The Steam Deck has finally been surpassed — by a fork of Valve’s own experience - Bazzite turns the Asus ROG Ally X into today’s best handheld while putting Windows to shame.

What's the GN debacle?

Agreed. It's hard to believe anyone still recommends Asus after the whole GN debacle.

If you're in Asia, that debacle is a non-issue. Their support in Asia has been great for me. I'm on the Steam Deck camp but they're still my go to for gaming laptops.

As someone who owns neither but is impressed by this new boom in handhelds, I'm just happy that there are multiple options that are repairable and modular.

Not the case for me (at least for the original model). I used it a lot for a few month before it just... stopped charging, not with the supplied power cable, not with any other cable capable of charging it.

Weirdest of all it still detects usb-c for files & stuff, and charges with a phone cable, but the power delivery is so crap that it doesn't even show up as charging on the taskbar.

Sent it to general repair many times, they could not find out why it does that. It could be a windows problem, and i wish i was in the minority here, but it basically dead weight now.

I really love the deck's layout, the original steam controller only having one analogue stick killed it in my opinion. I could never get used to trackpads joystick emulation in games that were designed for an Xbox controller.

Grim Dawn, Factorio, Project Zomboid, FTL, Rimworld, Crusader Kings, Papers Please, Red Alert, Stacklands… the list goes on.

The Steam Deck’s trackpads (and Steam Input in general) are the most underrated and game changing aspects of the Deck and the old Steam Controller.

Playing keyboard and mouse, or mouse only games is totally doable and a joy on the Deck.

I’ve actually chosen to change some games from using gamepad to Keyboard and Mouse since the Deck is so good (for instance Factorio does do gamepad but it’s much better to just use KB&M via Steam Input).

I’d argue Grim Dawn is better on the Deck as I’ve got so many fancy radial menus etc set up, it’s actually easier to play than pressing the number row etc. And with the touch screen, you can rapidly tap different enemies without needing to touch the “mouse”.

Desktop mode I find just fine, steam controller was how we operated a htpc for a few years. Gamepad control worked for kodi, but anything else I had to drop into desktop and mouse around with the touchpads and triggers. Little bit more finnicky with the deck because of the size of the pads though.

I’ve been in Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island (1-3 are my jam) lately. Technobabylon. I’ve been working my way through games I haven’t had time for because of work, like Gemini Rue, the Rusty Lake games. I never played Day of the Tentacle back in the day either so I’m keen for that one. Va-11 Hall-a.

I could not get handy with fps games on the deck at all. I really wanted to run Borderlands 1 again but I was just getting murdred trying to aim with gamepad controls. Touch on right pad activating gyro set me on the right path, and that technique translates to my steam controller when I dock too. It feels more natural to be able to flick around like with a mouse as week. I briefly had a ps3 in 2010. I could not play fps well with a pad. I went from Sega to Dos, to Win 95/98, back to Sega. So I never played around with thumb joysticks. They were never part of my life until I bought a ps3 and just fumbled around with it.

Also Blood. I’m through the first two episodes but put it away for a while.

Been on a Kknd kick in the last few months. But it’s worked so well I’ll move into some other favourites when I’m done - Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Blood and Magic.

Last year I did my 3000th Fallout 2 run on my desktop pc, but now I’ve got a deck I’m planning to do my first ever fallout 1 play.

In Torchlight 2 (this has been my deck go-to for hack and slash), I play using both pads to move mouse. Getting into the rhythm of it, I easily cover the entire screen by flicking over one pad and setting off in the other. It’s a technique I started using on steam controller some years ago.

I haven’t played Grim Dawn on deck yet, but I understand people are playing it with native gamepad control, I’ll see how that goes.

I play a lot of point and click games (just replayed Grim Fandango), and text entry is way better with touchpads than joysticks. I've also played a couple city builders, and I prefer touchpads for that

That said, I prefer joysticks most of the time, especially for games with a lot of action like Metroidvanias and whatnot with a lot of fighting.

Different how? No difference in that the same scummy company sells them both.

Oh Bazzite is great, no doubt about it.

But it's not endorsed/supported in any way by ASUS so ROG Ally (X) compatibility isn't a given. ASUS could release a firmware update tomorrow that breaks compatibility (very unlikely of course).

Do you have any recommendations for learning more about Bazzite for such a use case?

No, via the internal display.

You probably don't play mouse heavy games, but if you like strategy games they're a must. Playing Stellaris, RimWorld, Crusader Kings or Factorio without a touch pad would get annoying really fast.

Anything which does not have controller support. Civ, for example. Lots of other similar strategy titles. They function as a great mouse replacement. I've even used them for first person shooters, where a trackpad in trackball mode can be more accurate for aiming versus a controller.

The right one, that is. The left is more often used for custom menus.

But the fact remains: you are restricted to games with controller support without the touchpads.

Games with partial controller support. I mean, I can hold the guide menu button and then use the right stick to move the mouse, but it sucks balls in comparison to just a quick swipe of the track pad. It makes the game feel fluid instead of wonky. For more complex games they act as controller augments. You can configure anything you want. When I use my PS controller, it just feels like it's missing a necessary feature without the touch pads. I think most people think of the track pads as a replacement for L3 and R3 and they were in the past. Now though, we have gyro and flickstick. To me, gyro and flickstick over track pads.

Mouse heavy games, e.g. Sterallis, you simply move the cursor with the touchpad and click with RT or LT and it works wonderfully

I've used them for custom radial menus and for moving the mouse cursor on games with no proper controller support, but I never use it on games with controller support; I would also like to know what other people use them for.

Same here, it's strange because within my social circles no one talks about them. I only ever use them for the custom menus but that's pretty much about it. Generally people seem to like using it on shooters but I've tried it and still prefer to play shooters with a mouse on my PC. Only ever play more controller friendly games on my Deck so it's not a big deal to me either.

Yeah I'm the same. People have said they're better for subtle movements like aiming but I find I tend to either move too little with them or spin out of control. Fat thumbs I guess.

I use them to get around shitty launchers too.

Desktop dungeon type games where you need to mouse over stuff.

Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both have Epic and GOG integration.

While I would love to have an official GOG Launcher on Linux, it would probably not work as well as Heroic’s integration.

Neither of the companies want to support Linux. Simple as that. Or else their launchers would work on Linux without needing third party ones. They don't see Linux user base as big enough to be worth the effort.

They likely already have regular executive meetings amongst the developers at GOG and likely have discussed this over a decade and decided is wasn't worth the effort. I wonder why?

Is there a newer method? I had to install Ubisoft Connect recently and it's still somewhat tedious having to set up all the Proton settings manually.