead of vanilla, it’s not a mod but is instead a full engine rewrite. It runs natively on linux, has better performance, and a whole lot of other benefits:

• Native support for macOS, Linux, and Windows
• Improved physics and AI
• Distant terrain
• Save/Load dialogs organized by character
• Quality of life UI improvements, such as being able to search for spells
• Multiple quicksaves
• World map adjusts automatically to fit new landmass from mods such as Tamriel Rebuilt
• Support for up to 2147483646 loaded mods (up from 255 in the original Morrowind engine)
• Since it was made from scratch, virtually no engine bugs from the original Morrowind
• And much more

You can install it from the Discover store in desktop mode and then add it to steam, or alternatively you can use a tool like Protonup-qt (also in the discover store) to install Luxtorpeda, which is a tool for automatically launching supported games with rewritten engines. Once Luxtorpeda is installed you can open Morrowind steam properties in game mode, and check the “force specific compatibility tool” box and select to run the game with Luxtorpeda. After that it will automatically run the game through the OpenMW engine instead.

You’ll need to set a password for Cryoutilites I think. In desktop mode you can open konsole and run the command passwd, then enter your password twice. After that you can just run the Cryoutilites installer.

I haven’t played world, so unfortunately I can’t make a comparison. There’s definitely grinding to do though, hopefully someone who has played both can comment about it.

I’ve been playing a whole lot of Monster Hunter Rise. It runs really good, great performance and battery life (which makes sense considering it was originally a switch game). It’s my first real Monster Hunter game and I’m having a great time with it.

Only issues I’ve encountered: switching between docked and handheld play causes a minor fps drop until I restart the game. The game also has a utterly bizarre bug where if you’re playing with a controller designated as the 2nd player controller, any monster roar will drop the fps to 0 for like a minute. Super bizarre, no idea what kind of spaghetti code could cause that.

Edit: for anyone interested, Fanatical has a build your own monster hunter bundle right now that’s an incredibly good deal. Can get MH Rise + it’s big Sunbreak expansion for $11, previous best deal I had seen was $18 for the two. They also have MH World and a lot of other past MH games.

That’s unfortunate, full system freezes like that are sometimes because you ran out of ram/VRAM. If that was what happened, the SteamOS Beta uses zram which should prevent this once the change makes it to stable. In the meantime you could use something like Cryoutilites to increase your swap file size, which should also prevent crashes like that.

Valve pushed a beta client update this morning that among other things fixed a login issue:

Fixed a rare bug that could cause the login page to continuously fail with “error 11” until the client was restarted.

So based on that maybe try restarting the client if you’re already having trouble. Could be completely unrelated issue though.

That actually came up in some of the early ROG Ally reviews. Some reviewers found that old steam games wouldn’t run on it, but they would run on the steam deck.

The top seller chart only covers around 2 weeks of time if I recall right, and the Steam Deck has been near the top of it for years now.

You’re good, no shame in asking questions.

Go to ProtonDB and link your steam account.

Huh, that’s super weird. I never realized the Steam flatpak wasn’t official.

That was just the Yuzu/Citra team. Main reason they got in trouble (from what I understand) is that they were making money off of it, specifically people had to subscribe to their patreon to get Tears of the Kingdom optimized builds, when the only copy of TotK available was an illegal pre-release one.

There were some more things like messages they sent that were incriminating, but that was the biggest thing afaik.

Found it, see this reddit post here.

it’s basically setting up a virtual menu where button 1 is: A -> wait 60ms S -> wait 60ms S -> wait 60ms SPACE etc etc.

Here’s a link straight to the controller config: steam://controllerconfig/1966720/3142322044 You can easily open this by sending this link in a steam message, and then clicking on the link from inside game mode.

Edit: oops, replied to the wrong comment.

I think there’s a way around that, I know there’s a Lethal Company input scheme that will type whole computer commands for you. I need to dig that control scheme up and see how he does it.

This is just my personal settings I’ve found that work well for playing on a TV, but I usually cap my fps at 30, limit my external display resolution to 1920x1080 (you can set this for all games in SteamOS settings) and enable FSR. Goal is to still run the games at 1280x720, but use the FSR to upscale to 1920x1080.

I cap the external resolution because there is a noticable performance hit when using FSR or similar tech to upscale to 4k.

I love mine, but if you’re not a gamer it probably won’t be a good device for you.

The biggest advantages of the Deck (in my opinion) are it’s portability, and the ability to suspend mid game. I used to play games primarily on my computer, but as a father I had to mostly drop playing games. I can’t afford to lock myself away from my wife/kids for long periods of time, and there are frequently interruptions (kids crying, someone’s hungry, wife needs help, etc) that makes it hard to know how long I have to play before I need to be able to stop playing. Due to this, I had stopped playing PC games almost completely. I still played phone and Nintendo Switch games some, but these both have downsides (most phone games suck and the controls limit what games are viable, nintendo switch games are overpriced and I have to compete with the kids for it).

The steam deck solved my game issues, and really let me play games freely again. I can play for short bursts, and if I need to stop I can just suspend and pick up in the same place later. It’s been a great device for me, but I was someone who wanted to be playing games and lacked time/freedom to do it.

In comparison though, when I upgraded to an OLED deck I sold my LCD deck, and I know that the person I sold it to hasn’t gotten very much use out of it. He’s generally less into games than I am, and when he wants to play he can play on his PC without issues. He didn’t have much of a use-case for the Steam Deck outside of trips.

So in summary, the deck is a fantastic piece of hardware, but it’s really dependent on what you want out of a device that will determine if it’s something that will be good for you personally.