I just find it abit ironic this is supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread even tho I’ve read multiple times Steam has bloatware and Spyware on it , it was created by two former Microsoft employees and has DRM and yet they used Linux as operating system does nobody see any irony in this ??
I like to play cheap games (compared to other consoles) and it works well. I have more than 750 games on Steam. Nearly all of them are proprietary software anyway. It’s okay, as they’ll work for years to come. More than what I could expect from Windows.
Which bloat and spyware are you talking about?
The “former Microsoft employees” have worked at Microsoft when they were still known for decent software, albeit bad business practices. which is why they left.
Steam Deck is repairable, uses FOSS components, contributes back to Linux due to some Valve devs submitting patches upstream…
It’s just a company selling their proprietary blend of Linux on their hardware. Bootloader is unlocked. Why should I have an issue with that? The hardware is mine, when they decide to make SteamOS shit I can just install Bazzite.
Please realise Open Source doesn’t mean it needs to come from people. Linux is made by lots and lots of corporations, and that is a good thing. Valve won’t take over KDE or Wayland or whatever components they sell, because there is no need to.
Valve’s revenue stream requires defending the app store. I look at the Steam Deck as being the first time it made sense for a large company to invest in consumer Linux, since it defends access to the app store.
Is it worth buying a used or refurbished one? The brand new ones are a bit out of my price range.
Sure, they’re quite repairable. If it’s used I’d certainly test it extensively as the previous owner could’ve overclocked it or could’ve done other things to “mod” it in a negative way.
There’s also other handhelds which have similar features. The Asus ROG Ally comes to mind.