Hello!
I often see people with different setups to dock their steam deck and play, steam deck docked to portable monitor, custom stands, TVs, or whatever.
But I’ve only seen people using it as their main PC while actively searching for it, and I get the feeling that that’s not a very common use, and that surprises me, as I believe its a hell of an offer to buy the cheapest model (like now 330€ LCD), and run that docked as your PC. When you want to play or bring it to the couch, you can do so because you got a cheap steam deck not a cheap pc. (I know laptops exist, but c’mon)
Anyway, my uses for the steam deck are:
- Gaming (Town to City is my new favourite)
- Programming
- Studying
- Consuming media
- Breaking and fixing my home server
Normal stuff for a PC with the added bonus of
- I get tired and go to bed
- I get tired, undock it and dock it back on the living room to play on the couch
- Get out of classes to rest and play it on the car for half an hour
Anyway, I’m getting further and further away from the title, but again, this thing fascinates me. I used to have;
Main pc + 2 screens
then it was
Main pc +1 screen + 1GF with 1 Steamdeck with 1 screen
And now
1 me with 1 steamdeck and sometimes both screens (which really impressed me when I first saw it), and my gf with my used to be main PC.
And so, for you, what are your favourite or niche use cases for it? Do you daily drive it as a PC? Do you feel like the steam deck lacks anything for a good desktop experience?
pd. Yes, I really made the post image for this one post, and it absolutely took me too much time for what it is.
Nah. Instead I use my desktop PC as a Steam Deck. My arms are getting so ripped from having to carry the whole setup around.
I was visiting a friend by train and took my deck with me. Best experience ever for a good session of Age of Mythology!!
Awesome!
I use my Steam Deck as a PC. I mainly use it for web development. The integration between my containerized services (via distrobox) and my IDE was giving me problems, so I went with Nobara Linux. I don’t do a ton of gaming on it these days, but when I do, it is usually 2d games. They work absolutely wonderfully. At the end of the day, it’s just a laptop, and in desktop mode (with an external monitor and keyboard), it is perfectly capable of everything I need it to do.
Are you dual booting Nobara and SteamOS or just Nobara?
It’s just Nobara for now. If I decide to upgrade the storage I may choose to dual boot, but, I haven’t had a need to yet
I’m one of those weirdos. It’s my daily driver desktop PC.
I ordered mine with the same intentions as everyone else in the Great Queue of 2022 and waited patiently until it arrived in June. The week before it did, my old laptop finally kicked the bucket.
At first I intended to replace that laptop, but… I docked up the Deck and fell in love. I had already divorced Microsoft and was on Linux anyway, so it was an easy transition, and the Deck is far more capable than that old laptop was, so weirdly… it was an upgrade. More capable on daily tasks, and more portable when I had to be on the go with it. It’s been a great several years, and no regrets.
I have an aging computer and have test driven the Deck with a dock as my main. I don’t do a lot of heavy lifting with it because i have a homelab so i mostly need a simple workstation. It’s def more than capable for that task.
I recommended my little brother get a steam deck and dock because it was within his budget, a gaming PC was not. He’s had an absolute blast and been able to play every game he’s wanted to. Mouse and keyboard and display work fine.
I only use the 256GB LCD Steam Deck as my desktop that I do all my work on (graphic design, web development, illustration, Blendering, etc.)
I have it permanently hooked up to a stamd/dock connected to my monitor external storage and graphic tablet, with the keyboard and mouse being wireless. I get to put videos or reference boards on the built-in display that works as a cute little secondary monitor too.
I’m still on SteamOS stable. Almost all my apps are Flatpak, but I also have Nixpkgs set up for anything else. Also Distrobox, I suppose, but since installing Nixpkgs I’ve not had to use Distrobox at all. Occasionally I miss having a newer kernel. But not enough to want to install any other distro.
It’s been a blessed couple of years. No complaints!
Main pc +1 screen + 1GF with 1 Steamdeck with 1 screen
Did girlfriend come with a SD, or SD came with a girlfriend? Can I find them as a bundle?
I needed a
girfriend for my SDSteamdeck so my gf could play by my side :)I believe the bundle (gf+SD) isnt on sale rn, but I think you should marry any woman you see gaming on a SD, that’s my grain of salt
When I travel I take the deck and a Bluetooth keyboard with a trackpad. It works fine as a laptop in a pinch. With an external monitor it’s a perfectly serviceable PC.
My Steam Deck has been my primary and only PC for almost 2 years. My laptop that I had broke and instead of buying a new one I decided to buy adapters and a portable monitor. I rarely game on it but manage my homelab and do web development.
I’ve been trying some different distros over time and currently I’ve been sticking with NixOS, however it’s been giving me some minor inconveniences here and there so I’ve been thinking of moving back to Nobara again.
When I do game I never really leave desktop mode and just play it normally. Lately I’ve been playing Peak, No Man’s Sky, Stardew Valley and occasionally some VRChat.
Overall, it’s great, my steam deck works well as a secondary screen while plugged into my monitor. I place my chats and stuff there and then I do whatever else on the main screen.
Is it LCD or OLED? I’ve heard a couple of times people keep the steam deck screen off while docked to prevent burn-in on OLEDs, but idk if that is a real concern with the steamdeck?
It’s my daily driver as well, I’ve had both LCD and OLED, and native display is normally off for both when I’m docked to my monitor. Personal preference, I don’t need the small Deck screen as a second monitor 99% of the time when I’m setting five feet (1.5m) away, and I don’t like losing my mouse cursor in it.
Mines an LCD. So I don’t really worry about burn in on it. However my portable monitor is an OLED which I do worry about burn in on so I have my screen off time quite low.
OLED burn in isn’t an issue because you can replace the screen inexpensively if it does burn, and I’ve never heard of burn in on an OLED SD. Can keep the screen off anyway because it’s too small to be of use on a desk.
Burn in is a problem on stuff like OLED tvs because your options are to warranty or chuck the tv and get a new one if it burns. Steam deck is repairable.
I’m not sure if it’s still the case but Pewdiepie was using his as a home server.
That’s impressive and cool :)
Wow I never thought of that. If I ever buy a better deck I know what I’m doing with the old one.
My friend has been using theirs for several years to manage their home server and for gaming. They tend to have it docked by the TV and use KDE connect and/or a trackball mouse and keyboard for server stuff and an 8BitDo controller for gaming.
They haven’t seen the need for a dedicated console since and they had been gaming on playstation for decades prior to getting a Steam Deck
I have a privacy oriented raspberry pi 400, that i use for my web browsing, banking, office, microcontroller and video conversion stuff.
Steam Deck is for games and 3d modelling and other stuff that rp400 might not have enough power for.
Steam Deck is mostly 90% on desktop mode mounted on a dock with external display, mouse and keyboard.
I keep my personal stuff out of Steam Deck because I don’t trust steam + games data gathering.
I allowed my son to scavenge my old desktop PC, because I didn’t need it anymore.
Only gripe is that Arduino IDE is shit on both Steam Deck and RP400, but so far Thonny and micropython has been adequate.
Wow the raspberry thing is cool, and after seeing a streamer get scammed 30k worth of crypto for downloading a steam game, separating gaming from banking and such seems smart
If somebody is inspired to get one, I’d recommend getting raspberry pi 500. The 400 is OK, but needs a hefty overclocking to run most robust webpages smoothly. It can still get a little sluggish on really bloated webpages, like using steaming services from a webpage.
Good thing is that you can overclock it quite far before you need to modify the default cooling setup.
Perhaps an intel 100 or 150 would be better in this regard?
True. For example lattepanda is not a bad option, if you don’t mind the price and availability is not a problem.
thats really cool, thanks for the recommendation
I guess, most people who buy a steam deck already own a PC.
Would be the same for me. I’d get a steam deck to game on the go, but I already have (multiple) PCs. So why would I replace my PC with a Steam Deck?
It might be an use case for a student or other young person who is getting their first device, but then again I feel if you have only one device, a laptop is the more sensible, more versatile choice.
I’m pretty sure that for most people a steam deck or similar device is a secondary or tertiary device.
Yep, started of with the stock OS and distrobox for dev stuff. I had occasional issues with multi monitor setup so ended up just using 1 on its own.
Recently put cachyOS handheld on it instead.
No problems with it so far. For gaming I mainly use it hooked up to either a monitor or TV but handheld works fine too.
Dev wise, I’ve gone down the docker rabbit hole and had no issues so far with it.
I sometimes do but it’s not my main desktop PC. I have a notebook that’s much more powerful but when I left the notebook in my backpack besides the apartment door and sat down at my desk already, I may be too lazy to get up again and then grab whatever is the USB-C dockable device nearby. (Sometimes it’s also my Samsung phone for DeX desktop.)
Steam Deck is artificially power-constrained. That affects desktop use as well. Everything is just that bit less smooth than a Ryzen 9 system that’s not constrained to handheld power consumption.
