00:00SPEAKEROkay, it's about to be a reunion of sorts for you.
00:03SPEAKEROoh, is this This Is My Life?
00:06SPEAKERWe're not quite there yet. You're looking around as if balloons and streamers are about to start
00:10SPEAKERfalling from the sea.
00:11SPEAKERI'm waiting for the surprise. Who is it?
00:13SPEAKERBut surprise, we have another podcast to do.
00:16SPEAKEROh, cool. I love podcasts.
00:17SPEAKERIt's about to be a bit of a tested reunion.
00:20SPEAKERYeah, we have my former tested co-founder Norman Chan and one of our earliest contributors,
00:29SPEAKERWes Fenlon, coming on this week.
00:31SPEAKERI just realized, I just realized that in the course of asking this question,
00:34SPEAKERI'm going to admit something.
00:36SPEAKERUh-oh.
00:36SPEAKERWhich is that I never listen to your old podcast.
00:39SPEAKERIt's okay. Nobody ever listens to anybody else's podcasts.
00:42SPEAKERIt's very true.
00:43SPEAKERI was going to ask, how did you start that podcast?
00:46SPEAKERWelcome to This Is Only a Test, the official podcast of tested.com.
00:52SPEAKERAnd then the music would play.
00:53SPEAKERIs that, is that actually it?
00:54SPEAKERThat's it, yeah.
00:55SPEAKERIs that, okay.
00:55SPEAKERYeah, the thought occurred to me as we were rolling into this.
00:58SPEAKERI wonder if his like very punctuated welcome is just a tested thing that he appropriated for this.
01:03SPEAKERNo, I did that for the, like the welcome is probably a me thing at this point.
01:06SPEAKERCause I did it for Maximum PC too.
01:08SPEAKERCause I, cause the Maximum PC podcast was welcome to the No BS podcast.
01:12SPEAKERThis is episode blah, blah, blah for da, blah, blah, Thursday, something or other.
01:16SPEAKERDid you say the No BS podcast?
01:18SPEAKERWell, the Maximum PC No BS was the, wait, no, it's Maximum PC Minimum BS is the tagline
01:25SPEAKERfor the magazine.
01:26SPEAKERMinimum?
01:26SPEAKERAnd I was like, that is a fucking bullshit tagline for years.
01:29SPEAKERI tried to get them to change it to be No BS.
01:32SPEAKERSo when we did the podcast, we just called it the No BS podcast.
01:35SPEAKEROkay.
01:36SPEAKERI feel like times have changed a bit since then.
01:39SPEAKERLook, it was 2005, man.
01:40SPEAKERIt was a, it was a different time.
01:42SPEAKERWhen I hear somebody say No BS now, I feel like that implies a certain, like there's,
01:46SPEAKERthere's some very suspicious, like you can't trust anybody else but me.
01:50SPEAKEREverybody else is lying to you kind of thing.
01:52SPEAKERI'm just saying, man, you can only trust me.
01:55SPEAKERI'm the, I'm the one that tells it to you straight here, buddy.
01:58SPEAKERYou got to wrap your headphones in tinfoil while you listen to this podcast so they can't,
02:02SPEAKERso they can't pick up your brainwaves, man.
02:04SPEAKERLook, man, if you go into West Virginia, there's the radio exclusion zone and that's where
02:09SPEAKERthe truth is, man.
02:11SPEAKERIt's where they keep them.
02:13SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
02:14SPEAKERThem?
02:15SPEAKERThem.
02:16SPEAKEROh, boy.
02:16SPEAKERArea 51 is just a red, red herring, a red flag, a false, a red herring, false flags
02:22SPEAKERwe don't talk about here.
02:23SPEAKERRight, it's a red herring, man.
02:25SPEAKERA false herring.
02:26SPEAKERThe aliens speak radio, man.
02:28SPEAKERThey can see the waves and they can't be where there's too much, too much.
02:31SPEAKERThat's why they take your cell phone away when you go to West Virginia.
02:33SPEAKERSounds too well practiced.
02:35SPEAKERI don't follow the money, man.
02:36SPEAKERThat's all I'm saying.
02:37SPEAKERStarting to think this is not an act.
02:39SPEAKERNo, it's, it's look, I look, I'm going to, I'm not going to lie.
02:42SPEAKERI always like, if you had asked me 20 years ago what my dream job would have been, not
02:47SPEAKERknowing what the future is now, I would have said, I would love to host a late night call
02:52SPEAKERin show that crazy people listen to and call in about aliens and UFOs and stuff.
02:57SPEAKERAll art bell coast to coast with art bell.
02:59SPEAKEROh yeah.
03:00SPEAKERI, I love, I unabashedly love art bell.
03:04SPEAKERLike that art bell show was fantastic in the nineties.
03:08SPEAKERAlso doing a show like that, the stakes could not be any lower, right?
03:10SPEAKERCause it does not matter what you say.
03:12SPEAKERI mean, look, we've seen the bad side that comes out of the spinoffs from that, that
03:18SPEAKERkind of behavior.
03:18SPEAKERSo yeah, probably less enthusiastic about it now.
03:21SPEAKERBut yeah, you know, Hey, maybe let's just stick to tech.
03:25SPEAKERTech's good tech.
03:26SPEAKERI like tech.
03:51SPEAKERWelcome to still entitled the Adam Savage project.
03:57SPEAKERI'm Will.
03:58SPEAKEROh wait, no, that's the wrong one.
03:59SPEAKERI'm not doing this.
04:02SPEAKERSay it.
04:03SPEAKERSay the name of the podcast.
04:06SPEAKERWelcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
04:08SPEAKERI'm Will.
04:08SPEAKERI am Brad.
04:09SPEAKERThank you for that.
04:10SPEAKERThat's staying in just so you know.
04:12SPEAKERI just realized that all of the intros are the same.
04:14SPEAKERI've been doing the same thing for like 15 years now.
04:17SPEAKERThat's exactly why I brought it up in the cold open.
04:19SPEAKERI figured that was the case and I needed to confirm and now I know I'm not special.
04:23SPEAKERI am just the latest.
04:24SPEAKEROh, the latest, latest in a long chain.
04:26SPEAKERWow.
04:27SPEAKERI'm just the latest in the succession of disposable co-hosts.
04:30SPEAKERI see how it is.
04:31SPEAKERThat is all.
04:32SPEAKERLook, all of the co-hosts have gone on to bigger and better things.
04:35SPEAKERSo actually, well, I mean, I guess that's a perfect segue because yeah, like we said
04:38SPEAKERat the top, Norm and Will, I mean, God, I've been doing too much podcasting today.
04:44SPEAKERLook, we both have red beards.
04:46SPEAKEROkay.
04:46SPEAKERYou both have red beards and your names both start with W.
04:49SPEAKERThat's true.
04:50SPEAKERNorm and Wes are here to talk about the Steam Deck because they've both had hands on with
04:55SPEAKERit for some time now.
04:56SPEAKERYeah.
04:57SPEAKERIf you are new to the tech pod and don't know our past lives, Brad and I worked with Norm.
05:03SPEAKERNorman Chan, who is one of the editors at Tested.com and is like the tech guy over there
05:09SPEAKERand is just a genuinely delightful human being on top of other things.
05:13SPEAKERAnd Wes Fenland of PC Gamer have both had access to the Steam Deck for about two weeks
05:18SPEAKERin case you don't know what the Steam Deck is.
05:22SPEAKERWhat are you doing listening to this podcast?
05:24SPEAKEROh, I'm sorry.
05:24SPEAKERWe're inclusive.
05:25SPEAKERWe want people to come here and learn.
05:27SPEAKERGod damn it, Brad.
05:28SPEAKERYou're right.
05:29SPEAKERI totally screwed that one up.
05:30SPEAKERWhat's the Steam Deck about?
05:32SPEAKERThe Steam Deck is a handheld console from Valve for playing your PC games in your hands.
05:38SPEAKERSo look, there's a reductive way to do this that I'm going to try not to do.
05:42SPEAKERWait, hang on.
05:43SPEAKERWhy don't you start with the reductive version and then expand with the much more intelligent
05:47SPEAKERand robust version?
05:48SPEAKERIt's like a Switch, but for PC games.
05:51SPEAKERYou know, it's not entirely not that.
05:53SPEAKERYeah.
05:53SPEAKERYou can plug it into a dock and make it come up on a TV or a monitor.
05:56SPEAKERYou can carry it around.
05:59SPEAKERYou can take it out on the subway.
06:00SPEAKERIf you have a real wide chair on the subway, it seems like maybe.
06:02SPEAKERI don't know.
06:03SPEAKERWell, you know, listen on for our conversation with those guys.
06:06SPEAKERThat may actually be difficult based on the size of that thing, but I get ahead of myself.
06:11SPEAKERWait, how do we know that?
06:12SPEAKERWe haven't heard the conversation yet, Brad.
06:15SPEAKERI mean, I'm just guessing.
06:17SPEAKERWe've worked with those guys so much.
06:18SPEAKERI really just feel like I'm very in tune with their opinions on tech.
06:22SPEAKERAnd I'm guessing that's exactly what they're going to say.
06:25SPEAKERBut yeah, it's like it is a full x86 handheld.
06:27SPEAKERIt's got a fairly robust AMD CPU and GPU in it to play your Steam games.
06:32SPEAKEREssentially a 720p screen.
06:34SPEAKERIt's got a touch screen.
06:37SPEAKERIt's got touch pads.
06:38SPEAKERIt's got sticks.
06:39SPEAKERIt's got buttons.
06:40SPEAKERIt's got a D-pad.
06:41SPEAKERIt's kind of got all of the things you need to play the video games, minus maybe a mouse
06:46SPEAKERand keyboard.
06:47SPEAKERIt has a gyroscope.
06:48SPEAKERIf you're a gyroscope aimer, there's a bunch of interesting hardware in there.
06:51SPEAKERIt's a shockingly powerful on paper PC, which we'll definitely talk about.
06:58SPEAKERAnd it's interesting because in the progression of hardware that Valve has made over the last
07:01SPEAKER10 years, they started with these little streaming boxes and some PCs that kind of went nowhere,
07:06SPEAKERwent onto the Steam controller, then made a bunch of VR hardware, which turns out pretty
07:12SPEAKERchallenging.
07:13SPEAKERAnd they made that at a pretty good scale, it seems like.
07:15SPEAKERAnd now they're doing something that is completely different.
07:18SPEAKERAnd for me, it's pretty exciting.
07:20SPEAKERLike I like handhelds and I like not having to fight for the TV.
07:24SPEAKERSo it's like two of my interests align in one giant wide Switch-like package.
07:29SPEAKER- It's a cool device for a bunch of reasons.
07:31SPEAKERYou know, the power they've packed into it, the kind of shockingly low price they're going
07:35SPEAKERto sell it at.
07:36SPEAKERWe talked to Wes and Norm about all that stuff, but for me, the crazy thing about it is that
07:40SPEAKERit's by far a piece of hardware Valve has made with the biggest mass appeal.
07:45SPEAKER- Yeah, that's probably right.
07:46SPEAKER- Look at the size of the Switch audience.
07:47SPEAKERSwitch has sold over a hundred million units at this point.
07:50SPEAKERPeople want cool, powerful video game handhelds.
07:54SPEAKERLike you said, everything else they've done, like the Steam controller is kind of a very
07:58SPEAKERstrange product.
07:59SPEAKERThe Index, for as much as it's a well-made VR headset...
08:02SPEAKER- Still a VR headset.
08:03SPEAKER- VR headsets, like some people don't want to hear this, but like VR headsets are still
08:08SPEAKERa somewhat niche market, let's say.
08:11SPEAKER- Nobody's shipped a hundred million VR headsets right now.
08:14SPEAKER- That's what I mean.
08:14SPEAKERIt's like everything else that Valve has made has been like this very, you know, kind of
08:17SPEAKERspecific use case for a very specific audience.
08:20SPEAKERBut like the Steam Deck seems like the thing they've made that could blow up.
08:23SPEAKER- Well, and then the other thing that's interesting to me personally as one of the
08:27SPEAKERproprietors behind the FOS pod, the free and open source software podcast, is it runs
08:33SPEAKERLinux and runs Proton to play Windows games on Linux.
08:37SPEAKER- Not just any Linux, it runs Arch Linux.
08:40SPEAKER- Yeah, which we will definitely get into.
08:42SPEAKERBut it's what I would describe as a pretty hardcore Linux use case for most people.
08:50SPEAKERAnd they're doing the Linux thing, which is they're making like essentially an embedded
08:53SPEAKERsystem that runs Linux in the background.
08:55SPEAKERAnd then they put their own stuff on top of, and you play your normal ass Windows games.
08:59SPEAKERPeople don't even have to cross compile for Linux or anything like that.
09:01SPEAKER- So it's a fascinating device.
09:03SPEAKERAnd we're about to get into a whole lot more detail about it, I assume, because we totally
09:07SPEAKERhaven't had this conversation yet.
09:08SPEAKER- Yeah, and Wes and Norm had both had it for about two weeks now, I think.
09:12SPEAKERSo we'll just jump into that conversation right now.
09:18SPEAKERSo Norm and Wes have both had the Steam Deck for what, a couple of weeks now?
09:21SPEAKER- Two whole weeks?
09:22SPEAKER- Yeah, two whole weeks.
09:24SPEAKER- Wait, hang on.
09:25SPEAKEROkay, he's holding it up.
09:26SPEAKERWes, can you just hold it up next to your head?
09:27SPEAKER- Oh, I know how big Norm's head is.
09:29SPEAKER- Dude, wow, that is big.
09:31SPEAKER- Finally, the Atari Lynx has been surpassed in this pantheon of giant handhelds.
09:36SPEAKER- I'll tell you when I know how long I've had it for.
09:40SPEAKERI've had it since those first three videos went out from Linus Tech Chips.
09:44SPEAKERThat's the day right before, the day I received it was the day after those videos came out.
09:48SPEAKER- So, okay, let's take turns.
09:52SPEAKERWes, what's your kind of, like, what was your first impression?
09:55SPEAKERHow are you feeling now after like two weeks with it?
09:58SPEAKER- My first impression, and I don't remember feeling exactly this way
10:02SPEAKERwhen Norm and I both actually went and tested it at Valve,
10:06SPEAKERand I probably felt like this and just forgot because it was a while ago,
10:10SPEAKERbut like, this thing is pretty heavy.
10:11SPEAKERAnd that is still kind of my end feeling of the device,
10:16SPEAKERis that it's heavy and it's big for a portable device.
10:20SPEAKERIt's not something that I would just casually, like, take on a commute on the train,
10:26SPEAKERor like take out when I'm like going to the bar or whatever.
10:29SPEAKERBut it is something that I would pack for a weekend trip, for a longer trip.
10:33SPEAKERAnd it is mostly the thing you're going to be playing on the couch,
10:36SPEAKEReither balanced on your knees or on a pillow, that's like my go-to method.
10:42SPEAKERBecause if you're just holding it up the way you would a Game Boy or something,
10:47SPEAKERlike, it gets pretty arm fatiguing after, I don't know, half an hour, an hour.
10:53SPEAKER- What's the hand comfort, Norm, compared to like a Switch?
10:57SPEAKERSo if you're playing Breath of the Wild with a Switch,
11:00SPEAKERmy hands were messed up at the end of a three-hour session.
11:02SPEAKERAnd this has little wings, right?
11:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I'd say much more comfortable than the Switch.
11:06SPEAKERI agree with Wes that it's heavy, although I would say
11:09SPEAKEReveryone I've shown it to has agreed with me.
11:11SPEAKERThe first impressions is that it's lighter than it looks,
11:15SPEAKERbecause you're kind of taken aback by the physical dimensions of it,
11:18SPEAKERespecially if you have a Switch or your primary game device is like a phone.
11:23SPEAKERI, to use like the Apple analogy, it's like an iPad Mini
11:26SPEAKERmore than it is an iPhone or a MacBook.
11:29SPEAKER- Except it weighs more than an iPad fat.
11:32SPEAKER- Oh, yes.
11:36SPEAKERBut to evenly distribute it, like the wings you said,
11:38SPEAKERso ergonomically it has grippy handles.
11:45SPEAKERThey shared some images of prototypes and how they got to this design,
11:49SPEAKERall their 3D prints and everything from like how far your thumb can,
11:56SPEAKERand where the muscles are, where the tension is as your thumb moves,
11:59SPEAKERbecause they're packing in thumb sticks on both sides, D-pad,
12:03SPEAKERyour ABXY and a touch pad and paddles, right?
12:07SPEAKERSo really the kitchen sink, I think they did an admirable job
12:12SPEAKERon the core functionality.
12:14SPEAKERMy gripes are with the touch pad, really.
12:17SPEAKER- Okay, before we get into the touch pad, just to wrap up on the face buttons,
12:21SPEAKERit seems like that was the million dollar question for people
12:22SPEAKERwhen they first revealed this thing is how close to the edges
12:25SPEAKERa lot of those face controls are, so like...
12:27SPEAKER- It really makes sense for the way you hold the thing,
12:31SPEAKERlike where the grips are contoured on the side.
12:33SPEAKERIt's really easy to reach the joysticks and the D-pad and the face buttons.
12:38SPEAKERI would say the track pads, maybe if you have really small hands,
12:42SPEAKERthey might be a bit more of a reach,
12:44SPEAKERbut I think the one thing that really justifies the size of this system,
12:50SPEAKERother than the fact that if it was smaller,
12:51SPEAKERthere's no way they could have fit all that AMD hardware
12:54SPEAKERand the battery and stuff in it, right?
12:56SPEAKERIs just having full-size joysticks and full-size face buttons
13:01SPEAKERand a D-pad feels great if you're coming from a Switch.
13:06SPEAKERI do not like the Joy-Cons.
13:08SPEAKERI love the pro controller for the Switch,
13:10SPEAKERbut the Joy-Cons feel like they're designed for a kid's hand.
13:13SPEAKERThey're just too small for me.
13:15SPEAKERAnd these joysticks are great.
13:17SPEAKERThey feel really nice.
13:18SPEAKER- How do these compare to the Index joysticks?
13:20SPEAKER- They're bigger joysticks.
13:21SPEAKERThey have capacitive...
13:22SPEAKERI think the Index is not a really great comparison.
13:24SPEAKER- Okay.
13:25SPEAKER- Even though they did...
13:26SPEAKERI think you have to go back to maybe...
13:29SPEAKERLike, I actually go back to like the...
13:31SPEAKEROr the Razer, you know, they have that Kishi thing?
13:33SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
13:34SPEAKER- You can plug a phone in because, you know...
13:37SPEAKERAnd I think Xbox controller is where I'd say this falls in line with.
13:41SPEAKER- They feel pretty similar, I think.
13:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
13:44SPEAKERYeah, Xbox controller is what I always went back to.
13:46SPEAKERI think PlayStation, the PS5 controller, I feel like has more...
13:52SPEAKERIt feels like there's more functionality to that.
13:54SPEAKERThe hapics here certainly aren't as good as that.
13:57SPEAKERBut this feels much better than that Razer Kishi.
14:00SPEAKERAnd ergonomically, you can tell where...
14:02SPEAKERWho you have these compromises when you try to squeeze a phone,
14:05SPEAKEReven a big phone between, you know, Joy-Con-like things.
14:09SPEAKERI was much happier ergonomically using this.
14:12SPEAKERThan the Switch controllers or that Kishi.
14:15SPEAKER- So can one of you paint us a word picture?
14:18SPEAKERWhat are the inputs on the front?
14:20SPEAKERLike there's left stick, right stick.
14:25SPEAKERThey're up-sy down-sy's like Xbox, right?
14:27SPEAKER- They're actually on the same level, both near the top of the screen.
14:32SPEAKERWhich takes some getting used to.
14:33SPEAKERIt's kind of like the Wii U gamepad, I think, had the same layout.
14:38SPEAKERAnd yeah, the D-pad is like hanging out in the top left corner.
14:41SPEAKERAnd the face buttons are hanging out in the top right corner.
14:43SPEAKERAnd then you have your kind of traditional triggers and bumpers above that.
14:48SPEAKERAnd then the two track pads hang out below the analog sticks.
14:52SPEAKER- And you have paddles underneath on the inside of the grips?
14:55SPEAKER- Yep.
14:56SPEAKERAnd two triggers and no dual-stage trigger on the left and right triggers.
15:02SPEAKERI use haptics to indicate when you've reached a certain threshold.
15:06SPEAKER- And that's something you control,
15:08SPEAKERthe developer controls in their Steam controller profile, I assume?
15:10SPEAKER- The user can control it, absolutely.
15:12SPEAKER- Did you find yourself using the track pads?
15:18SPEAKERSo Norm, you have some track pad beef, I guess?
15:21SPEAKERI want to hear the beef.
15:22SPEAKER- That was one of the most irritated chuckles I've heard in a while.
15:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so I mean, taking a step back, the whole promise.
15:32SPEAKERI say it in my review, but with new handhelds, we've seen so many new handhelds that come out
15:37SPEAKERthat have that chicken and egg problem, right? Like they need to sell a lot of hardware,
15:41SPEAKERcheap to create a user base, then convince developers to create software for it,
15:45SPEAKERto create an ecosystem.
15:47SPEAKERAnd the promise of this is that there is no, like the egg, whatever,
15:50SPEAKERthe software side is solved first.
15:53SPEAKERMillions of people have Steam, millions of people have a library of games.
15:56SPEAKERAnd the promise is here that you can buy hardware at heavily subsidized price
16:00SPEAKERand you get the back, you have all your games, your emulated games,
16:05SPEAKERwhatever games already on this device.
16:08SPEAKERAnd that includes legacy games.
16:10SPEAKERSo one of the big questions was how does it do with not just like, like RTS games.
16:14SPEAKERI'm not, you're not going to play RTS here.
16:16SPEAKERI tried, like you can, there's a touch screen, so you can use the cursor to the touch screen.
16:20SPEAKERYou can even use the gyro as a mouse, as a mouse cursor, a point and click.
16:25SPEAKERI think point and click is where the touch pad makes the most sense.
16:29SPEAKERAnd the clicking, the pointing, I have no problem with.
16:32SPEAKERIf you remember with the Steam controller, they had two round track pads,
16:35SPEAKERhighly configurable again.
16:37SPEAKERAnd the way to think about that was less like a laptop track pad and more like a track ball mouse.
16:45SPEAKERLike it really emulated the track ball experience of momentum, acceleration, stopping.
16:50SPEAKERAnd it had some kind of cool feedback to it too, right?
16:52SPEAKERThe clickiness of it, the linear actuators that they had behind that here because of the form
16:57SPEAKERfactor, no linear actuators.
16:59SPEAKERThey actually, I think iFixit did a teardown and what they found was they actually have
17:02SPEAKERjust kind of vibration coils, like speaker coils underneath that you can calibrate.
17:07SPEAKERYes, but mostly I think it does a good job of simulating the fling of a track ball,
17:14SPEAKERbut the pressing of the click, right?
17:17SPEAKERMy intuition is click into the track pad.
17:20SPEAKERThat's not good.
17:21SPEAKERThe pad is too small.
17:22SPEAKERI'm too often the cursor flies everywhere.
17:26SPEAKERAnd then so their solution is use maybe a shoulder button, right?
17:30SPEAKERBecause if you think of a track ball, your index finger is the click on the mouse.
17:34SPEAKERSo if your thumb is the track ball, your index finger is the click.
17:37SPEAKERThe shoulder button, I found that actually strained my hand using that as the click
17:42SPEAKERwhile using my thumb as the track ball.
17:44SPEAKERYou can use the paddle also.
17:45SPEAKERI think that's also a default and there's other buttons I can make, but none of those felt good.
17:50SPEAKERI ended up just using the touch screen.
17:52SPEAKERWes, what's your take on the track ball?
17:55SPEAKERI agree that the click on the track pad does not feel especially good.
17:59SPEAKERIt doesn't feel anything like tapping on a laptop track pad.
18:04SPEAKERThat didn't really bother me, though, because I only used it for pretty much only use the
18:08SPEAKERmouse for a few games where a few games I decided I do not want to play this kind of
18:15SPEAKERgame on the Steam Deck, like first person shooters that are much twitchier where they
18:20SPEAKERdon't have like controller support.
18:23SPEAKERSo I was like, OK, that's not a good fit.
18:25SPEAKERBut I did play a point and click game the same as you.
18:29SPEAKERAnd I just used a controller config for it where you could use the A button to click.
18:33SPEAKERYou could use the trigger to click as well.
18:36SPEAKERAnd I didn't really I didn't have a problem with that.
18:39SPEAKERAnd then when I set up emulators, I had all the kind of the controller buttons configured
18:44SPEAKERthe way they would be on the actual game controller.
18:47SPEAKERAnd then I used the track pad as the mouse for the UI.
18:50SPEAKERAnd I use one of the back paddles as the click.
18:53SPEAKERAnd it's not if I was doing five thousand clicks on it, it would definitely be annoying
19:00SPEAKERand like strain my finger.
19:01SPEAKERRight.
19:01SPEAKERBut I was kind of just using that to like launch a game basically and like go through
19:06SPEAKERa menu.
19:07SPEAKERI thought that was totally fine.
19:09SPEAKERIt's the click and drag that I felt was the issue.
19:12SPEAKERRight.
19:13SPEAKERWhen if you need to hold down a mouse button, a cursor button and then move something over
19:19SPEAKERas you would kind of hell that I'd never found a good ergonomics feel for.
19:24SPEAKERIs it multi-touch?
19:26SPEAKERUh, no, multi-touch.
19:28SPEAKERI don't think so.
19:30SPEAKERAnd the touch screen would be.
19:31SPEAKERBut it almost looks too small to accommodate two touches at once.
19:34SPEAKERThere was a weird I don't want to say bug, but just a result of the way they programmed
19:41SPEAKERtheir inputs, I guess.
19:42SPEAKEROr if you switch over to the Linux desktop by default, they're using the right trigger,
19:46SPEAKERlike Norm said, to be your mouse click, your left click.
19:50SPEAKERBut if you booted up Steam on the desktop, it somehow changed the configuration a little
19:55SPEAKERbit.
19:56SPEAKERAnd then you couldn't click with the trigger.
20:00SPEAKERYou could only click by tapping on the touch pad.
20:04SPEAKERSo I spent several times of like trying to take a screenshot of the desktop and like
20:09SPEAKERdoing like a drag a bunch of files around or something with just the trackpad and then
20:14SPEAKERclicking in on the trackpad.
20:16SPEAKERAnd it was like using it was like trying to use a Windows laptop from like 2003 or something
20:21SPEAKERlike just a terrible trackpad experience.
20:24SPEAKERIt's interesting.
20:26SPEAKERIt's like having the touchpad on the controller seems like as somebody who's used to spend
20:29SPEAKERa lot of time like with Steam link and Steam link apps, streaming games into TVs and other
20:34SPEAKERrooms, having the touchpad to select like for those moments when you have when you launch
20:39SPEAKERthe game and some launcher pops up and you have to use a mouse cursor and you're trying
20:42SPEAKERto do the thumb stick mouse and that's terrible.
20:45SPEAKERIt seems like it would be nice to have the trackpad, but it seems like it's maybe not
20:47SPEAKERthe primary way you should be playing most games.
20:50SPEAKERYeah.
20:50SPEAKERYou know, Wes mentioned first person shooters are a little twitchy.
20:53SPEAKERAnd I tried playing a Quake 3 launch on this, but there were certainly shooters that were
20:58SPEAKERthe pre like pre Call of Duty, like designed for gamepad shooters.
21:03SPEAKERThe gyro actually ended up being, I thought, pretty, pretty useful.
21:08SPEAKERAnd what I liked is that you can configure the gyro.
21:11SPEAKERI think by default, it when you rest your thumb on the thumb stick, that's when the
21:16SPEAKERgyro activates.
21:17SPEAKERSo it's not always on.
21:19SPEAKERAnd so actually, I use that as a way to use the gyro or the gyro emulating the mouse or
21:24SPEAKERgyro emulating a joystick as an extra way to camera movements while I had buttons press
21:31SPEAKERand held.
21:31SPEAKERI like that.
21:32SPEAKERDo you have some some examples of games you use that in like twitchy first person shooters?
21:36SPEAKERLike what are we talking here?
21:38SPEAKERI tried it in post void, which is an extremely twitchy like acid trip, literally first person
21:45SPEAKERshooter where I think each of my runs lasted between six and 15 seconds.
21:52SPEAKERGyro helped a little bit, but I am not a gyro pro.
21:55SPEAKERSo I was definitely a little manic in that one.
21:59SPEAKERYeah, TF2 was one where, you know, my not as capable as a mouse, obviously, but I still
22:06SPEAKERpreferred that over the thumb stick.
22:09SPEAKERI never can get a thumb stick working the way I want in FPS.
22:13SPEAKERThe kids, the kids who grew up learning how to play shooters on Splatoon love gyro mouse,
22:17SPEAKERit turns out.
22:19SPEAKERYeah, there's a couple of topics I want to get into here.
22:21SPEAKERI mean, there's hardware specs and like what kind of game performance you can expect.
22:24SPEAKERThere's also system software.
22:26SPEAKERI think those are the two big ones for me.
22:28SPEAKERI guess we'll do hardware first before we get into the OS stuff, which sounds like it
22:32SPEAKERmight be a little contentious.
22:35SPEAKERInstead of like asking for just an exhaustive rundown of what the specs of this thing actually
22:38SPEAKERare, could you guys like could you liken it to what's out there in the PC space in terms
22:42SPEAKERof like, can you just give us some nice reference points for like it's kind of like this Nvidia
22:46SPEAKERcard and the CPU, like like what kind of grunt are we looking at here?
22:50SPEAKERI'm terrible at this because I haven't reviewed PC hardware in so long.
22:54SPEAKERI actually I think performance is a great way to think about it.
22:57SPEAKERI would categorize the type of games you can play as almost using the console game, console
23:02SPEAKERgeneration analogy, right?
23:03SPEAKERThere's an era of 360 PS3 games of Xbox one PS4 games and then kind of the modern era
23:10SPEAKERof games.
23:11SPEAKERI found that the hardware here, which is a custom AMD APU, it's the first that uses their
23:17SPEAKERRDNA to a GPU.
23:20SPEAKERSo it's a combination CPU, GPU chip that they've capped at 15 watts.
23:26SPEAKERAnd I think the whole reason this device can't exist is the AMD was ready to manufacture
23:31SPEAKERin quantity at a good price for Valve this APU that they could put a 40 watt hour battery
23:38SPEAKERand have, you know, two to three hours of decent game time.
23:41SPEAKERBut go back to those games.
23:43SPEAKER360 PS3 era games, no problems maxed out like a Bioshock Infinite, for example.
23:49SPEAKERYou're going to get that all, you know, all your anti-aliasing, all your filtering, no
23:54SPEAKERproblem because it's playing at a 1280 by 800 display rates, essentially 720p.
23:59SPEAKERThe resolution is really key for this thing being able to play games as well.
24:04SPEAKERSure.
24:04SPEAKERWhat kind of frame rate are you talking in something like a Bioshock Infinite?
24:07SPEAKEROh, 60.
24:08SPEAKERSo the screen is 60 hertz.
24:10SPEAKERAnd what's interesting is the software on this device, even the past two weeks that
24:13SPEAKERwe've had it, has updated at least, you know, I want to say at this point, maybe a dozen
24:18SPEAKERtimes now.
24:20SPEAKERYeah, almost daily.
24:21SPEAKERAlmost daily, like that's the pace of the updates.
24:24SPEAKERAnd previously you could cap your frame rate or have it uncapped, I should say.
24:29SPEAKERBut I think as of a couple of days ago, they cap frame rates to 60 for performance reasons,
24:33SPEAKERfor battery life reasons.
24:35SPEAKERAnd you can also cap down to 30.
24:36SPEAKERSo I say maxed out.
24:37SPEAKERI do mean 60 hertz.
24:38SPEAKERThat's like their targets, 30.
24:41SPEAKERBut 60 is a noticeable difference on games, I think on this.
24:45SPEAKERSo 360 era games, 60 frames maxed out, no problem.
24:49SPEAKERXbox One era games, PS4 era games.
24:52SPEAKERI was surprised.
24:53SPEAKERYou could play those high/ultra between 30 and 60 frames per second.
24:59SPEAKERLike, you know, obviously tons of engine depends on the scope of game.
25:02SPEAKERBut even like Titanfall 2 single player maxed out 60 frames per second.
25:08SPEAKERNo problem.
25:09SPEAKERGTA 5, pretty maxed out.
25:12SPEAKERThings that you toggle off are, you know, anti-aliasing and I do, you know, max draw
25:17SPEAKERdistance and max textures.
25:20SPEAKER35, 45 frames per second.
25:22SPEAKERThe one that really impressed me was Resident Evil 2 remake.
25:26SPEAKERAnd like the RE engine is super well optimized.
25:29SPEAKERRuns great on PC.
25:31SPEAKERLooks beautiful.
25:32SPEAKERI was able to do a mix of like low to medium settings, native rest and get 60 FPS, like
25:38SPEAKERwithout really any significant drops.
25:41SPEAKERA lot of games that are only a year or two old like that game.
25:44SPEAKERYou can not play at 60 FPS.
25:47SPEAKERThat that is kind of an exceptionally well, well optimized engine.
25:51SPEAKERAnd they're verifying that they verified close to a thousand games now.
25:54SPEAKERElden Ring today, literally verified.
25:57SPEAKERAnd they say when it's verified, it will play at their default settings.
26:03SPEAKERSo standard res, 50 percent brightness, a medium graphics quality setting at 30 FPS.
26:10SPEAKERSo God of War, I think, is a good example of a recent PC release that can that you can't
26:14SPEAKERpush to the ultra settings, but at a medium to high 30 frames per second.
26:19SPEAKERNo problem.
26:20SPEAKERWhat about like high like high Twitch games like Hades or Spelunky or something that requires
26:26SPEAKERlike low input latency and high frame rate to like really excel at?
26:31SPEAKERGreat.
26:32SPEAKERYeah, I mean, you know, something like Hades isn't especially graphically demanding.
26:36SPEAKERIt's going to run at 60, no problem.
26:38SPEAKERAnd the the screen is super low, low latency.
26:44SPEAKERI mean, I'm not going to say it's like a one millisecond TFT panel or something, but like
26:49SPEAKERit's it's good.
26:50SPEAKERIt's real good.
26:51SPEAKERHades is an interesting mention because they had that as a demo when Wes and I went up
26:55SPEAKERto to Valve to try select games.
26:57SPEAKERRight.
26:58SPEAKERAnd both Hades and I believe Doom Eternal use Vulcan as you know, as opposed to DirectX.
27:06SPEAKERAnd so much that we're talking about now is taking for granted the fact that games run
27:10SPEAKERat all, which was a big question that you remember six months ago when they announced
27:13SPEAKERthis, because, you know, it runs Steam OS.
27:17SPEAKERIt's Linux gaming.
27:18SPEAKERWe all know what happened with Steam Machines.
27:20SPEAKERAnd so a lot of the questions we had coming into this was what would compatibility be
27:25SPEAKERlike?
27:25SPEAKERAnd I think the great thing is that's like an afterthought now, like more often than
27:30SPEAKERnot, games work as the games that, you know, current people are playing.
27:35SPEAKERAnd I think that's the biggest surprise of this, that, you know, that it's just so many
27:39SPEAKERgames just work and perform just fine.
27:42SPEAKERAnd it's a seamless launch.
27:43SPEAKERYou know, sometimes you get a launcher pop up that the press play on.
27:48SPEAKERBut they've done the work with developers to make it.
27:50SPEAKERSo you're just pressing the Steam Deck UI menu and play in the game, though.
27:54SPEAKERI will say that the caveat to that is there are a lot of games that just work, but they're
27:59SPEAKERnot verified yet.
28:00SPEAKERLike I have probably played four times more just random games from my library than verified
28:07SPEAKERgames, and almost all of them work just fine.
28:09SPEAKERBut Valve has about 64000 games to go if they're going to check everything on the on the Steam
28:15SPEAKERStore, so they've got some work cut out for them there.
28:18SPEAKERWhat have you have you have you hit places where like like anti cheat or DRM or stuff
28:23SPEAKERkeep you from being able to play?
28:25SPEAKERThat is still an issue with a few games.
28:27SPEAKERYeah.
28:28SPEAKERSo EAC, I think, is something they've had better compatibility on.
28:32SPEAKERYou know, there's like I think Apex is currently there's like inklings that they're figuring
28:39SPEAKERthat out.
28:40SPEAKERIt seems like publishers, aside from Epic, are happy to be on board.
28:45SPEAKERAnd weird funny how that works.
28:48SPEAKERBut I mean, if you go back to Branson, the other thing to talk about is the software
28:52SPEAKERand the platform stuff.
28:53SPEAKERAnd one thing I didn't get to do in time for this is do a full Windows install.
28:58SPEAKERThat's for many reasons.
28:59SPEAKERNot the least is that the graphics drivers aren't ready yet at this point for Windows.
29:04SPEAKERBut if you want to buy a Steam Deck and not run the Steam Deck UI and all the benefits
29:10SPEAKERof that, the suspend features, the battery life stuff, all the Steam menu overlays, you
29:16SPEAKERcan just boot into Windows and get a Windows PC.
29:19SPEAKERSo so I mean, I'm a giant OS nerd.
29:21SPEAKERI want to hear about all those features.
29:22SPEAKERBut so what is what is the experience out of the box the first time you boot it up?
29:24SPEAKERAre you going to the integrated like kind of nice console big picture UI?
29:29SPEAKEROr if you are not a like computer nerd, you could buy this thing and not know what Linux
29:36SPEAKERis and like never see it on the device.
29:39SPEAKERLike you would have to go out of your way to hold down the power button.
29:43SPEAKERAnd then from there, there's a little menu option that says switch to Linux desktop.
29:47SPEAKERAnd you can do that.
29:48SPEAKERBut you could just turn this thing on like it's, you know, any game console, basically.
29:52SPEAKERAnd then you just have Steam and you click install on a game and then you click.
29:56SPEAKERI'm almost surprised to hear they expose Linux even that readily.
29:59SPEAKERI mean, like that is, you know, pressing and holding the power button is a step to get
30:03SPEAKERto that.
30:03SPEAKERBut like, I'm kind of surprised they don't obfuscate that more because the potential
30:06SPEAKERto screw something up seems like it's pretty great.
30:08SPEAKERBut I don't know.
30:10SPEAKERI mean, I think they trust their users.
30:11SPEAKERThey know at least who the literally there is no double check to format system.
30:16SPEAKERLike you could reboot the system right from this configuration.
30:19SPEAKERAnd you can you know, you can toggle FPS lock accidentally and not know why your performance
30:24SPEAKERor TDP like, you know, don't cap your TDP assumption.
30:28SPEAKERI think most of the first wave of users are going to be people are PC adept or are willing
30:34SPEAKERto, you know, read a Reddit forum and get some support.
30:38SPEAKERBut I'd say Linux, it's plasma.
30:42SPEAKERIs there is the the interface, right?
30:46SPEAKERKatie, plasma.
30:47SPEAKERAnd it's very much like I don't use Linux as a as a daily driver, but having had to
30:53SPEAKERgo in there and install things like, you know, Chrome, Firefox, Spotify and all the apps
30:58SPEAKERand and audacity even like.
31:01SPEAKERThey've done a good job, like the Trojan horse here is getting people to feel comfortable
31:05SPEAKERin a Linux desktop, actually is it the year finally?
31:08SPEAKEROh, no, no, no, no.
31:09SPEAKERDon't say it.
31:10SPEAKERDon't say it.
31:11SPEAKERDon't say it.
31:12SPEAKERWe have an open source podcast now.
31:14SPEAKERThis is this is this is for the other show.
31:15SPEAKERFair.
31:16SPEAKERThe the thing about the the Linux desktop is it is actually pretty it would be hard for
31:23SPEAKERyou to break this thing.
31:25SPEAKERSo like you say, it's sort of surprising that they make it that accessible, but they
31:29SPEAKERhave locked down the bits of the file system that you could you could break.
31:35SPEAKERAnd they'll give they're giving everybody like the passwords there in or like the command
31:40SPEAKERyou need to put in to unlock it if you want to.
31:43SPEAKERBut that comes with like multiple caveats.
31:45SPEAKERThey're like, don't do this unless you know what you're doing.
31:48SPEAKERSeriously, don't do this.
31:50SPEAKERHere's how to reinstall steam OS if you if you break everything.
31:53SPEAKERI was going to say what like I assume two questions.
31:57SPEAKERFirst, I assume if you install Windows, you lose all of the new UI stuff and you're just
32:00SPEAKERusing like bog standard steam and presumably like old school big picture mode, right?
32:05SPEAKERBecause this is a new UI for the for the steam deck, which they haven't released yet.
32:08SPEAKERYeah, it's funny.
32:10SPEAKERIf you use Linux, you can use big picture mode.
32:13SPEAKERSo like I was kind of surprised about this, like the default UI they call the deck UI
32:18SPEAKERand it's there.
32:19SPEAKERIt's actually going to trickle down to replace big picture mode in the future.
32:23SPEAKERSo it's, I think, a nice hybrid modern design between the desktop steam interface and the
32:29SPEAKERkind of usability of big picture mode, although I'd say even more usable.
32:33SPEAKERBut if you boot into Linux, the steam OS CMOS 3.0, which people can download and install
32:38SPEAKERand run on their systems today, you can launch your games there.
32:43SPEAKERBut it's actually big picture mode because it's like a windowed version of steam there.
32:48SPEAKERIt doesn't and you lose the functionality like suspend and you lose the overlays as
32:52SPEAKERwell.
32:52SPEAKERSo it's kind of like a two steam OS experience with windows.
32:58SPEAKERYeah, I think they're just like they're just like racing to finish steam OS 3.0 for this
33:03SPEAKERlaunch, and then they're going to put it up for download, right?
33:07SPEAKERYou can get the ISO and I assume that's when it will also make its way into the the old
33:12SPEAKERbig picture mode or replace the old big picture mode.
33:14SPEAKERYeah, I'm trying to I'm sitting here trying to think like, does Valve have any like strategic
33:18SPEAKERbusiness priorities that would bias them toward wanting people to run the Linux version?
33:22SPEAKERI mean, I guess if they're if people are running Windows on this thing and still buying games
33:25SPEAKERfrom steam, do they really care?
33:27SPEAKERI guess not, right?
33:28SPEAKERWell, they care because they don't they they don't have to buy a Windows license for each
33:32SPEAKERone they sell, right?
33:33SPEAKERWell, I don't mean out of the box.
33:34SPEAKERI mean, like you're providing your own Windows license at that point, right?
33:37SPEAKERLike that's what I'm saying.
33:37SPEAKERLike down the line, they have no reason to withhold features for Windows users on this
33:41SPEAKERthing, right?
33:42SPEAKERNo, and that's that's that's their MO, right?
33:44SPEAKERThat's kind of company philosophy.
33:46SPEAKERAnd, you know, as long as they're raking in as much money as steam breaks in, right, they
33:51SPEAKERwant to just, you know, raise the floor for PC gaming as a whole.
33:55SPEAKERLike they want hardware competitors to to make other steam deck like devices to make
34:01SPEAKERdifferent types of tradeoffs, right?
34:02SPEAKERSo like like this device, this form factor exists because of a series of decisions they
34:06SPEAKERmade, you know, no 1080p screen, this amount of battery life, this amount of performance.
34:11SPEAKERThe big thing also is same amount of battery consumption and performance, whether plugged
34:15SPEAKERin or not, which is not something you typically think of or expect from a computer like experience.
34:23SPEAKERYou know, that's being docked doesn't mean anything with this other than you aren't going
34:28SPEAKERto run out of battery life, right?
34:29SPEAKEROr you can use accessories and you can even plug in a display or something.
34:34SPEAKERDoes it still run at 720p when you plug in a display?
34:37SPEAKERNo, it goes up to 4K, 4K 60 and a 2 4K 60 displays even for the desktop, right?
34:42SPEAKERI think Steam OS is still currently limited to native rez right now, but I'm guessing
34:48SPEAKERthey'll improve that.
34:49SPEAKERBut, you know, I think they're betting that their user base and their user friendliness
34:54SPEAKERis going to compel people to stick in their store.
34:58SPEAKERThey're spending money and not like very different ways and epic spending money.
35:01SPEAKERAnd it's a different like business discussion epics buying exclusives and and they have
35:06SPEAKERthey have Fortnite as an anchor as well as the engine stuff.
35:10SPEAKERYou know, Steam has just like a legacy and open support.
35:13SPEAKERI think it's kind of their business strategy.
35:15SPEAKERYeah, I don't know if you had an interview with with Gabe Newell, Norm, but he basically
35:20SPEAKERsaid the exact that exact thing when I when I asked him, like, do you want you know, do
35:25SPEAKERyou feel like having to put Steam OS 3 out there for download for anybody?
35:30SPEAKERBecause I think they legally have to because it's based on whatever the open source of
35:35SPEAKERthe old GPL.
35:36SPEAKERSo I assume they have to do that.
35:38SPEAKERAnd I'm like, that feels like kind of the secret sauce of this system.
35:41SPEAKERLike the hardware is good, but it's kind of meaningless if Steam OS doesn't work as well
35:46SPEAKERas it does.
35:47SPEAKERAre you, you know, hesitant about releasing that for your competitors like GPD?
35:52SPEAKERAnd I although like the Chinese companies now that are making these handheld PCs and
35:57SPEAKERhe was like, no, we want more people to use this because we make steam like that's, you
36:03SPEAKERknow, as long as we're selling games like it's cool.
36:07SPEAKERCool with us.
36:08SPEAKERYeah, it's interesting you bring up GPD and Aya because like they like this is a product
36:13SPEAKERthat exists in the east and has for a really long time.
36:17SPEAKERLike like these little portable handheld gaming machines started out as like emulation machines
36:22SPEAKERyears ago.
36:23SPEAKERAnd now you can get just a full ass gaming PC and a little switch looking thing for 600
36:29SPEAKERbucks, 700 bucks in a lot of cases.
36:31SPEAKERA lot of them are more like a thousand thousand there.
36:33SPEAKERYeah, they're pricey.
36:36SPEAKERYeah.
36:36SPEAKERAnd those companies have to their hardware companies.
36:38SPEAKERThey have to make money on hardware valve like they won't say how much this cost.
36:42SPEAKERBut I think they've said, you know, to the they've said up to a point that there was
36:46SPEAKERa tough decision to get to that $400 price point.
36:49SPEAKERSo that's probably either at cost or they're taking a hit there.
36:54SPEAKERAnd the good news for people who may be looking to make a purchasing decision is that that
36:58SPEAKER$400 version is just as capable and upgradeable as the $700 one.
37:05SPEAKERAnd if you want to, you know, go to fix it and buy some screwdrivers and pry it open
37:10SPEAKERand and upgrade that M.2 storage technically can.
37:15SPEAKERBut you don't even need to because like the other great thing is that micro SD storage
37:18SPEAKERlike is fantastic.
37:19SPEAKERI have like most of the game.
37:22SPEAKERThey said at least the 500.
37:23SPEAKERThey sent me the 512 gig version.
37:25SPEAKERGames like 100 gigs these days.
37:28SPEAKERRight.
37:29SPEAKERThe biggest recommendation is you don't need the A2 micro SD card.
37:33SPEAKERYou get A1 the UHS to like the whatever the latest class is.
37:38SPEAKERI think 100 megabytes per second is like their max anyway.
37:43SPEAKERBut get a terabyte micro SD card.
37:45SPEAKERGet a couple of those.
37:46SPEAKERI bought and get you a little like 150 bucks.
37:49SPEAKERYeah.
37:49SPEAKEROr less even.
37:51SPEAKERYeah.
37:52SPEAKERAnd so they say they send everybody the 600 megabyte, 600 gigabyte version, SSD version.
37:57SPEAKERI think they send a mix of the 512 and the 256.
38:00SPEAKERYeah.
38:01SPEAKERWhat's I guess what's different about the software like the the user interface software?
38:06SPEAKERIs it just like big picture has gotten I don't want to say slow but it's gotten slow over
38:10SPEAKERthe last few years.
38:11SPEAKERIt feels kind of chunky.
38:13SPEAKERIt feels dated.
38:13SPEAKERIt's a lot cleaner.
38:15SPEAKERIt's it's very I would say it's very snappy.
38:18SPEAKERIt's it's easy to use.
38:20SPEAKERProbably my biggest criticism of it is pretty minor in that it's like it's a little it's
38:26SPEAKERnot even ugly.
38:27SPEAKERIt's just like kind of bland in the way that Steam has been.
38:30SPEAKERFirst it was like army green for a few years right?
38:34SPEAKERLike it was hideous you know this hideous camo color.
38:37SPEAKERAnd then they kind of went to gray and then it kind of finally got to like blue gray.
38:42SPEAKERAnd this this interface is that same like blue gray that they have on the desktop.
38:46SPEAKERIt's very utilitarian.
38:48SPEAKERIt's fine.
38:48SPEAKERLike there's nothing wrong with it.
38:50SPEAKERIt's not as pleasant to look at as I would say like the Switch.
38:54SPEAKERThe Switch UI is just kind of nice like has a little bit of color but it's got like the
38:58SPEAKERwhite it just kind of pops.
38:59SPEAKERThis is like very straightforward.
39:02SPEAKERYou're not going to look at it and be like oh this is just like such an elegant you know
39:06SPEAKERpretty UI.
39:07SPEAKERBut it does everything you need it to.
39:09SPEAKERIt's really clearly laid out.
39:11SPEAKERLike you could pick this device up without having used it.
39:15SPEAKERAnd in five minutes you're like okay there's where my games are.
39:17SPEAKERThis is how the settings work.
39:19SPEAKERLike I get it.
39:19SPEAKERIt's easy.
39:21SPEAKERYeah it feels very Android in that way.
39:22SPEAKERI kept thinking about this feels like the Android version of a gaming OS versus a polished
39:29SPEAKERmainstream super mainstream friendly like iOS OS.
39:34SPEAKERHave either of you tried streaming streaming games from the desktop to the Steam Deck?
39:38SPEAKERYeah yeah so did a bunch of comparisons and you know you can do Steam Link's remote play
39:44SPEAKERon basically any device now right like that Kishi thing works on iPhone.
39:48SPEAKERYou can do it on TV.
39:51SPEAKERI don't know if Chromecast has a Steam Link.
39:55SPEAKERYou can do Moonlight to a Chromecast now I think but I don't know if you can do the Steam
39:58SPEAKERLink version.
40:01SPEAKERAnd you know what?
40:03SPEAKERI would not buy this just as a $400 remote play device because that means that you probably
40:08SPEAKERhave a gaming PC but it's actually really nice to supplement for battery life.
40:13SPEAKERYou know a game like Cyberpunk doesn't run well natively on this but I was able to continue
40:19SPEAKERa cyberpunk campaign running on my desktop on this or Red Dead like you know if and if
40:25SPEAKERI'm playing at home and I'm you know on my couch there's a router nearby.
40:31SPEAKERI actually oftentimes went deferred to remote play because I knew I'd get you know more
40:35SPEAKERthan twice the battery life running it there with it's running at 4K or at least 1080 on
40:42SPEAKERmy desktop right and then scaled down to the 720 screen and it's just a nice pleasant low
40:46SPEAKERlatency experience with the option then to boot it up locally when I'm not in that Wi-Fi
40:51SPEAKERspot or somewhere else.
40:53SPEAKERI haven't done a whole lot of streaming yet.
40:55SPEAKERDid you find the image quality you know comparable playing it streaming versus local?
41:01SPEAKERYeah and you do a little bit of tuning I think on the desktop side because you can configure
41:05SPEAKERwhat your game resolution is going to render at what that caps out at.
41:09SPEAKERI found that you know you don't need to render a game at 4K on your desktop because this
41:13SPEAKERis 720.
41:14SPEAKER1080 down sampled is super nice.
41:17SPEAKERLatency you know with a standard you don't even need a Wi-Fi 6 router but latency was
41:21SPEAKERan issue for these types of you know console style games third-person games did some Halo
41:27SPEAKERInfinite in that and it's pretty seamless.
41:32SPEAKERIt did make me wish because I you know doing Steam Link on like a phone with an OLED screen
41:36SPEAKERit did make me wish it had a better screen because it's a seven inch screen here there's
41:41SPEAKERthe matte finish on the high-end model they have but like if I could pay more for a 1080
41:49SPEAKERscreen or an OLED version that would be really killer.
41:53SPEAKERYeah I'm curious your feelings on the screen overall I feel like it looks really good but
42:00SPEAKERmaybe I have a bit lower standards it is definitely not an OLED like it doesn't have that degree
42:06SPEAKERof pop to it.
42:08SPEAKERYes not only that I have some noticeable backlight bleed I don't know if yours has that actually
42:14SPEAKERhaven't talked to anyone else who's had a review unit but the top of mine top right
42:18SPEAKERwhere the USB cable plugs in like pretty noticeable it's a lighter at the seam lines just because
42:25SPEAKERit's a IPS LCD.
42:27SPEAKERYou touched on this a little bit before but like what are the just kind of handheld oriented
42:31SPEAKERfeatures built into the system software like you know suspend overlay stuff like that are
42:34SPEAKERlike are those exactly what you think they are are there any others that are notable?
42:38SPEAKERSuspend is I think probably the most important feature because that's something that they
42:42SPEAKERwork really hard because they're suspended also cloud saving with that too so the idea
42:48SPEAKERis if you're literally in the middle of the game not even hitting a pause menu you could
42:52SPEAKERpress the power button and in my testing over like an eight hour period there's some battery
42:58SPEAKERdrain because you know you're running in memory memory requires power it's about like four
43:02SPEAKERto five percent over over a normal workday of battery drain so don't leave it in your
43:08SPEAKERdrawer with the game suspended but it pops on almost instantaneously like it is you press
43:13SPEAKERthe power button and you're back in the game there's no like texture pop in or anything
43:17SPEAKERwi-fi is back immediately if you're you know something needs to be connected if you pause
43:23SPEAKERthe game and developer supports it with steam cloud backup then when you're pausing the
43:28SPEAKERgame the save game actually goes up to steam cloud and you can boot up the game on your
43:34SPEAKERdesktop and resume there without having to quit the game on the steam deck well and and
43:39SPEAKERthat's a new feature like a new like steam api that they just rolled out within the last
43:44SPEAKERlike month or two so i don't know does anything support it yet no that's it's pure theoretical
43:50SPEAKERi couldn't find it's tough to yeah it's theoretical but it's a really cool idea it's so so just
43:56SPEAKERso i understand the workflow you pause it on your on your handheld and then you fire
44:01SPEAKERthe same game up on your desktop and it just goes back into that pause menu you don't have
44:05SPEAKERto like load a save or anything even you have to load the save okay it's in the back end
44:10SPEAKERso developers the way they send the steam cloud save files it's more rapidly sending
44:16SPEAKERthem up when you're in like a pause state so it's probably basically just adding a like
44:21SPEAKERif on steam deck power off send to cloud instead of only sending the cloud on game exit kind
44:28SPEAKERof thing so we'll see if anybody you know actually adopts that but it's it's pretty
44:32SPEAKERcool even just being able to suspend this thing and then turn it back on and play a game obviously
44:38SPEAKERyou can do that on a console for years but being able to do it on a pc is pretty cool there are
44:44SPEAKERways though that i wish it was almost more like a dedicated console in terms of like the the low
44:49SPEAKERpower states like suspend obviously works as you imagine but you know how playstation you know when
44:55SPEAKERyou're not using it it's in a sleep mode because it's no it's plugged in but it'll do like background
45:00SPEAKERsoftware updates or game downloads there's none of that here this is more like a laptop when you're
45:06SPEAKERpausing it the screen is down so you can't have like a screen off low power state to have game
45:12SPEAKERupdates you know and so oftentimes software updates game downloads i'm like waiting looking
45:19SPEAKERat the screen downloading it's a you know it's a short-term problem but if you're downloading a
45:23SPEAKERton of games or doing memory card transfers i wish there were things that could happen in a low power
45:27SPEAKERstate it'd be nice if that's something they could figure out how to add like while you're plugged
45:32SPEAKERinto power maybe because they i'm sure they don't want the battery drain when you're you know not
45:36SPEAKERplugged in but that seems solvable yeah one one thing i want to want to say about the suspend
45:41SPEAKERfeature that i i think is really cool is you know this is a system level feature so it works with
45:47SPEAKERanything you add to steam that is not a steam game so like i've been playing a lot of emulators on
45:52SPEAKERthis thing so like i put in metroid prime i can be in the middle of a metroid prime like boss fight
45:59SPEAKERand then just hit the suspend button turn it off turn the thing back on you know 10 minutes later
46:04SPEAKERand like i'm just right back there one of my big issues with the switch now what like six years
46:10SPEAKERinto the switch's life is that it's it launching things is slow it's incredibly like it takes a
46:16SPEAKERlong time to launch animal crossing at this point do you feel that on this on this on the steam deck
46:21SPEAKERas well or do you think that that's like the ssd and the fast uh sd card have solved the problem
46:27SPEAKERit's like a pc it's as fast as it is on on a pc which is to say that it's not instantaneous
46:33SPEAKERbut you're not waiting for a minute you're waiting 15 seconds i think it's more game dependent than
46:39SPEAKERsystem dependent like there are definitely those pc games where you're like okay i'm gonna wait 10
46:45SPEAKERseconds of black screen and then i'm gonna like mash the button through 30 seconds of logos
46:51SPEAKERbefore it will let me get to the the title screen uh so an indie game you can get up and running
46:56SPEAKERpretty damn fast but some of the triple a games are still kind of a pain in the ass
47:01SPEAKERhonestly you say that it kind of feels like this is an indie game like the switch everybody jokes
47:05SPEAKERthat the switch is the pc's indie game handheld but but this feels like it feels like this is the
47:10SPEAKERmarket they're going after with this thing i think on paper yes but i think the the surprise is how
47:17SPEAKERcapably it runs those ex i say last gen but still modern uh triple a games and i like and which is
47:26SPEAKERlike a disconnect right you don't think of even like the the ia neos like yes you could run pc
47:33SPEAKERgames on that but you're not thinking you're going to run god of war i'm not thinking i'm gonna play
47:36SPEAKERred dead redemption you could do that for an hour and a half on here no problem which is kind of
47:43SPEAKERmind-boggling um from just a form factor even though it's bigger than the switch but it's just
47:48SPEAKERit's not how i think about portable gaming there's probably an algorithm you could work out for like
47:53SPEAKERevery five years of like older a game is like you get an extra hour of battery life or something
48:00SPEAKERplaying it of course it depends on your settings right but i i kind of got in this mode of being
48:05SPEAKERlike boot up a game like oh man i can only get an hour and 20 minutes of battery life in this like
48:09SPEAKERthree-year-old game but then if i booted up something like uh night dives uh quake remaster
48:15SPEAKERwhich is great like plays super well i'm like i'm getting like six hours of battery life and this is
48:20SPEAKERfucking awesome is it is is it is there a 2d 3d split on this too like that's my experience with
48:26SPEAKERthe switch is like 2d games typically perform better than in terms of battery life than 3d
48:30SPEAKERgames too sure i mean you know it's engine dependent right um and it's shared memories
48:36SPEAKERddr5 right i think there's only a gig of dedicated video memory um when west says something like he's
48:43SPEAKERbooting up a game and finding out how long he can play uh that's because it's really easy to toggle
48:50SPEAKERon these performance indicators so you know in steam you can obviously put on the frame rate and
48:54SPEAKERthere are multiple tiers of ui overlay that you can put in the top left corner that not only show
49:00SPEAKERyou you know what clock speeds your gpu cores and cpu cores are running at but also the wattage
49:06SPEAKERconsumption and it became really kind of almost fun to do the math and realize you have 40 watt
49:12SPEAKERwatt hour battery right if this maxes out at 25 watts max load but really it's going to operate
49:19SPEAKERin like a sweet spot of like 15 watts but i think 11 12 watts for the gpu plus you know four to five
49:25SPEAKERoverhead for screen and everything else and you kind of do the math like oh i'm consuming this
49:30SPEAKERgame is like a 15 you know watt per second game i know exactly like it's a pretty consistent thing
49:37SPEAKERbecause there's no plugging in getting more more to unplug it's full full load full bore so you're
49:43SPEAKERlike you know how um based on how power intensive each game is how long you're going to get to play
49:50SPEAKERyeah i got kind of hooked on like pressing the pause button in a game to like go to the menu
49:54SPEAKERand then seeing the battery life go up and then resuming the game and like the engine has to kick
49:59SPEAKERback in and then seeing it go back down that's bonkers that they expose that stuff um do you
50:05SPEAKERdid either of you try plugging in like an external backup battery um i assume you get your big giant
50:11SPEAKERonker power power bank you plug that thing in you can make it last as long as you want basically
50:16SPEAKERyeah yeah i mean it's a the wall charger is a 45 watt wall charger which is overkill um a standard
50:22SPEAKERbattery pack is going to give you as much as the battery it's gonna you know as long as the output
50:27SPEAKERon that usb-c is giving you uh the right wattage like you know 20 watts or so no problem cool they
50:35SPEAKERuh they sent you guys the doc and is there anything to say there if so it's a doc right
50:39SPEAKERnot available yet so i did ask them um about satisfied i think they actually just talked about
50:45SPEAKERuh it's coming late spring 2022 spring okay uh but everyone at valve is using the doc i bet it's just
50:53SPEAKERproduction and sure and but they have said like it's just a usb-c doc like it's not doing anything
50:58SPEAKERspecial i'm sure you know the design of it will be a little tailored to the system and and how
51:03SPEAKERmany ports and stuff they put on it but like you can go buy a usb-c doc and it will do the job
51:09SPEAKERright can you think of any i mean so now that you guys have had your hands on this thing for a while
51:12SPEAKERlike can you think of any novel uses for this thing because it is an x86 pc at the end of the
51:16SPEAKERday like you can extend it out to all the ports you could need on a pc you know it's not a laptop
51:21SPEAKERreplacement i'm sure but like can you think of other stuff you know you mentioned emulators like
51:25SPEAKERi know dolphin has been out there sort of like promoting their ability to run game tube games
51:30SPEAKERon this thing and stuff but even beyond gaming maybe like it's like any other cool ideas that
51:34SPEAKERyou see this thing being useful for i think the question you're asking is like what is this an
51:40SPEAKERanalogous to in the pc space is it more like an intel nuk or is it more like a a gaming laptop
51:46SPEAKERwhere right and i would say it's closer to like the nuk with the screen okay it's a nuk in a
51:53SPEAKERhandheld form factor with the screen and which means you can run a server on it you can use it to
51:57SPEAKERas a live stream host you can run it you know but i'm not gonna be video editing on this
52:02SPEAKERsure one of my co-workers did actually like take a we were doing like our weekly meeting and he
52:10SPEAKERlike was doing the meeting from on the steam deck like linux desktop apparently uh so like you can
52:16SPEAKERdefinitely do that stuff i feel like buying a nuk or a raspberry pi or something is gonna be the much
52:22SPEAKERbetter you know route if you're just like i want a weird little linux machine that i do like goofy
52:28SPEAKERprojects with but yeah i don't know what people are gonna use it for other than a gaming system
52:34SPEAKERthat they then maybe set up in their hotel room and like you know run some word docs on it when
52:39SPEAKERthey when they need to you know does it have just an hdmi out or is it just a usb-c out it's one
52:45SPEAKERusb-c out and there are a lot of price differences on the marketplace right now for the type of what
52:50SPEAKERyou get functionality wise with hubs so like onker for example you can pay 30 bucks and get a usb-c
52:56SPEAKERhub that gives you you know a bunch of usb-a ports and hdmi out but if you want ethernet or you want
53:02SPEAKERmultiple video out then you're going to pay you know 70 80 dollars but it supports displayport
53:08SPEAKER1.4 so you could potentially just plug it straight into a monitor i guess assuming you have a
53:14SPEAKERdisplayport monitor i assume people are gonna plug this into tv though probably more than a monitor
53:18SPEAKERwould be my guess so that's a that's a thing like if you're spending 400 and you have the choice to
53:26SPEAKER400 it's it's i think the price is misleading because it's such an unbelievable price
53:32SPEAKERright if you only had 400 to spend on something i cannot recommend this enough over you know
53:38SPEAKERa 400 PC that you're going to try to spec this out but if you want a gaming device that you're going
53:45SPEAKERto not that it depends on your your invite you know how much travel you're doing how much gamepad
53:52SPEAKERversus keyboard mouse stuff but i think it doesn't replace like a gaming laptop like a gaming laptop
53:59SPEAKERwith a keyboard with a desktop functionality that you can also bluetooth a gamepad to bigger screen
54:04SPEAKERyou know high high resolution real graphics like up to you know 3080s you're going to get a better
54:13SPEAKERplugging that into big screen tv experience than the steam deck but it's also going to cost five
54:18SPEAKERtimes as much probably right and that's why i started with the the price is the trick here
54:22SPEAKERbecause 400 bucks is absurd for this this should cost a thousand dollars easily double that's what
54:27SPEAKERthose aya neos costs and if this was properly priced at thousand plus then you're talking
54:33SPEAKERabout comparing it to a medium gaming laptop it's it's weird that larry like two and a half years
54:39SPEAKERago if this thing came out there would be endless articles comparing it to like how does the steam
54:45SPEAKERdeck step up against the cheapest you know budget gaming pc you can build right and like it's not
54:50SPEAKEReven worth writing that anymore because you can't get components that would come anywhere close to
54:56SPEAKERequaling the performance of this thing for the price you know just you mean because of the
55:00SPEAKERpandemic or just in general just because of the pandemic just the how it has changed you know
55:05SPEAKERsupply and pricing on on everything i think valve almost got i don't know if lucky is there is the
55:12SPEAKERright word for it but they um they made commitments to buy all the parts for this thing you know a
55:20SPEAKERwhile ago right because they've been developing this thing for some time they made big orders to
55:25SPEAKERbe able to get the prices down to the volumes where you know the volume equals we're paying
55:31SPEAKERless for this thing we can sell it for 400 bucks and either break even or not lose a shitload of
55:37SPEAKERmoney and like prices have just gone up on everything over the last two years right so
55:43SPEAKERthey got locked in at probably a 2020 or you know early 2021 or something rate on a bunch of stuff
55:51SPEAKERthat now would cost them even more money if they were making those deals today yeah and what's also
55:57SPEAKERinteresting is that this feels like a really good companion device for a person who has all the
56:02SPEAKERgaming devices like if you have a gaming laptop or a gaming desktop and you spent the money on a
56:07SPEAKER3080 or whatever right like you can still get a lot out of this because of its mobility and the
56:12SPEAKERremote play functionality right it's all in that steam ecosystem the games you bought once now
56:18SPEAKERstretch further but i was thinking like this is also a really good device if you're like an
56:22SPEAKERmac user right if you have a if you spent if your primary computing platform is like a macbook pro
56:29SPEAKERand you want to play games like here's your way in to pc gaming for 400 bucks honestly i i ordered
56:36SPEAKERone i pre-ordered one so that my kid has a gaming pc that doesn't take up space in the house right
56:42SPEAKERlike i wanted to be able to play games on that so she can play human fall flat and whatever other
56:46SPEAKERyou know ultimate chicken horse and all the stuff she plays with her friends um wes norm thank you
56:50SPEAKERguys so much for coming by this is fabulous we really appreciate you sharing the thoughts about
56:54SPEAKERthe steam deck is this is this like a thumbs up for both of you or you both or would you would
56:58SPEAKERyou spend your money on this it's definitely a thumbs up for me i think the the weird question i
57:03SPEAKERstarted asking myself after using it for a while was like what games do i it's not a weird question
57:09SPEAKERbut like what games do i want to play on this thing and it feels a little absurd to have like a
57:16SPEAKERdevice for every different type of game that you want to play right it's like i could play all
57:20SPEAKERthese on my computer that's fine but i sit in my computer all day i still want to play first person
57:25SPEAKERshooters in my computer but do i want to play hades on the switch where it's going to run at
57:29SPEAKERmaybe 30 fps do i want to play slay the spire on the switch where it's going to run at 20 fps like
57:35SPEAKERno i want to play it on this thing and like not hog the tv and still have a good gaming experience
57:41SPEAKERand there's a lot of games that fall into that that middle ground of you want that performance
57:46SPEAKERyou know i i was thinking earlier when you were talking about this thing i mean does this feel
57:50SPEAKERlike this is abstracting yet another layer or another tier of consumer device out like remember
57:54SPEAKERwhen all you had was like a computer and a phone and then it was like now you have a phone and a
57:58SPEAKERlaptop and a desktop third screen now you have a tablet in there it's time for fourth meal and
58:03SPEAKERthird screen this is like fifth meal or whatever like fifth handheld yet another category of device
58:10SPEAKERthat doesn't quite fit in with the others i i think yes and the the more i wanted to use this
58:17SPEAKERalongside my phone while also watching tv told me that like wow like the couch i can the couch
58:24SPEAKERis so much more now um i think conceptually it's a success uh execution wise absolutely it impressed
58:33SPEAKERme with more to come i think this year not only are they going to be trying to fulfill orders but
58:38SPEAKERiterating on the software this feels like there's a lot they can still do and they've been iterating
58:42SPEAKERreally quickly but it also feels like the beginning of something right where if someone's
58:48SPEAKERreading the hundred or so reviews are coming out this week um and trying to make a purchasing
58:52SPEAKERdecision one if you're making a purchasing decision in february on february 25th 2022
58:57SPEAKERyou're not going to get a seam deck until summer or later right or the fall um and it might be worth
59:04SPEAKERwaiting because if valve proves the marketplace for this type of hardware and they're going to
59:08SPEAKERbe competitors and amd is going to be improving architecture architecture and valve has said
59:13SPEAKERthey're already thinking about you know their excitement internally about what the next device
59:17SPEAKERcan be then really the question is you know do i want to get the steam deck for what it is now
59:22SPEAKERor if i'm thinking of spending wanting to spend 500 to a thousand dollars on something in the
59:27SPEAKERnext couple years what is that next device if this proves a new type of ecosystem of gaming
59:36SPEAKERi think the only thing that that you can't beat is the price like the deciding factor may be the
59:41SPEAKERprice and i don't think if valve was going to continue with a steam deck too they could afford
59:45SPEAKERto do a 400 version well and if a bunch of people come into this market there's no incentive for them
59:51SPEAKERto subsidize anymore at that point too which which you know it's an it's an interesting like it's it's
59:57SPEAKERthe most interesting piece of hardware i've seen in a come out in a while i can't wait to get my
1:00:00SPEAKERhands on one so yeah ergonomically it's a lot better than the old uh fat nintendo ds but i am
1:00:06SPEAKERexcited for like what is the ds light of steam decks you know what is the v2 is it going to be
1:00:13SPEAKERthat elegant and you know half the weight and and all that stuff like that's really exciting
1:00:18SPEAKERawesome well thanks guys um norm i know you're gonna get you out of here so all right wait wait
1:00:22SPEAKERwait hang on we have to keep wes for a minute i know norm has to run he has business to attend to
1:00:25SPEAKERbut wes i just want to talk about arch linux for a few minutes linux yeah uh i am not a linux pro
1:00:33SPEAKERby any means uh ubuntu is kind of my one like uh area of experience in in linux learning a little
1:00:41SPEAKERbit about arch the last like two weeks has been interesting and frustrating i would say so my
1:00:49SPEAKERimpression of arch and a lot of this comes from talking to people on our discord is that it's it's
1:00:53SPEAKERthe linux distro for people who just want to twiddle all the knobs and pull all of the levers
1:00:57SPEAKERthemselves and that feels like something that people at valve would maybe be into oh absolutely
1:01:04SPEAKERso arch gets updates constantly like it's it's kind of the other end of the spectrum from
1:01:07SPEAKERsomething like a debian stable where they'd lock a distro in and don't touch it ever again in terms
1:01:12SPEAKERof upgrading software like arch gets rolling updates to everything constantly and i think
1:01:16SPEAKERthey've said or implied that's kind of why they moved steam os over to it is because they need
1:01:21SPEAKERthey need that rapid update cadence for stuff like proton development i assume yeah last uh last
1:01:27SPEAKERyear when they revealed the steam deck they said they were switching steam os from debian to arch
1:01:33SPEAKERand this sort of like they didn't go into detail but they basically said we're doing this because
1:01:39SPEAKERuh it gets stuff faster it's just like more up to date and okay i i assume the proton stuff is
1:01:45SPEAKERprobably the the major player there yeah and you guys made it sound like i mean they safeguard the
1:01:51SPEAKERos enough from people stumbling into mistakes that it's probably not an issue for most people but it
1:01:55SPEAKERsounds like you have actually dug into the command line and like trying to do some low level stuff
1:02:00SPEAKERwith this like how was that yeah i mean they they stopped me from breaking it basically with their
1:02:05SPEAKERwith their uh restrictions that they put in place i probably would have broken this thing
1:02:10SPEAKERby now uh if those weren't there but basically uh the way i understand is they have they've locked
1:02:15SPEAKERdown permissions on the sort of the part of the partition that steam os lives on and then there
1:02:23SPEAKERare a few other uh partitions that if you're trying to install some sort of basic arch tools
1:02:31SPEAKERthat you would use for assembling uh executables basically the partitions are too were too small
1:02:40SPEAKERfor me to be able to install those tools um i don't remember the names of them off the bat but
1:02:45SPEAKERlike using pac-man which is like the the kind of the arch built in um the compiler the right word
1:02:52SPEAKERpackage manager the package manager yeah basically i needed to install several hundred megabytes of
1:02:58SPEAKERstuff to like a 200 megabyte partition for that all to work properly and i just couldn't do that
1:03:04SPEAKERand i couldn't access the bit of the file system that a lot of stuff wanted to to go to unless i
1:03:12SPEAKERput in the um used the sort of the unlock code that they eventually like sent us out in an in
1:03:20SPEAKERan faq and i was just like do i really want to like break this thing two days before you know
1:03:26SPEAKERreview embargo no i don't is the answer what's the restore process if you do make a mistake do you
1:03:32SPEAKERhave like a thumb drive with the os on it or is it on a recovery partition or something i think
1:03:36SPEAKERthey have uh an image of steam os that you can download um but it's not it's not like baked into
1:03:42SPEAKERthe system you would you would have to i'm sure put it on a thumb drive and stuff but but the the
1:03:47SPEAKERnice thing about the way they have this thing set up and the way arch works um and i'm sure there
1:03:52SPEAKERare going to be some arch linux users who know much better than i do sort of like the stuff that
1:03:59SPEAKERi'm stumbling around talking about but basically you can you can build your own packages on arch
1:04:06SPEAKERand they're all going to tie into um you know a central version of files you have installed like
1:04:14SPEAKERthe the equivalent of direct x right or you can use uh the basically the app browser that they have
1:04:22SPEAKERjust built into the kde plasma interface called discover which will install a flat pack and the
1:04:29SPEAKERflat pack of a program includes everything it needs all in that bundle so potentially
1:04:36SPEAKERyou're installing the same version of direct x or whatever the equivalent is in this case
1:04:41SPEAKERseven times if you're installing like seven different programs on your system that each
1:04:48SPEAKERare contained in their own flat pack right kind of wasteful in terms of storage plenty of like
1:04:53SPEAKERhardcore arch linux users that i saw on forums when i was kind of stumbling around figuring out
1:04:58SPEAKERwhat all this stuff was or like i don't use flat packs because they're wasteful and also i don't
1:05:03SPEAKERlike them for these other reasons but if you're on the steam deck with its locked down version arch
1:05:10SPEAKERand you can just go and click install on a flat pack and it works perfectly and you don't have
1:05:15SPEAKERto mess with anything and like it's great then you know that is a pretty good like way to get people
1:05:23SPEAKERwho don't know how to use linux you don't know how to use the terminal into that desktop environment
1:05:28SPEAKERand be able to do like at least some of that advanced stuff outside of the steam interface
1:05:34SPEAKERitself flat packs help you avoid the problem of hey i have two applications and one requires
1:05:40SPEAKERpython 3.6 and one requires 3.9 and like never the twain shall meet so yeah i don't know who
1:05:47SPEAKERcame up with it it's another containerized application format similar to snap or not
1:05:52SPEAKERtoo dissimilar from docker um yes there are some some grognards i think are not are not big fans of
1:05:57SPEAKERthat kind of thing but um do they expose is there is the is the terminal there and present and
1:06:03SPEAKERexposed in kd plasma like could you just plug a keyboard and go yeah it's there you can you can
1:06:07SPEAKEReasily totally you can get into it yeah i've just put a usb-c keyboard into the thing and it it
1:06:12SPEAKERworked totally fine i was able to do some stuff on the terminal but a lot of the commands that i
1:06:18SPEAKERwas trying to input were just tying into system stuff that either wasn't configured or was trying
1:06:25SPEAKERto change a file that i just like wasn't able to to change and i didn't know enough uh about arch
1:06:31SPEAKERlinux at first to know like was i doing something wrong or was it you know the way they had
1:06:38SPEAKERbasically they had it configured for steam os and i think it was mostly the latter it was just
1:06:42SPEAKERlike i was not allowed to access files that on a kind of normal clean state clean slate arch linux
1:06:49SPEAKERsystem you would be able to change but it took me a while to like figure out of just every time
1:06:54SPEAKERputting in a command and it being like like cannot access like auto execute or whatever and i'm like
1:07:00SPEAKERbut why why not and then going through all the steps to fix that and it not being able to be
1:07:06SPEAKERfixable and eventually i was just like or i can use this uh app browser to click install dolphin
1:07:13SPEAKERand install pcsx2 and then i can just boot them and they work and it's great and that's what i did
1:07:20SPEAKERthat's cool it's it's cool how open this thing is it's i'm kind of excited for people to really
1:07:24SPEAKERget their hands on it and start tinkering with it like install every distro under the sun
1:07:27SPEAKERand see what else they can do awesome well thanks wes yeah thank you guys for having me on uh i am
1:07:33SPEAKERlooking forward to seeing you talk about the theme deck in six months with like whatever other version
1:07:39SPEAKERof linux somebody has put on it or running a quake server on on the steam deck or or something like
1:07:44SPEAKERthat i'm sure there'll be some fun stories coming out of it you know norm ran off before he had a
1:07:48SPEAKERchance to plug anything but if you do if you have anything you want to plug now's the window yeah i
1:07:52SPEAKERmean you can go read my review on it uh on pc gamer there's been a bunch of videos already about
1:07:58SPEAKERkind of you know hardware benchmarking this thing so i just spent a lot of time playing games on it
1:08:03SPEAKERand talking about what kind of games i think are a good experience on it and and why and uh we've
1:08:09SPEAKERgot some interviews with with gabe newell as well as the steam dev uh developer engineering team so
1:08:17SPEAKERyeah check out pc gamer for that stuff well that was a lot of steam decking no it turns out i we
1:08:24SPEAKERasked after we turned off the recording it doesn't get warm that was the one thing we forgot to talk
1:08:28SPEAKERabout it but it doesn't uh uh west west said that it gets you can feel warm air coming out of the
1:08:33SPEAKERvent at the top but it doesn't like heat up like a gaming laptop does when you set it on a comforter
1:08:37SPEAKERat a best western and and it starts to overheat and then you hear the smoke and the bad things
1:08:42SPEAKERcome out of it please don't set your brand new steam deck on the comforter at a best western
1:08:47SPEAKERthey don't watch those things yeah don't yeah no don't set anything on the comforter at a best
1:08:52SPEAKERwestern actually so i stayed in best westerns a lot when we when we first moved to california
1:08:57SPEAKERbecause we would travel and we had a dog and there all the west best westerns on the west coast that
1:09:02SPEAKERwe found were our dog friendly so you could bring the dog and stay in the room and like you didn't
1:09:06SPEAKERhave to you know deal with the the even worse hotels and best westerns well not great reliably
1:09:13SPEAKERconsistent okay maybe i'm being harsh would you say the best western is the waffle house of hotels
1:09:18SPEAKERmotels i should say okay now that's a loaded question because you know how i feel about
1:09:22SPEAKERwaffle house i would say it is the perkins huh of of inexpensive traveloges quasi diners
1:09:35SPEAKERyeah yeah hey you want to hear something trippy though one of the best wine sellers i've ever seen
1:09:40SPEAKERwas in the restaurant in a best western in canada because once you get out of the united states best
1:09:44SPEAKERwestern is actually not a bad chain huh like the best western in whistler had an amazing restaurant
1:09:50SPEAKERlike a really one of the top meals i've ever eaten and this bonkers wine cellar underneath it it was
1:09:55SPEAKERin a best western michelin stars and a best western it's more likely than you think there you go uh
1:10:00SPEAKERbrad you know what time it is time is it it's the inevitable time in every episode when we thank our
1:10:04SPEAKERpatrons thank you patrons thank you patrons as always for everybody who supports the show we
1:10:09SPEAKERreally appreciate you brad and will made a tech pod is 100 percent listener supported that's
1:10:13SPEAKERsomething i've never said it under one of our podcasts before oh no no they were always
1:10:18SPEAKERsupported by other people that's right it was ever true until now yeah i couldn't have said that at
1:10:24SPEAKERtested.com uh as always thank you to all of our patrons including and especially our executive
1:10:31SPEAKERproducer tier patrons including paddle creek games makers of fractured veil andrews silosky
1:10:37SPEAKERocto thorpe bunny crimes jacob chapel joel krauska bears bears bears david allen and james kammick
1:10:45SPEAKERthank you all so much we really appreciate you yes we do oh everybody yeah um and if you if you
1:10:51SPEAKERwant to find out more about the patreon if you want to support the tech pod you can by going
1:10:54SPEAKERto patreon.com slash tech pod uh where any membership level will get you access to our
1:10:59SPEAKERfabulous tech pod discord full of beautiful nerds and smart people sharing information and knowledge
1:11:04SPEAKERand things that they love and things that they don't love sometimes and like it's just a nice
1:11:08SPEAKERplace to hang out and talk to people who are share interests it turns out yeah if you want to if you
1:11:13SPEAKERwant to hear what separates your arch from your gintu there's a channel there is absolutely a
1:11:18SPEAKERchannel where you can find out yep if you want to talk about the if you if you want to if you want
1:11:23SPEAKERpeople who've spent thousands of hours listening to you talk on podcasts and find out highly
1:11:28SPEAKERspecific information about what microphone would suit your particular voice tone best
1:11:32SPEAKERthere's a channel for that too boy they've got the answers just ready to go yeah i mean that
1:11:36SPEAKERmight be more specific for you and me but uh so anyway uh the again the address is patreon.com
1:11:43SPEAKERslash tech pod we would love to hear uh from everybody who wants to support the pod and and
1:11:49SPEAKERwould love to see more always love to see more faces in the discord uh and as an added bonus
1:11:54SPEAKERnext week we were supposed to do q a this week but we're going to do it next week instead which
1:11:59SPEAKERmeans that i realized we we also need to thank our associate producer to your patrons because it's
1:12:03SPEAKERthe end of the month that's right this is when we do that uh so let's thank uh andre and burke arthur
1:12:09SPEAKERgeese dave eulian david fan graham banks jad rita jason neeland j maybe jorge pararia josh klein
1:12:18SPEAKERjulian mike bell nathan phelps ricin sanchi kumar steve lin tarry cox thomas shay and wedge thank you
1:12:26SPEAKERalso so much thank you and uh next week's question episode so if you have questions you can send them
1:12:32SPEAKERto tech pod at content.town we will turn them turn those q's into a's or you can use the questions
1:12:38SPEAKERseeking answers channel in the discord and do the exact same thing there that's right that's all i
1:12:44SPEAKERgot i just i'm just agreeing with you you're just excited you're brad brad is looking off staring
1:12:48SPEAKERinto space wistfully thinking about the street steam deck did you pre-order one i did not i don't
1:12:53SPEAKERi'm just not a big handheld video game player honestly like i play switch on the television
1:12:57SPEAKERevery chance i get see i you you live in a house with low competition for tv it's true that is very
1:13:03SPEAKERtrue my house has high competition for tv yeah no i get it i get the use case it's just not for me
1:13:08SPEAKERit's just not my use case the idea of sitting there in the living room playing god of war on my on my
1:13:13SPEAKERlap is very compelling to me uh but that'll do it for us this week we'll see you all next week
1:13:17SPEAKERthanks for listening everybody have a good week and don't forget to subscribe to the phosphod
1:13:21SPEAKERit's at phosphod.content.down bye everybody