Fubarberry @ Fubarberry @sopuli.xyz

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While Bazzite is gaming focused, it will still be a great non-gaming distro. The main things gaming distros do is include some optimizations, prioritize faster software updates, bundle in some programs like Steam, and usually try to be more new user friendly. There's also Fedora Silverblue, which is like the parent of Bazzite. It's more developer focused though, and may not be as new user friendly as Bazzite.

But as others have said, your biggest request is having the same desktop environment as SteamOS, which is the KDE desktop. This is available on nearly every Linux distro, so you can get that experience with any of them. KDE even has it's own official distro in the form of KDE Neon, which could honestly be a good choice for you if that's your main requirement. It's based on Ubuntu, which makes it easy to find help if you have an issue.

The biggest thing left to understand is that SteamOS and Bazzite are immutable distros, which means the system files are locked down. This makes those systems hard to break, and very reliable. However it can make installing some kinds of software harder. More tradition desktops like KDE Neon/Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora(non-silverblue) are not immutable. They will give your more options for installing software/etc, but there's a higher chance of breaking something if you start messing with system files.

If immutable sounds good, I'd recommend going with Bazzite still. If you want more freedom to customize your system and install software from outside of the discover store, I'd recommend KDE Neon.

It's a great one, although it can definitely be a slow burn at first.

A very good point.

Honestly depends on what kind of games you like.

Many Metroid games are classics and still great to play. For the 3D Metroids, you can install Primehack and play Metroid Prime Trilogy for an amazing experience. For the classic style 2D metroids, I'd recommend a play order of Zero Mission (GBA), Samus Returns (3DS), Super Metroid (SNES), and Metroid Fusion (GBA).

Many older mario games are great, both 2D and 3D. Mario 64 has some great recompiled versions, and even stuff like sm64coopdx that lets you play online coop. Mario Sunshine (GCN) is fun too, and both Mario Galaxy (Wii) games are fantastic. Lots of good Zelda games too, such as Wind Waker (GCN/WiiU). Until recently I would have highly recommended Xenoblade X (WiiU), but it just got a remastered and expanded version on switch.

Fanatical has it 27% off right now, and they're a trustworthy store. Reviews are pretty poor for Civ7 last I checked though, so it might be better to wait for more patches and bigger discounts.

A lot of good games in Steam's deep discount section, but unfortunately I already own most of them. Picked up Furi for $2, but haven't grabbed anything else from Steam yet. If you don't have them, some deep discount games I'd recommend are Besiege, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Borderlands 3, Black Mesa, and Steins;Gate.

I also picked up Neon White from Fanatical, been waiting a long time for the price on it to drop below $10.

Steam Summer sale just started, so steam servers are getting hammered.

Time will tell, there's progress towards proper open source drivers for Nvidia now, but I don't know how long that will take to catch up.

The fundamental issue with kernel anticheat is you're giving full control and unlimited monitoring of your computer to a company, and trusting them to not abuse that access. Being able to see some processes it runs isn't any kind of guarantee that those processes aren't doing something undesirable, and doesn't guarantee that there aren't other processes doing things secretly.

EAC should be one of the better ones, but it's still a question of:

1. Do you trust Epic Games to act in your best interest?
2. Do you trust Epic Games to dispose of your personal info and not sell it or use it? (remember, it's not a question of whether your info is being collected, anticheat programs are intended to gather a lot of info on everything you do on your PC so it can be confirmed if you're cheating. So you are being spied on, it's just a question of whether they delete the data after harvesting it or decide to sell/use the data already on their servers that you consented to giving them when you accepted the game's ToS).
3. Do you think that Tencent's partial ownership of Epic impacts either of the above questions?
4. Do you think that NSA and other government agencies are going to use the anticheat to spy on your computer, either through legal requirement or through undisclosed backdoors?

The next gen steam deck likely isn't coming out for quite awhile still, so it's probably not worth waiting for next gen.

Performance wise, the Steam Deck does struggle to run new AAA games if they're poorly optimized, use UE5, or have mandatory ray tracing for lighting. It's still possible to play most of these games, but it will depend on your tolerance for graphics quality or your willingness to install performance mods. There's also no shortage of good games to play, slightly older AAA games generally work flawlessly and nearly all AA/indie games run great. I have enough good games in my library where I could never buy another game and always have something good to play.

The switch 2 in portable mode has nearly identical power to the Steam Deck, so if it sells anywhere close to Switch 1 I think we'll see a lot of games target being able to run on it. The switch 1 was far enough behind modern platforms to not be worth optimizing for, for most AAA games/devs. But the switch 2 and steam deck generally have enough power to run new games at an almost acceptable level, and that makes optimization a much more appealing target.

Also worth considering is local streaming. If you have a decent PC/PS5 you can stream games to the deck. It can be a good compromise for the games that don't run great natively.

I'm pretty sure it's mandatory that any Chinese owned company has to have backdoors and provide access to the government. I've read interviews where people talked about running companies in China, and they would talk about how government employees would come and install hardware in all their server rooms, and they couldn't touch any of it or do anything about it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that most kernel anti-cheat are developed/used by companies that are at least partially Chinese owned.

The anti-cheat programs provide uninstall options, but you're basically just assuming they actually uninstalled and didn't leave anything behind. You don't have any control over whether it actually fully removes itself or not, it's very difficult to verify that nothing was left behind, and some have been caught leaving software behind or reinstalling themselves silently later.

Apex Legends also has kernel anti-cheat, so my point still stands. Also Apex legends famously had people's machines get hacked through it's anti-cheat during a tournament.

With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.

Yes, from what I've been told that actually does improve performance in many games.

Kernel anticheat is seriously bad, and shouldn't be allowed on any computer. Kernel anticheat is basically installing full access backdoors to your computer that you have no control over. Attackers and malicious devs have used kernel anticheat to install ransomware, spyware, crypto miners, and more. They also frequently cause increased system instability and crashes.

Kernel anticheat typically runs from the moment your PC is turned on, and it's job is literally to spy on you to make sure you're not cheating. Among other things, many take constant screenshots of your PC to see what you're running. In this day and age where every company is spying on your and selling your data, installing kernel anticheat is literally sharing 100% of what you do on your PC with a company (usually chinese company) and trusting them to not take advantage of your data.

Furthermore once you've installed kernel level anticheat, there's no way for users to reliably remove it. Most anticheats will reinstall themselves if removed, and it's basically assumed that once you've installed one, your system is permanently compromised. They can create backdoors on the PC to allow reinstalling themselves in the future, or even install other software without your knowledge. There are concerns about them batching your bios, so that even a full harddrive wipe won't be able to remove their backdoors.

Finally, the whole point of kernel anticheat (to players) is to prevent cheaters, but that doesn't even work. Games like valorant are filled with cheaters despite using kernel anticheat. It's just led to a bunch of kernel level cheat software that's still able to hide from anticheat. So players are giving up their PC security/etc for basically no real gain.

The compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance.

The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there's less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there's also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that's usually thanks to vulkan.

Have you tried trinity fusion in desktop mode to see if it has more resolution options there? Also worth cycling through fullscreen/borderless/etc and seeing if any of those give more resolution options.

Dues Ex Human Revolution is pretty old, I don't think it has controller support. Have you tried a control scheme that uses inputs like wasd and mouse?

That's super cool, and the fact that it splits in two means it will still be a uniquely cool option once we get an actual steam controller 2.

I don't have experience with that game specifically, but generally most games are easier to run through steam than through a 3rd party store. You often have to manually identify missing .dll files and install them through winetricks/protontricks to get games to work. The EA launcher in general doesn't play nice with Steam Deck, so I don't know if you'll be able to get it working.

It's worth noting that the steam version of Battlefront 2 didn't work well either for a long time, due to the EA app. My understanding is it works now, but the game still has some general issues with crashes and stuff. Some recommendations people made are to run the game in windowed or borderless (not fullscreen), to let the game sit on the main menu for 30 seconds before trying to play anything, and to maybe try forcing proton 9 instead of proton 10 or experimental.

You have to be careful about that too, the code isn't written to be easily understood by casual reading.

For example, the code will describe your hot, neutral, and ground wires as "ungrounded, grounded, and grounding" wires. Applying rules meant for a "grounding" wire to a "grounded" wire can have serious issues.

The whole code is written like that, where it's really easy to get confused if you don't understand the exact terminology it uses.

As an electrician, it's difficult to give good electrical advice over the internet.

First of all, you don't know how capable someone actually is at doing work. There's both a knowledge and a technique requirement for quality work. Bad electrical work can easily cause house fires and death, if I tell someone online how to fix an issue, and they electrocute themselves or burn down their house, I'm partially responsible for that.

Second, it's hard to give good advice on how something should be done without seeing it in person. Small details that are hard to get from a description or image can change how stuff is required to be done, and the code is complicated and has lots of exceptions and different requirements. Also different areas have different code requirements, and different AHJ requirements, so fully accurate advice has to come from an electrician in your actual area.

Final thing I'll mention is that getting qualified as an electrician is hard. Getting a full electrical license where I live requires 8 years of experience (4 years being directly supervised, then 4 years of light supervision). You also have to pass a pretty difficult exam, electricians usually spend 6+ months studying hard and taking training classes for the exam, and then it still has an abysmal first attempt pass rate and normally takes many attempts to eventually pass. Ultimately after all of that (8 years, months of focused study and classes, multiple test attempts), 25-30% of people are never able to pass and get their full license.

With all that considered, I'm happy to give advice to other electricians online. If they're already certified I can have some confidence that they have the knowledge and skills to do a good job with any advice given. However trying to give actually good, responsible advice to someone who is uncertified and a complete unknown on terms of skill/knowledge/location with only a partial knowledge of their problems and setup, it's hard. It's much easier to recommend they just get a licensed electrician from their area to take a look at it.