Just forwarded this pic to my dad. I’ll be guiding him in installing Mint on one of his old Windows desktops this coming Saturday! Wish us luck in the coming years 😂

Wow, thanks, I’ll try this!

I’m using Vanilla, but AFAIK modded would work just as well. The key for playing old, pre-controller games meant for big monitors on the Deck are two features: Stream Input and Native Zoom. I always map one of the back buttons (usually) to Toggle Zoom.

Please post about your experience with modded Morrowind, I might want to try that too!

Darkest Dungeon, Black Reliquary, Pillars of Eternity, Cloudpunk, Pathfinder 2, Divinity 2 Original Sin, Slay the Spire, Witcher 1 and 3, Morrowind, Oblivion, Torment, to name just a few…

Different folks are at different stages of their journey. People are allowed to post about their thoughts and experiences.

Can you please elaborate on the security layer that flatpak adds? Some commentators here suggest Flathub is not secure.

Yes, that’s what I meant. I take courses using Firefox in desktop mode. The Unity course was one of them.

Yep. I listened to a course on Coursera about Unity game development (alas, Unity), and installed Unity Hub and the engine, and made actual (simple) games on the Deck it self using a keyboard and TV. Then I was able to test play the said games on the Deck right there. Here are the links to the games if you care to check them out:

• https://moormaan.itch.io/solar-system-project-for-the-coursera-unity-course
• https://moormaan.itch.io/2d-shooter-for-coursera

I was on a decade-and-a-half gaming hiatus (job, kids, the usual) until we got the Nintendo Switch early in the pandemic (and it was a saviour for the whole family). When the Steam Deck was announced, I hesitated a day or two (this probably pushed me three to four months in the delivery queue), but eventually realized that this is the device I’ve been waiting for my whole life (a Linux-based gaming hand held which can also be used as a general purpose computer) and ordered it. I had a dormant Steam account with only Civilization V in it (my wife got it for me on DVD when it came out, and that’s when I made the account). Since then, I bought >200 games and >100 DLCs (I started playing some of the lighter ones on my under-powered Linux laptop before the Deck arrived and continued on the Deck using cloud saves), finished multiple games, and felt sleep depraved for months.

Currently, me and my wife are playing Divinity 2 in split screen mode on the big TV. I also use the Deck for online courses, responding to emails, writing documents, surfing, etc. I created a desktop controls binding for handheld desktop mode usage which allows me to change zoom and brightness, bring up the keyboard easily, copy and paste, open the start menu, alt-tab between windows and go in and out of full screen mode etc. all with one or two motions of the controls. For example, I mapped swiping up and down on the left touchpad to mouse wheel up and down, and swiping left and right on it to SHIFT+mouse wheel up and down, allowing me to scroll in all directions using my left thumb. This allows me to use it for reading illustrated books where I need to zoom in and out and scroll across the page.

Steam Deck is a game changer in so many ways.

If your wife likes gaming, you can play co-op on the said TV! The dock is somewhat expensive, but any USB C hub with power in and HDMI out will do. We have a thin keyboard with the mouse pad built in and two blue tooth controllers - voila! For optimal play on large screens, you should run it in Desktop mode. For gaming, I still use the Big Picture mode for Steam to be able to navigate to games with the controller, but with the keyboard and mouse, you can use it for anything really. I’ve responded to school emails, done online courses, even built small games in Unity (did a course on it), all from the comfort of my armchair and big TV screen.

Steam Deck is so versatile, you’ll love it!

I hear you 😁. For whatever reason I stuck with the Vim tutorial and did it a few times over the years. Now I’m using the IdeaVIM extension in IntelliJ - that mode system is just sooo powerful. It has a horrible learning curve, yes, but if you manage to stick with it, it pays huge dividends. I probably know, like, 18% of all commands, and it completely changed how I edit files (mostly for coding, but also text).

Thanks for the pointers! Is there a way to legally obtain ROMs for these games if I don’t own actual physical games? I don’t even know if WII could have games delivered online, or it only used physical cartridges.

Can you please describe how you made Link’s Awakening run on the Deck? Is it the new, remastered version that is currently available for the Switch? I’m interested in getting Twilight Princess for the Deck somehow…

For viewing and commenting on this post, reading books and PDFs, doing Coursera courses, playing Minecraft Java edition…

Oh, I thought 3rd party apps stopped working on Reddit? Or is Sync different?

Coursera should let you take (most parts of most) courses for free but without the ability to get a certificate (which you cannot get from a ripped course either). Have you tried that?