Most Innovative Gameplay Award: Starfield
still funny
Most Innovative Gameplay Award: Starfield
still funny
Yooo is that a trackball? I made the switch to a trackball because I’m a giant hipster a few months ago, but mine is an index finger one, not a thumb one. Setup looks good - an XPS is definitely on my radar for whenever the Surface I’ve been using for the past seven-ish years dies, it looks so clean.
I think you meant to say “Deck” in the second paragraph.
But yeah I totally vibe with your observation. Something a bit ironic with this situation is that a big part of why other companies simply can’t provide the kind of service Steam does is copyright issues - XBox and Playstation both give out free games, Nintendo has their online service, but no option remotely compares to “make everything available on one app on the most modern device.” Imagine if Nintendo put everything that had ever appeared on the Wii/DS/Wii U/3DS/Switch shops all on one online storefront on the Switch, and let you attach ownership to your account and play everything you owned on the most recent device - then they would have about a quarter of the functionality that Steam has on the Deck, where you have access to every game you’ve bought for PC for as long as Steam has existed (and quite a few things from before that) and the number of things that have lost compatibility is pretty low.
Talk of advertisements in the Windows app menu was the last straw for me. I don’t use any programs that require Windows so I don’t have dual boot or anything - although I do have a KDE theme that mimics Windows 95/8 because that was what I grew up with and I’m super nostalgic for it.
That said, I’ve always been attracted to “third options”. My favorite phone was a Windows Phone, my motorcycle is from a small manufacturer, etc.
I haven’t used many, but after fucking with Ubuntu, Pop OS and Mint I switched to base Debian 12 and it’s the cleanest my desktop PC experience has ever been. My computer doesn’t do anything I’m not expecting it to, it doesn’t have any bloatware, every program I’ve installed has worked clean out of the box exactly as advertised (except for the occasional Proton/Wine wrangling which is universal).
I switched over to this script on my desktop, and I use NewPipe on mobile. The script requires you to disable your ad blocker for YT, and then uses a different method to bypass ads that hopefully google will be less likely to patch.