The main benefits of SteamOS proper is that it is a distro that takes a very “windows” like approach to papering over/obfuscating a lot of the internals. And the main feature it has over the competition is that, because Valve have so much control over the OS, the gamepad controls of desktop work a lot better.
But I want to say Aya also provide that, but in Windows? I know either they or GPD do that because that was a big reason I didn’t want to GET (probably) an aya neo: Not super huge on so much closed source software provided by a random company having that much control over my OS.
And… I am still not super huge on Valve having that much power. But I “trust” them more.
But curious if am missing something.
And I’ll add on. This should not need to be provided by the vendor. On Windows, they have pretty strong tablet/touch screen support which goes a long way with keyboard popups and the like. Linux needs to step up its game and make sure that gamepads can be treated as first class citizens input wise and distros/workspaces need to make keyboard popups in a similar state.
At least one of the main features is seamless suspend/resume. Not sure what the state of that is on Windows but I’ve seen a lot of people mention that SD feature specifically.
And with VRR in general it matters a lot less if you have a steady framerate. Pretty much my only complaint with the steam deck hardware is that it is not a VRR display. Much like with dlss/fsr, freesync/gsync is perfect for when you are running an emulator with wild performance swings or at the limits of your hardware.
And, back in the day, you could do weird stuff with telling windows that your monitor had a different refresh rate to do this but it was far from pretty and prone to strange behavior.
What functions are you referring to?
The main benefits of SteamOS proper is that it is a distro that takes a very “windows” like approach to papering over/obfuscating a lot of the internals. And the main feature it has over the competition is that, because Valve have so much control over the OS, the gamepad controls of desktop work a lot better.
But I want to say Aya also provide that, but in Windows? I know either they or GPD do that because that was a big reason I didn’t want to GET (probably) an aya neo: Not super huge on so much closed source software provided by a random company having that much control over my OS.
And… I am still not super huge on Valve having that much power. But I “trust” them more.
But curious if am missing something.
And I’ll add on. This should not need to be provided by the vendor. On Windows, they have pretty strong tablet/touch screen support which goes a long way with keyboard popups and the like. Linux needs to step up its game and make sure that gamepads can be treated as first class citizens input wise and distros/workspaces need to make keyboard popups in a similar state.
At least one of the main features is seamless suspend/resume. Not sure what the state of that is on Windows but I’ve seen a lot of people mention that SD feature specifically.
There’s also the global framerate limiter. Pretty sure that’s impossible to do on Windows.
The AMD driver can cap your game framerate globally, 90Hz instead of 144Hz saves a lot of power but is still much smoother than 60Hz
And with VRR in general it matters a lot less if you have a steady framerate. Pretty much my only complaint with the steam deck hardware is that it is not a VRR display. Much like with dlss/fsr, freesync/gsync is perfect for when you are running an emulator with wild performance swings or at the limits of your hardware.
And, back in the day, you could do weird stuff with telling windows that your monitor had a different refresh rate to do this but it was far from pretty and prone to strange behavior.