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Comment by Joel_Mckay | Hacker News Reader

A Steam Deck won't fight you every step of the way.

Proprietary closed hardware is not great for home brew projects. =)

I have a Steam Deck instead of a Switch for that reason. Doesn't stop me from admiring and envying the form factor, unfortunately.

I do think it would be fun to have a plugin and be able to control lights from the Steam Deck menus, too, though. Just haven't gotten around to trying.

Right, because the Deck is open source hardware...

SteamOS 3 is Arch Linux-based, and should allow most popular game engines to run fine. =3

Nobody has to have instructions on how to "hack" the Steam Deck because it's a computer and you just run whatever you want on it.

The instructions on how to crack open the immutable OS image are readily available from Valve but you probably won't need them since it's already got a lot of power even without that.

If open _hardware_ is the requirement, rather than just a nicety, how many graphics cards can you actually support?

I mean, I know there are a bare handful that can run Quake I. But I don't think there are that many, that can do more.

A Steam Deck is also X times more powerful.

The decision-making here involved more passion than logic, clearly. And that's good. :)

I have heard emulation works well on the platform. =3

rather get a used DS for cheap than help pay for GabeN's next hyper-yacht.

Indeed, a lot of folks liked the R4 cartridge for playing a wide DS title portfolio for free. However, piracy doesn't sustain a platform economically, and Nintendo is famously litigious.

In general, home brew people actually interested in building their own unique indie games often do not port to systems people have zero interest in supporting. Even publishing to Android/iOS would have less problems with <12% of users actually buying anything. =3

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