I have a Steam Deck and I love it. I got the 256gb LCD version back in August 2022. The killer feature for me is portability. I find myself playing more games because I can lay on the couch or take it with me on trips. No longer stuck in front of the computer. The other awesome thing is the sleep functionality. You can hit the power button at any time and the deck will pause your game and go to sleep. Great for getting a few minutes in while waiting on the bus or while the kids are distracted etc.

The KDE desktop mode is fine. I don’t really see people using it as a replacement for a typical PC/Laptop but the option is there. I use the desktop mode to install additional software and that’s about it although I do nerd stunts occasionally like using the steam deck to control other equipment. It’s useable with the touchpads but I use a bluetooth keyboard and trackpad when I do it.

I’ve thought about getting one so i can play games when I’m too depressed to get out of bed. That would be my primary draw and use case. Fortunately I don’t need that rn!

I got it to mainly support linux development but its also just very good as a console. It feels more purposefully designed than the handhelds with windows slapped on them. I hate windows normally i don’t want to deal with it on a handheld.

So far I think its really opening people up to linux. My brother seems to have an easy enough time using it and he’s not very tech savy

It’s a Linux handheld with software support and updates and it seems like it’ll have it for a good while, being immutable is good for not fucking it (as long as you’re cool with those limits) and the hardware specs are midlevel gaming PC in a decent (but big) form factor. You can run anything that’ll run on a laptop/desktop of that spec. Seems like a pretty good device to give to a kid if you’re familiar with Linux and can lock it down.

I got the top-of-the-line Steam Deck at launch, absolutely no regerts about missing the OLED. Hate the gyro controls so turned those off (though maybe Super Monkey Ball would be fun with that? IDK) and added thumbstick caps and another 1TB of storage. The case is excellent, traveled with it internationally and worked great for pirating movies/TV and gaming (Vampire Survivors is an excellent time waster, BTW)

Desktop mode is good. I don’t really use it as a desktop per se but it’s good when you need to set up displays, networking, VPNs, etc. Sure, you can use it like that, but I find the fact that it doesn’t “remember” (i.e. list the last time you connected) connections like a regular, mutable Linux install would is kinda irritating (this is mostly aesthetic in my case because I only use a few connection, but if you regularly connect to similarly-named networks, I can imagine it’s a hassle).

Piracy/Media consumption on the Steam Deck is first-class because it’s all the power you need for most emulators and streaming through browsers is totally fine (but is locked at like 720 for most services). Haven’t gone beyond Super Nintendo and Genesis but it handles Mode 7 graphics just fine. Don’t have Plex but I think it’d work great w/ it

I feel like this will definitely help Linux adoption if kids really go for these over say a Switch - well cared for units will probably be good (and repairable) for a long while.

As you’re probably already aware, it’s a computer! Not like your phone is a computer, or another game console is a computer, you can actually do whatever you want with it, even install windows (wouldn’t recommend it but you can), or android, or another distro, without having to do any inane rituals to unlock this or jailbreak that. There are already several linux distros made for steam deck. It even lets me mount my NFS share without any hassle. As a mobile device it’s very friendly, if a bit bulky. With the trackpad you can actually use a desktop-oriented UI or mouse-and-keyboard game as easily as you would on a laptop.

As for steam OS, even in the gaming mode it doesn’t feel limiting. You can run multiple games/programs and switch between them. You can use your usual music player program in the background while playing a game, or firefox to look things up. There are community controller layouts that you can download easily. Even minecraft java had some very sane options that make playing it without a mouse and keyboard not a terrible experience. With emudeck you can play switch games like they’re native and they even show up in your steam library.

In the “desktop mode” it’s just KDE. Nothing is imposed on you. It isn’t corporate or opinionated, and with a dock it’s literally just a regular computer, but you can take whatever you’re doing with you! Being immutable it forces you to use flatpaks which I’m not a huge fan of but they’re alright. They haven’t been enough of a problem for me to install something else. The touchpad keyboard thing is actually really efficient.

I think it helps linux adoption quite a lot. It isn’t trying to “fix” linux or impose their interests on it like other companies are doing, it just builds on top of it. What is the point of getting everyone on a linux which has become an “ecosystem”, where even if your software freedoms are on the face respected, any modifications which are out of the “ordinary” cause opinionated software which expects other programs to behave in a certain way to stop working? All that to say, as of now valve is not doing this.

I don’t have any opinions about Valve outside of this. I don’t even play many video games, I just bought it to use as a neat computer!