u/Telorand

>I rather just be first in line on the purchase day.

That's just it. The scalpers have bots that can both do this faster than you *and* at scale. The idea of being "first in line" is simply not realistic anymore. The lottery ensures some semblance of fairness for a limited supply brought on by the AI tech bros buying up production capacity for the next two years (or more).

Love the execution, though the loss of the second thumbstick would be a bit painful for certain titles. I'm fortunate to own the original Steam Controller, and using a trackpad as the right thumbstick is not great.

Still, this would be great as an emulation machine or any game that allows mouse and controller input at the same time!

Yep, and I bet you could find those on eBay or similar second-hand sale sites.

Currently have a laptop with a disk tray, and it could hypothetically work with some design considerations.

It will always be powerful enough to be a gaming handheld, because it's an excellent emulation machine!

Someone said that Distrobox is installed by default, so I'm wondering if you could install Firefox via distrobox and also install PWAsForFirefox to that app in the same container.

Wow, nice! I might have to make use of that myself.

Good luck! Incidentally, if you do end up going to CachyOS, I like `webapp-manager` for PWAs; should be in the `extra` arch repos. I've tried a few flatpaks for creating the necessary shortcuts, and I haven't found one that felt quite as nice. Do go try some, though, because maybe there's one that works better for you!

Dunno, honestly. If it's not preinstalled as part of the base image, it would be subject to the same removal issues as other packages.

1. Yes, kinda. This apparently breaks your ability to easily switch back to game mode, but you can still get back there by running the second command below and rebooting.

to boot into desktop mode by default

>`steamos-session-select plasma-persistent`

>to boot into gaming mode by default (and to fix inability to go back to gaming mode from desktop)

>`steamos-session-select gamescope`

2. It will last until each update. Updates happen via an A/B partition switch, so the other partition gets updated, then that one becomes the default for booting (both still technically boot, but the original image will be behind).

3. If you mean accidental changes *by you,* then it would be `steamos-readonly enable`. Note that changes happen via a persistent OverlayFS. Re-enabling *might* remove that overlay and your changes. Test with something easy to see if it persists. Note point 2 about permanence.

4. Don't bother messing with the system files if possible. Try to use an AppImage or Flatpak instead, as they exist in userspace and will persist over updates. The issue is that it's the core system files that are written to a new image each update, not your home directory. Your home directory and settings will persist.

If you want something modifiable but still atomic, Bazzite is a good option. You can apply rpm packages via layering, and you can install packages from other package managers via `distrobox`. You'll still have the safety of images as restore points. If you want a more traditional Linux experience, though, look into something like CachyOS.

Bazzite will present a similar experience to SteamOS. They're both immutable/atomic in the same way, but Bazzite has the ability to persist some system changes via package layering, and `distrobox` allows for installing packages in a semi-traditional way.

But I agree, if you want a more standard Linux experience, CachyOS and others would be better.

If I hadn't already bought one before all this AI-induced production chain ruination, but also knowing what I now know about it and how I've used it, I might still pay those prices for it.

Is there something wrong with ES-DE?

As an owner of the original Steam Controller *that I still use,* shut up and take my money.

I'm not a historian, and I feel like I can reasonably say since at least the early 1900s, so probably before even that.

This. Building a new supply chain is no small feat and can take years of planning. We are all caught on our back foot by these contracts, unfortunately, even though no money has been spent and the data centers haven't been built.

We're suffering for the collective delusion of billionaires.

I did not consent to exclude others. Fuck AI.

Directions unclear. Currently freezing in Antarctica, still can't buy a Steam Deck.

But the penguins are cute.

Tbh, you could probably do what you needed to with Pipewire and Wireplumber to route your audio devices correctly, but the learning curve is steep.

But I mention that to say that you are correct; installing Windows to solve this problem is gross.

I dunno. There's probably plenty of examples where companies soldered RAM instead of installing SODIMM slots, even when they had space. I agree that it makes sense, but sense isn't always a factor when a company starts crunching the production cost numbers.