The valve time distortion bubble is real unfortunately. Thankfully it finally caught up.

No one had posted the actual patch notes yet when I pinned this, and the headline on this one covers what’s probably the most significant news item about this update.

Personally I really like reading the patch notes directly, but it seems like usually it’s the articles talking about the changes like this that get more traction on lemmy and other sites. I think having the patch notes directly linked in a comment here is a nice middle ground of having the higher traction headline/article and the more info rich patch notes both easily accessible.

Updated the SteamOS recovery image for repairing SteamOS on Steam Deck and Legion Go S. If you would like to test SteamOS on your own AMD powered handheld, you can use this SteamOS recovery image and follow the instructions here.

Unless I missed a previous update to the SteamOS recovery image, this is pretty huge. The old steamOS recovery image had some major bugs like crashing the wifi card if you tried connecting to a wifi 6 network with the OLED deck. Losing the ability to use wifi while trying to install/recover steamOS was a real headache, but I’m guessing that’s fixed now.

Most linux OS with locked down file systems allow you to install apps permanently if you need something that doesn’t work with flatpak/distrobox/etc. It’s usually called something like atomic updates, and it installs the software in a layered image, and will require a reboot to load.

It’s not the ideal way to install software, but it’s a lot easier than your options for installing packages on SteamOS.

I haven’t personally used Bazzite, so I’m not 100% sure that it supports it, but I’m assuming it does. If anyone else wants to confirm it I would appreciate it. Edit: you can, here’s the documentation page on it

Rockstar recently switched to a kernel anti-cheat program that doesn’t support the deck, breaking online. You can still play the single player versions of those games, but not online unfortunately.

Ah, the cross post didn’t cross post everything. Fixing it now.

Ok, I missed that changing controller profiles fixed it.

I’d still recommend trying the global toggles, that will let us know whether it’s haptic feedback or simulated rumble. From there we can hopefully narrow down what’s going on with the control scheme.

There’s two kinds of haptics with the trackpads, one is haptic feedback when using the trackpad, the other is simulating controller rumble using the trackpad haptic feedback.

I’m guessing it’s one of these two causing the vibration. you can individually disable them by pressing the QAM button (the “. . .” button), going to the gear menu, and scrolling down to the bottom where there should be toggles for game rumble and steam haptics.

I also might try switching to a different control profile and see if it still happens. Ideally a pretty blank profile where the left stick is configured to let you move and that’s it.

Great interview!

I appreciate GB calling kernel anticheat a fad, but going by his own 4 pillars of big tech, it doesn’t seem like something that companies will give up willingly. Funnily enough I think our best chance of getting rid of kernel anticheat might be government action. A lot of the biggest anticheats are either wholly or partially owned by chinese companies, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the current administration bans them over that.

In general though his answers are all really solid, I agree with basically everything he said here.

We’ve recently seen games that are hard locked to work on Steam Deck hardware specifically, but will be anticheat blocked on any other linux/SteamOS device with different hardware.

So that may not actually work out.

Oh, yeah you’re right. It’s a beta feature, although it will hopefully come to stable pretty soon.

The decky plugin powertools can also set a limit if you don’t want to wait.

A recent update added the option to limit the deck’s max battery charge in Settings>Power. If you want the deck to be ready to go, I would recommend capping the max charge at 60-80% and leaving the Deck plugged in. Alternatively you can put the deck in battery storage mode.

Valve’s basic use and troubleshooting page has a section on long term storage that covers how to put the Deck into battery storage mode.