That might be a reason to maybe consider some competitors of the Steam Deck that are a bit more powerful (but have their own tradeoffs, primarily that the wholistic experience just isnt going to be as good as the steam deck is right now), I don’t know the Steam Deck might run 4k fine but I’d be hesitant to recommend it, that is so many fucking pixels lol
LogSeq notes: https://github.com/logseq/logseq A different approach to note taking & journal. Very nice looking, rich plugin ecosystem, could use some performance boost but I think they are working on it
My true love is Org Mode and Emacs, but honestly LogSeq feels similar in a weird way with its extreme simplicity but also confusingly powerful and open ended design.
I am EXTREMELY impressed with LogSeq, I showed it to someone recently and they straight up told me “this is the best software I have ever tried in my life!”… admittedly they didn’t know about PKMs, external brains, obscure powerful note taking, thinking and tasktracking software but also that is kind of the point… they could immediately see the power of these type of tools even though they didn’t know anything about them because Logseq is so straightforward and powerful.
Logseq + Syncthing (my favorite software period) is an INCREDIBLY powerful combination and honestly shits on 99.99% of office/task tracking/productivity/filesharing software from boutique productivity companies and multi-billion dollar tech companies alike. Like yeah… Syncthing isn’t a file backup utility, and Logseq has no built in simultaneous editing capacity in its current version but when you are talking about syncing edits of tiny markdown plain text files you can just basically forget all of that crap and just pretend you and the person you are sharing Logseq notes with are magically the same user making edits on a single device… and so long as you are reasonable with your editing pace and approach you can forget the nightmare of the cloud/corporate silos/subscription/surveillance-capitalism… COMPLETELY in the realm of notes and note sharing.
Crank the simple file versioning up to like 40 on your Syncthing share folder for Logseq, deal with the extremely rare file sync whenever it pops up through Syncthing’s GUI, preferably have one of the devices in the share network be a phone or raspberry pi that is online most of the time and never look back!
That is great to hear, definitely seemed like FreeCAD was REALLY basic in the past, but there is such a big gap for a really fully featured FOSS Cad software!
Well we can’t live without a modern game that acknowledges how awesome Total Annihilation is as an idea so effectively that means we can’t live without Beyond All Reason/The Spring Engine right?
I mean Forged Alliance Forever is amazing and I am zero percent bashing it… and ok I guess we would still have Planetary Annihilation, and that game looks pretty awesome too…so I suppose technically we could live without Beyond All Reason but I doubt even the Planetary Annihilation devs would be happy about that world, I know the FAF community wouldnt be happy lol.
Can you actually use steamdeck as a desktop PC though?
Depends on how many pixels you “need”. Running high resolution monitors, even for basic stuff can get costly performance wise pretty damn quick, but in my opinion that isn’t really asking the same question as whether the Steam Deck can be a good desktop.
You can absolutely use the Steam Deck as a desktop, I frequently use my Steam Deck in desktop mode… using the onboard controls. The only real limitation of the Steam Deck so long as you don’t expect it to be a top of the line gaming pc, is that most people who buy it are never truly going to be able to give anything else other than a mouse and keyboard an honest go, they are too impatient and won’t believe it can work but the sky is the limit for joystick+gyro input (our touchpad + gyro) for computers/gaming.
I would like to suggest a perhaps oddball steam deck utility here.
logseq!
logseq is a note taking, thinking and task tracking tool, it is open source and free and works superb on the steam deck when launched in gaming mode.
logseq has functionality for
-arbitrarily deep trees of headings
-easy linking between pages (think wikipedia)
-calendar and in depth task tracking and scheduling
-whiteboard simple visualization utility that can link back to notes
-ability to reference specific parts of a pdf or image from notes and link directly to it
You can then use the equally superb and also free and open source file sync software Syncthing to sync your logseq notes between different devices (say your phone and steam deck).
Using these two utilities you can easily build a cloud based task tracking and note taking system that has ZERO percent lock-in to any corporate silo or any subscriptions, you have complete agency over the whole thing and its pretty damn slick too!
Logseq notes are stored as plain text markdown which adds an extra layer of comfort in knowing if you take a bunch of notes on your games even if ALL development of logseq somehow went belly up those notes are stored in plain text markdown… so you arent going to lose them/have to rewrite them by hand.
(your notes being stored in plain text also means that even a comical amount of notes takes up only kbs of disk space)
Men need to find animal
Women needed to make sure it was safe to eat
Most food eaten wasn’t harvested from animals for most of human history in most cases. The obsession with hunting and meat consumption is a cultural one FROM CURRENT CULTURE (especially in the US where I live).
There really is no good reason to enforce our current conceptions of gender, masculinity and feminity on wildly big swaths of human history. It is always a lie best case, worst case it plays into dangerous narratives about who “men” and “women” are “”“”“naturally”“”“” supposed to be.
These kinds of reductive generalizations seem fun to make but they are hurtful, just plain wrong and honestly just kind of boring compared to the actual truth.
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Get nice headphones, I dont know good in ear headphone models to recommend off the top of my head but for over the ear headphones a used/refurbished sony XM3 or XM4 is a FANTASTIC way to spend $80-$160 on your love of music listening and nice comfy all day wear bluetooth headphones like these will pay for themselves after only a couple miserable airplane flights or travel trips involving loud public spaces you have to take.
As much as I just shit on “boutique” DACs for being all the same basically, there definitely very real differences in headphones between the bottom of the headphone market, branded “cool” headphones like beats and ACTUAL music enthusiast headphones like headphones from Audiotechnica or nicer Sonys or gestures at overwhelming number of options.
Just make sure the headphones you get are “efficient”, as in the decibels in volume they put out vs how much energy is put into them by the DAC/amplifier is a big ratio, that means your run of the mill DAC will be able to amplify your headphones to as loud as you want with audiophile quality :) .
If you want just that little bit more of audio quality in your bluetooth headphones (with not quite as good noise cancelling as Sonys) go for the Shure Aonic 50s. Damn they reallly really sound wonderful are very comfortable to wear for hours and hours.
Both models of headphones I mentioned have 1/8th inch headphone jacks and can be used without bluetooth, which in my opinion is a baselevel requirement for nice bluetooth headphones if JUST for the fact that it demonstrates more than anything else that the headphone manufacturer actually gives a shit about audio quality. I also dont trust bluetooth not to randomly shit the bed too lol (also like come on, how much does it cost to put a freakin headphone jack in a device these days, they are a literal commodity, it is always worth the couple extra cents in my opinion).
Look I am not trying to rain on your parade but I really really reallyyyyy dont want other people to get lost or confused by this misinformation. I really am not trying to be antagonistic here I just feel very strongly about how science is being misrepresented in the realm of audio engineering.
DACs are a solved problem in terms of amplifying music to normal listening levels for a normal pair of headphones.
let me repeat that in a different way
DACs are a commodity, they are like bic pens, pens used to be this difficult thing to produce quality versions of for cheap at a mass scale… and then someone invented the bic pen and now it is trivial… we are at that point with DACs and a lot of people are weirdly uncomfortable with that and want there to be different flavors of DACs and shit… but it is a lie people tell themselves because the reality in 2024 is boring with DACs… but also inspiring because hey basically any DAC you get your hands on is going to be of arbitrary quality.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html
Yes if you get a fancy pair of headphones with really high impedance that needs to be driven by an extra powerful DAC ok… but that is NOT the overwhelming majority of headphones. Crucially it isn’t that nicer DACs have “more warmth” or other nonsense, it is a question of HOW MUCH amplification a DAC can do before distortion begins, which means a less powerful DAC driving normal headphones at a normal level is never going to encounter conditions where it would differ in performance from a $3000 DAC hooked up to the same headphones.
To put as many nails into this coffin as possible let me also be clear, there are plenty of audiophile level headphones with very reasonable impedance values that can be driven by any random DAC in any random computer or phone in a fashion that is indistinguishable in blind A/B listening tests even with experts from the way an expensive DAC would drive those headphones.
Please stop pushing pseudosicence that is effectively trying to make listening to music into this exclusive thing where you are only getting the “real” listening experience if you have a signal chain full of psuedo scientific gear that costs hundreds if not thousands of extra dollars and yet doesnt make a difference that can actually be sensed by the human ear because the difference is imperceptible or not even perceivable by the human ear at a basic level in the first place.
People are broke as shit right now, they are struggling hard, please don’t encourage people to spend the precious little spending money they actually have on DACs that are marketed on effectively psuedosciencific differences (again in terms of what YOU can actually perceive as a human).
Spend money on nice headphones, on a nice neck pillow for your head while you listen, whatever just spend your money on anything else about the music listening experience other than an expensive DAC, PLEASE as an audio engineer I beg you.
If you really feel the need to buy a DAC, hell just buy the base level audio interface from Native Instruments or another trusted brand, those are DESIGNED for musicians and yes you are getting a bunch of hardware you dont need in that box too (like audio recording hardware and inputs) but even still it is going to run you far less than some of these “boutique audiophile DACs”.
Honestly I have really fallen in love with using normal programs fullscreened through steams gaming mode. It feels like a natural evolution of a window manager like i3, so much new stuff to learn and the exciting thing is this is all new for everybody!
Also in the realm of space games, Overload is a BLAST on the deck, especially in short bursts. It is a great way to quickly get locked into the Steam Deck for high intensity flying and fine aim control.
never heard of angry search!, I will have to try it
Discovering that the SD can be used as a computer too, with all the bells and whistles has been very fun.
A useful side note on that, the desktop app “store” is Flathub
I recommend Konqueror as a good file manager/web browser hybrid that you can run fullscreen in gaming mode on your Steam Deck if you add it to steam as a non-steam game.
https://apps.kde.org/konqueror/
I recommend CoreKeyboard as an alternate touchscreen keyboard to Steam’s for when you are in desktop mode or can’t use Steam’s keyboard for some reason.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.cubocore.CoreKeyboard
If you want file sync, try out Syncthing/Syncthingy, it is like DIY cloud file storage but it is actually really easy to set up.
https://flathub.org/apps/com.github.zocker_160.SyncThingy
Inkscape is a great vector image editor that runs really nice in fullscreen/gaming mode on the Steam Deck
https://flathub.org/apps/org.inkscape.Inkscape
Kdenlive is a fully featured video editor that runs really nice in fullscreen/gaming mode. You can record clips and then edit them right there on the deck which is really handy once you learn your way around Kdenlive.
https://flathub.org/apps/org.kde.kdenlive
One final recommendation, CoreHunt, this app doesn’t run well in fullscreen/gaming mode on the Deck but it is such a useful and quick file search utility (with good fuzzy search too) that I have to recommend it. If you are still getting used to the file structure of the Steam Deck and get lost/can’t find a particular file or folder location CoreHunt can save you a big headache just run it in desktop mode.
i havent tried it but you arent alone in feeling like it has staying power as a roguelike, people talk about it really highly even after long amounts of play time in my experience.
I have been playing a lot of games recently, but I think the one I want to highlight most is a game I have recommended in the past here.
Beyond All Reason is a free and open source RTS game inspired by Total Annihilation. It is based on the Spring RTS Engine and collectively BAR represents probably almost two decades of community development over the years and the game is at a really polished fun state at this point with a diverse variety of units and strategies.
The AI is good, it constantly probes your defenses, multiplayer is a blast with active lobbies, you can play PvP or PvE and there are a massive amount of maps. I know I am a weirdo but with gyro on I don’t find playing Beyond All Reason difficult at all. Am I going to out APM a mouse and keyboard player? Nope, but that isn’t really why I play RTS games anyways, and I can hold my own fine especially with the awesome action que system that BAR expanded on from Total Annihilation.
Honestly, I don’t think you are going to find a 3D RTS game with better performance on the Deck for the insane amount of units that get thrown around in a typical BAR match than the Spring RTS Engine/BAR, it is a fairly old 3d RTS engine that by today’s standards has extremely low system requirements but at the same time, everything is simulated. When a tank shoots at another tank in the Spring Engine, the tank aims and then launches a projectile… that projectile is modeled as a physical object and it may or may not hit its target. It is VERY impressive that there can be hundreds of units blasting it out on the battlefield in BAR, and the game just keeps chugging along somehow without melting my steam deck.
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
p.s. check out the new BAR trailer, can you believe this game is a free and open source game??!?
Playing Rounded right now, definitely have my eye on Peglin
Yeah I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea of making file paths case sensitive (i.e. usr/Folder/ is a different directory than usr/folder and same for files), but it is definitely a big mind fuck coming from an operating system where things aren’t really case sensitive in that way.
For big map vehicle and infantry shooters with vehicles that run decent on the Steam Deck I recommend
Easy Red 2 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/
^ I am as tired of ww2 shooters as everybody else, but this game is just damn fun, the maps are very varied, there are lots of quality of life details but the core gameplay is actually very realistic in terms of bullet/gun/vehicle mechanics, the AI can receive basic orders and there is a small but active multiplayer scene. The planes are a blast and the variety of realistically behaving armor is great. I appreciate that you can control the cannons on tanks from the driver seat or just focus on driving and let the AI shoot (or have a friend shoot of course). Performance is superb on the deck, especially for the amount of bots you can get on screen at any time.
For some reason Easy Red 2 is 9 bucks on steam??? Like why is it so cheap? I don’t know, but if you are upset at EA a great way to take out your anger is by buying this awesome game from an awesome indie dev who is the opposite of EA. Note this doesn’t play like Call Of Duty WW2, it plays like a realistic-ish shooter.
Operation Harsh Doorstop https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
^ A free moddable realistic tactical shooter on the unreal engine, it is still fairly limited and the playerbase isn’t huge yet but honestly it is really promising and is already a blast if you like realistic modern warfare tactical games, gunplay and movement feels tight and locked in, weapons feel chunky and the foundation is there for a lot of great mods. Vehicles and helicopters are very early stages but are being worked on. I think this is going to be a GREAT platform for big team shooter mods of all kinds of genres and it is nice that it runs decent on the steam deck so long as you are willing to turn everything down so you are basically playing ghost recon 1 but lol… I don’t really care. Check out the Star Wars mod on the workshop as an example of what kinds of different stuff can be done with modding on OHD.
Both Easy Red 2 and Operation Harsh Doorstop are great games to keep your eye on even if the specific experience of either shooter doesn’t attract you right now, I could easily see a fan made spiritual successor to Battlefield 1 being made using Operation Harsh Doorstop as the basis for example so both games represent a lot more than Yet Another Boring WW2 shooter and Another Boring Modern Warfare shooter lol.
Halo Infinite also plays well on the Steam Deck, though I wish performance was better and it sometimes just crashes.
There is of course, always Xonotic available right on the linux distro app store a 30 second download away in desktop mode :P
When Jupiter or Saturn finally wins some competitions are they going to get their medals in the form of precious metals aersolized into a vapor and stuffed into a mason jar?
If at first you crash and burn… well I mean it is Beam Ng so doesnt that mean you are actually playing the game right?