Me neither. I only (have to) use Windows at work, all my own PCs have been running Linux for decades…

I do know however, that WSL emulates most (but not all) Linux syscalls, so you can ran (nearly) all Linux programs on Windows - including WINE. There is also a driver in Mesa so that you can render 3D graphics from within WSL on any DX12 graphics card.

They will likely write their own emulator, but don’t forget about WSL. You can already run WINE on Windows, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could also run FEX+WINE on Windows for ARM.

by intercepting syscalls and executing them directly

Not only syscalls. FEX and Box64 also allow using native libraries instead of emulating them. That leaves basically only the game logic to be emulated.

Yep. The big question is if the gap will close enough that ARM chips indeed end up delivering better power efficiency with emulation than an AMD64 chip that delivers the same performance without emulation.

My bets would be on the native AMD64 chip ending up more power efficient. To be honest, I would not bet too much money though.

ARM based Deck would be a huge improvement to battery life. Don’t get your hopes up too high. You will need an emulation layer like FEX of Box64, and unlike WINE those do have quite a substantial overhead.

It is impressive how far those emulators have come, especially since they got the option to use native libraries instead of emulated ones, but the game logic itself will always need emulation…

This doesn’t mean it can’t be done, it just means that the ARM CPU needs to be pretty fast to counter the emulation overhead, and that’s why I have my doubts about the energy efficiency…

(Btw: I have tried running several AMD64 games on my A311D powered MNT Reform laptop with Box64. It’s impressive how well the emulation runs, and how many games are actually playable already. However, I also encountered a lot of games that don’t reach enjoyable FPS on that hardware. With a faster ARM chip though…)

This. There is very little need for third-party tools, as long as you don’t want to install a whole lot of games. After all, the installation process only happens once per game, and also without tools it doesn’t take very long.

As a step-by-step guide:

• Download the games from the GoG website. You can find them if you hover the site’s header bar, where your user-name is displayed. There’s a “Games” button which brings you to the list of games, where you can download the installers directly. The downloads are listed under “Download Offline Backup Game Installers”.
• Unpack the game installer.
  • Innoextract is your friend here. No need to run the installer, just unpack the files. Works with both, Windows and Linux games.
  • Alternatively, if it’s a native Linux game, you can just run the installer directly on the Steam Deck.
    • For Windows games you can theoretically also use Proton directly on the deck. However, the process is annoying, so I won’t go into details.
  • Alternatively, you can run the installer on your desktop PC and copy the files to the Deck via sftp.
• Add the game to Steam Library. This can be done in Desktop Mode. There’s a menu entry in Steam’s “Games” menu for that.
  • In the File Browser, you need to disable the file filter, as it (iirc) only shows .desktop files by default. You’ll want the game’s executable though.
• If it’s a Windows game, go to the game’s properties page in Steam, and force a specific compatibility tool for it, namely some recent version of Proton.
  • For native Linux games this step is usually not needed, but some very old games need to set the Steam Linux Runtime here.
  • For DOS games, check out my blog post about DOSBox on the Deck.
    • I don’t know how well it works on the Deck (never tried it, as I don’t feel it’s necessary), but there would also be boxtron.
• Last, but not least, use sgdboop to set some artwork.

I only use my Steam Deck while I am away from my gaming (Linux-)PC. The reasons for this are that for me a big screen wins compared to the small (and relatively low-res) display of the Steam Deck, and also the games I usually play play way better with mouse and keyboard than with gamepad input… Also, the Steam Deck is relatively heavy, so gaming in bed or stuff like that also isn’t that enjoyable…

That said, the Steam Deck absolutely shines in situations where I cannot access my gaming PC. I usually take it with me when I go for a longer train ride, and also brought it along for vacation.

Compatibility wise I am in the situation that all the games I ever tried are working on the Steam Deck, but that’s mostly because I have been using Linux exclusively for decades, and have made it a habit to check if a game is going to work before buying it. Though, in recent years that habit slightly changed, thanks to the work Valve has put into WINE development. While back when I switched to Linux most Windows games would not run via WINE, nowadays one can expect that almost all games do. It is still a good idea to check protondb first, of course. Also, there are still a few games that need tinkering to get them to run, and protondb usually has some info on how to do that.

One negative point I have to mention is battery runtime. It strongly depends on what one is playing, but very demanding 3D games can drain the battery in 1.5 hours. However, I am talking about the old LCD model here, the newer OLED models run longer with one charge (though I don’t know how long actually).

Another negative is the display resolution. Most games don’t mind running on 1280x800, but some do. This can lead to illegible text, broken UI, or, as is the case with Stellaris, a different UI that is less convenient to use.

And last, but not least, performance. The Steam Deck GPU is just enough for the built-in display’s resolution, and also only under the assumption that games are reasonably optimized. I have not yet been in the situation that I would have gotten unplayable FPS, but I have heard a lot about games only running with 20 FPS, and needing upscaling… So, basically don’t expect it to run Crysis (yes, I know that joke is old, and that the Steam Deck can run Crysis just fine).

No. Or rather, not yet. Valve has not released SteamOS 3 for anything other than the Steam Deck, but is planning to do so at some point in the future.

I honestly wouldn’t recommend SteamOS for anything other than a dedicated gaming device though. It excels at its use case of launching games via Steam, but for everything else it is quite cumbersome… I would much rather install a general purpose Linux distribution and run Steam on it.

I would rather trust GamingOnLinux here:

While it is not in any way officially supported by Valve, they have now released Windows drivers for the newer Steam Deck OLED model.

(emphasis mine)

To answer your question: I use an Xbox Series X gamepad. However I cannot recommend this cheaply built piece of junk.

I also tried to use the DualShock 4, but with that I had the problem that it interfered with my WIFI connection. I’m not sure if this is a general problem, or only happens with my WIFI base station though. Also, the DualShock controller has a severe drawback, and that is its short battery runtime, compared with the issue that you cannot easily switch batteries…

So, my recommendation: An Xbox One gamepad. While I don’t own one, I am using them regularly at work, and they basically have all the advantages of the Xbox Series X gamepads, and have a way better build quality.

I would also recommend Xbox 360 gamepads, but they need a dedicated base station, which is very expensive.

And their gamepads for Xbox were pretty good too. Past tense, because those of the Xbox Series X suck (including the “Elite”).

and adding it to Game Mode

Wait, waaaaaat? Lutris can do that? Okay, time to download it on my Steam Deck, like, right now. (Okay, not actually right now, I am at work, but today in the evening.)

Just to add this: Star Control 2 is not only free (as in free beer), it is free (as in free speech). The open source project is hosted on SourceForge (yes, that still exists), and has a website that is worth checking out: https://sc2.sf.net/

I have been using Linux for more than 15 years and would consider myself a semi-advanced user, but that thing in the screenshot - it scares me.

Android has become such an unusable mess otherwise…

I mean, you can’t even find the option to allow sideloading on my Android TV box without first enabling developer mode…

It really depends on what you are doing with your system…

On my main PC I want the full Linux Desktop experience, including some Gnome tools that require webkit - and since I am running Gentoo, installing/updating webkit takes a lot of RAM - I would recommend 32 GiB at least.

My laptop on the other hand is an MNT Reform, powered by a Banana Pi CM4 with merely 4 GiB of memory. There I am putting in some effort to keep the system lightweight, and that seems to work well for me up to now. As long as I can avoid installing webkit or compiling the Rust compiler from source, I am perfectly happy with 4 GiB. So happy actually, that I currently don’t feel the need to upgrade the Reform to the newly released RK3588 processor module, despite it being a lot faster and it having 32 GiB of memory.

Oh, and last, but not least, my work PC… I’m doing Unreal game development at work, and there the 64 GiB main memory and 8 GiB VRAM I have are the absolute bare minimum. If it were an option, I would prefer to have 128 GiB of RAM, and 16 GiB of VRAM, to prevent swapping and to prevent spilling of VRAM into main memory…

Anything 2D… Or emulators for old (2D) consoles, or DosBOX…

I already asked over at the GoL forums, but I think it’s worth repeating: Does anyone know where one might find a legal download of this game? https://www.mobygames.com/game/3132/rally-championship-international-off-road-racing/

It seems GoG does not have it, and I would really like to play it again - for nostalgia reasons.

You can also use Steam as a launcher. In Desktop Mode there is a menu entry “Add a Non-Steam game to my Steam Library”. For Windows games, you can just browse to their .exe file. After adding it to the library, you can open the Library Entry’s Properties page, and choose Proton as compatibility tool.

That way you get your non-Steam games in your Gaming Mode launcher.

To get nicer images, there’s a website named https://www.steamgriddb.com/ that also has a small Flatpak tool that you can use in Desktop Mode to set icons/banners for your Non-Steam games.

The Orange Pi Neo will ship with a custom version of Manjaro, and is imho the only Steam Deck competitor that is even worth considering.