Frankly, it seems somewhat self-evident based on the fact that Valve chose a Hawk Point 2 CPU (last gen laptop CPU with 2 big and 4 little cores) with a last gen laptop RX7600M GPU on a desktop, and also the fact that Valve calls them “semi-custom.”

But here’s the analysis: https://youtu.be/sJI3qTb2ze8

Depends on how you loosely you feel about “why”. Was battery life a consideration? Sure. But it wasn’t really the primary consideration. Valve’s current track record is that they are masters at making a product that’s surprisingly workable out of scrapyard parts that they got for cheap.

Valve didn’t design the Steam Deck’s chip - AMD designed it for Microsoft initially before the deal fell through. Then AMD offered the chips to Valve for cheap to recoup the costs.

Likewise, Valve didn’t intentionally choose the parts in the upcoming Steam Machine. Valve just bought AMD’s excess stock. That’s why the Steam Machine uses such an unusual and unbalanced CPU/GPU combo.

I honestly think SD2 is going to use x86, not for any particular reason, but because AMD is most likely going to have excess stock that’s x86 at the time that Valve designs it

I think it really depends on your definition of what counts as year of Linux. Will Linux usage ever beat Windows or Mac? Of course not. But it can definitely get popular enough that companies have to think really hard about whether they need to support Linux or not. And meanwhile, Linux isn’t going to get popular overnight (or in a year, for that matter). So do you consider the year of the Linux to be the end of growth? Middle of growth? Or beginning of growth?

For me, I think year of the Linux desktop already passed in 2021, with the launch of the steam deck (where I’m defining year of Linux to be the point where Linux usage picks up and will hopefully end at a point where companies have to take Linux seriously)

Thanks, we had that issue but I think we just solved it by downclocking

This trick also works for a lot of other non-steam games - always good to keep this trick in your hat

My understanding is that automount is different from what you’ll need. The automount that you’re using is probably mounting when you log in, but you’ll probably want to mount when you turn on the computer.

For that, you’ll want to edit fstab. That’s a file that tells the system that you need to mount this drive during boot-up. On KDE, there’s a partition manager software that can edit fstab through a GUI, but I’m not sure if there’s something similar in Mint. If not, the file is in /etc/fstab. Make sure to double check for typos when you edit fstab because errors can prevent your computer from booting up properly. Or just be proficient at terminal so that you can undo the changes when you make an error.

Word of advice: use the nofail option for secondary/storage drives

Not finicky and Arch-based don’t really go together well.

Just go with Bazzite or something, the exact distribution doesn’t matter (as long as it’s not Arch). The more important choice is the desktop environment, which is the user experience and looks of the distro. If you’re moving from Windows, I assume you’ll like KDE Plasma. It’s basically Windows 10 but modernized, with a more aesthetic and clean look. (It’s also paralyzingly hypercustomizable, so I would recommend using the default settings initially and slowly learning the settings, rather than diving into the settings headfirst the moment you install)

I personally use Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE Plasma), but it’s slightly more annoying to set up than something like Bazzite

Strange - haven’t gotten any issues myself. Kubuntu 25.04 here

I’m guessing this would be Valve Fremont? At least, the name would make sense for what we know about Fremont. From what we can tell, it’s a Steam Machine-like PC, designed for a console-like experience. Runs a Hawk Point APU with its iGPU stripped out, paired with an RX 7600 GPU, iirc

KDE Plasma’s default monitor is quite good, but you’ll need to edit the page to reveal all the hidden trackers that aren’t shown by default. Great if you already use Plasma.

I also tend to use CoreCtrl and Steam’s inbuilt monitor (which I think is based off Mangohud?). CoreCtrl has a nice UI (much better than LACT, IMO), but it’s no longer receiving active development, so it doesn’t support the current generation of GPU’s. Meanwhile, Steam’s monitor is convenient but, well, it only works on Steam

There shouldn’t be a need to look through multiple folders. Check the path that I listed, it should be that one.

From what you describe, it sounds like you’ve already found it once on your own. That folder contains all the custom images (the default images are presumably stored somewhere else). Just put your custom image into that grid folder and name it the correct thing. It’ll work.

The path should be the same for non-steam games as well

2284631436 (the example id that I used) is the “game id” of Firefox on my steam deck, which I added as a non-steam game

That looks like the horizontal grid. All the custom images are in a folder in Steam (see below for the location). You should be able to copy an image into that folder, and as long as it’s using the correct name format, Steam should use that image just fine. You’ll need to know the game’s ID, but you should be able to figure that out by cross-referencing other custom images

• Image folder location: (steam directory)/userdata/(user id)/config/grid/

• horizontal grid format: (game id).(file format) (ex: 2284631436.png)

• vertical grid format: (game id)p.(file format) (ex: 2284631436p.png)

• hero (aka wallpaper) format: (game id)_hero.(file format) (ex: 2284631436_hero.png)

• logo format: (game id)_logo.(file format) (ex: 2284631436_logo.png)

• how to find game id: there’s no easy way to find it, but you can set a custom image for the game with any of the other options, then look into the folder to see what the custom image is called. You then should be able to figure out what the game id is by comparing it to the name format

Kubuntu 25.04 here. Did you edit the audio quantum setting? If not, you should. It may or may not be the same issue, but I would get occasional buzzing when playing games. It turns out the default audio buffer time is really small, so when you’re doing something CPU intensive (such as playing games), the CPU can’t consistently fill out the buffer on time, leading to occasional audio hiccups. Increasing the audio buffer time will slightly (ie, imperceptibly) increase audio delay and will give the CPU more time to fill out the audio buffer, which solved the audio issue for me. Try putting this line:

context.properties = {default.clock.min-quantum} = 1024

into /etc/pipewire/pipewire.conf.d/pipewire.conf

(you may have to create some folders and files).

Then restart and see if that fixes anything

I vouch for Kubuntu. It uses KDE Plasma, which is the exact same UI as SreamOS desktop mode. It’s based on Ubuntu, which is a very popular distro, so there’s a lot of support and apps that are packaged for it

You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)

If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs

Ive had that issue on Kubuntu. In the end it was one of my USB devices (specifically my controller) that was responsible for turning my PC back on. No idea why, but unplugging it stopped the entire phenomenon. Maybe check if one of your USB devices is doing the same thing?

While some see this as an academic lifeline, others view it as France capitalizing on a U.S. brain drain under anti-science policies

I don’t necessarily see how these are opposing viewpoints. Both are certainly true

I tend to like using flatpak, but for Steam, I find that installing it through their website (ie, actually going to their website and downloading the install file) is the best way to get Steam

I think people who view Wine/Proton as a crutch is missing the point. Even disregarding the fact that it’s introducing more people to Linux (me included), I think the bigger point to make is that the future of software (or rather, the emerging meta of software) is cross-platform. Think about all the web apps and Electron apps. The solution to the Linux compatibility issue is not to make a Linux version of the software, it’s to set up a system such that one version works for every OS. Wine/Proton is just an unusual extension of that software philosophy.