OK, thanks for the hint. I just found out that you will only be prompted to update if you:

1. power everything off (shut down deck completely, don’t just sleep it)
2. remove all peripherals connected to the dock (except network cable if you use that for your connection)
3. start the deck
4. if there are any updates for the the dock, they should show in the options of gaming mode

here’s to hoping the updates will allay the display issues

I vaguely remembered it offering me updates when I first set the dock up (purchased the dock much later then the deck). I’ll make sure I have the latest version.

Good to know. It was a common problem with XCOM 2 for me.

Whenever possible I tried to get around this distorted audio noise after resuming from sleep by first opening a pause menu and then sending the deck to sleep. It seems to occur less the less audio channels are used by the game engine at the moment that you sent the deck to sleep.

Ideally you’ll adjust both in game settings and deck settings for each game with in-game settings taking precedence as they give you access to fine tuning custom tailored to that game. The deck settings are great to tinker with when you want longer battery life especially. If it’s inside the dock and charging while you play you needn’t worry much about optimization (frame rate limit, heat limit, half rate shading, etc.) and can leave it at the sensible defaults.

The Steam Deck per-game control layout is very helpful for games that don’t come with native controller support or those that don’t let you rebind controls inside the game itself.

I don’t own the games you mention, so I can’t suggest specifics but my general way of setting up a game is:

1. install the game and get it running at all
2. use in-game options to find a resolution and layout comfortable from your preferred playing posture/position
3. enable frame rate overlay in the steam settings
4. start with default or auto detect settings for graphics or look up what others recommend online in sites like protondb. if you hit a comfortable frame rate (40-60+ for me personally) keep increasing the graphics quality settings in game as long it remains fluid to play. Don’t need to do it all in one session. I usually minimally increment the graphics settings at the start of each gaming session and simply revert once it’s no longer fluid.

I often use this over KDE’s inbuilt screenshot tool because this one has a quick way to crop a screenshot

That likely means they’ll put thought into a pleasant controller layout (including steam actions) as well. Good stuff.

Is that what the Steam Deck uses? It’s pretty useful.

Oh nice, I had a lot of fun with the demo back then. I’d describe it as basically XCOM 2 but with super heroes and you can pull off a lot of fun combos when your heroes work together.

You can export all your bookmarks to a single JSON file. it’s a format designed for storing and exchanging data between machines just like this.

Also good for making local backups of your favorites.

i see a keyboard , but no track pads. track pads are really versatile and a key feature of the deck. this keyboard doesn’t look to comfortable to use either. Maybe it’s ok ish if you put down the device on flat ground and are seated, but typing on this thing while holding it in your hands is going to require some amazing thumb agility.

I have a small Bluetooth keyboard paired with my steam deck that I use whenever I need to input longer stretches of text. it works out just fine.

I much like Quod Libet. It has a clean, functional interface to manage your local music collection. Also support for Plugins is nice.

You can create Boolean Logic filters like (played < 10 times AND genre = classical AND composer = Mozart) which I appreciate. And some of the included tools like being able to automatically create meta data tags from file names (for instance <artist> - <album> - <track>.mp3).

It’s the best replacement for Music Bee (Windows only) that I’ve come across.

Ok,the suspension is actually a big deal.I noticed that in desktop mode it usually closes my open files in GIMP and others when I suspend. Not that I wouldn’t save everything first anyway, but good to know.

Different question: what’s the benefit/difference to launching the game from desktop mode instead? increased performance?

The interface is just so responsive and well laid out in Slay the Spire which makes it a joy to play. Not just on the Steam Deck.

People mock the graphics sometimes but I’d much rather have something this responsive than bombastic but sluggish (Hearthstone comes to mind - haven’t played in years thou maybe it’s better today).

I’ll give the adapter a shot. One costs < 10 € and a good monitor is easily 200+ €.

If you use a different distro ¿do you still have access to the “game mode”? ¿Or do you launch everything from “desktop mode” (which is just the default for other distros)?