I know everyone says such good things about the steam deck, but my personal experience hasn't been great. Steam games are the best case scenario, but even those often require hunting down the best version of proton and doesnt work out of the box. why cant steam auto default to the version that works with the game? Getting discord running properly often involves switching to desktop mode, and then its hard to play handheld. if i connect a display in handheld mode i cant increase the resolution to match my monitor.
and then we get to 3rd party stores, requiring all kinds of hoops, and once you get it working and you come back to a game after a couple of months, its broken again. Installing ISOs requires even more painful work (tbf thats not an intended use case i guess).
Disclaimer: my use of the steam deck has been as a fairly non technical user. For me the whole point of getting it was a slightly console like experience, so I wasn't willing to hack into it too much.
Remember that the majority of users doesn't use anything other than the default steam store ui. This case works like charm. I use with my tv, or standalone, my 10 year old uses, and we love it. I just make sure to play games announced as supported.
With custom things, desktop mode, non-steam software installation it's a typical customization story. It is amazing that you can do it at all but nobody will be supporting you on this journey.
> For me the whole point of getting it was a slightly console like experience
You say this, but talk about the difficulty of 3rd party stores and installing ISOs. A console like experience means using Steam alone, and not even considering desktop mode.
