u/_spiffy

One install is fine! you just need to add it as a non steam game for each different steam account! (assume save progression doesnt matter as much)

I have an 8 and a 7 year old who both have their own steam accounts as child accounts within my steam family. Both of them have access to a profile on the steam deck(though I have 2 decks so they can each use one at the same time) and they for the most part just work.

The steam user profile changes but the account the steam deck runs on doesn't. So some things stick around. Controller pairings and the like just work. Steam profile specific configs need to be done multiple times for each user (steam input custom mapping, etc) but I try and mostly stick to deck verified games for my kids because they really do just work.

I had a dock for a while and it also just kinda worked. But I didn't have to do much tweaking. The dock broke after a while though(jsaux not valve) and I never bothered to replace it since I ended up just installing moonlight in my tv and sunshine on my gaming PC(also Linux).

I don't have any experience with heroic launcher, but I did set up prism and Minecraft on their profiles and it just worked with the right deck compatible mod bundle.

The biggest issue I have found is sea of thieves will default to whichever the last signed in account is on any profile, so I just signed into it on my daughter's account and don't play it on the deck myself.

Docking it made it a bit more complicated for us as well, mostly because the kids don't know much about the tv inputs and honestly getting them set up would just take me a few seconds to turn it in, grab the charged controllers and get them to the home menu so I never really bothered to teach them it. But that's a non issue unless I buy another dock at some point in the future. They both prefer to be in mobile mode on the couch anyways.

I love these posts and always look forward to them. Take care of your health! As someone who recently found out my health and lifestyle are about to change drastically. You absolutely need to make sure you take care of you.

Get some Darn Tough socks! I've been using them for years and outside of the initial purchase I've been rocking free socks!

I have set up a steam family and created accounts for my kids. Other than only having one copy of some games or games not supporting family sharing it's been great. I have control over the games they can see in their libraries and we can all play different or the same game with enough licenses at the same time. We often play valheim together.

The LCD one is 512GB which hasn't been an issue for them so far. They mostly just play valheim and portal/portal2, sticky business and snakeybus. I figure once they get older they will have access to more games and will need more space. But I'm hoping at that point they are involved financially in the purchase so they will have some control over what they get.

I bought two steam decks of which one was at launch and the other was the limited edition OLED one. Both of which get daily use. My kids play them regularly. I play them regularly. If my wife wants to get another computer in the future, I would probably recommend she get something cheap and buy a steam deck to game on. It works quite well for northgard!

My kids (7 and 6) enjoy valheim, Lego Star wars, deaths door, portal 2 and spiritfarer

Northgard primarily! It's been wearing my trackpad smooth.

I would just like to see more games be a bit friendlier with settings. Give me some real potato settings or focus a bit more on optimization so I can play stuff without having to futz with settings so much.

I keep getting lost! But then I find secrets I walked by and vacuums I can pet so it's worth it. But the colours can be really difficult. I find I use the flashlight quite a bit while exploring. I've been playing half on the OLED steam deck and the other half on my PC(standard LED) and the colours seem better on the steam deck.

Sifu and Selaco