Well, I mean it kind of is a solution. It’s a cloud backup solution. OneDrive doesn’t just keep a single version of your file, there’s versioning, retention policies, etc.

Cloud makes a lot of sense for businesses with small IT staff and a lot of users because while it’s not fully in your control, it comes with all the things being discussed here “out of the box” and scales infinitely.

For self hosters there’s some fun and power in doing everything yourself, but even then adding cloud as part of your backup (if done securely) is usually a pretty good idea.

You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Look, I see what you’re getting at, high end GPU improvements have slowed to a trickle and they just keep charging more. You’re not wrong that the business has changed and NVIDIA and AMD are squeezing.

However that is NOT what is happening with the Steam Deck. This is a simple engineering limitation. You cannot have a super powerful GPU in the form factor of the SD due to size, cooling, and power constraints. They can’t just magic these limitations away or throw money at it. To get what you want would not only cost more, but the SD would be twice the size if not more, sound like a jet engine, and have a 15 minute battery life.

The Steam Deck is still king to me due to it’s controller setup. Nothing comes close to the versatility. But I do agree with you, if OP is a console player and only cares about thumb sticks then there are better options.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense. 3840x2160 is cleanly divisible by 1920x1080. You should just have pixel doubling happening. Check that you don’t have some sort of scaling turned on in the TV.

It wont magically look high res, it’ll be 1080p, but there shouldn’t be any blurryness, just the blockiness of 1080p on a large display.

That’s basically what I do right now except I do have a domain and my ISP doesn’t restrict inbound ports like 443 so it works fine.

Just trying to sort out if I want the headache of a VPS if I don’t need it (costs, maintenance, point of failure, etc).

What added security do you get by using a VPS besides obscuring your home IP? I can definitely see benifits to not leaking your home address, but otherwise the reverse proxy and wireguard tunnels don’t actually add any increased security for the extra steps. You could just host a reverse proxy at home, and any flaws Jellyfin could have in their app would still be exposed.

I’m not knocking your solution, I’m just in a similar place and considering if I want to go through the extra hurdle for a VPS if I don’t need one.

I think P2P is still the way to go. Sure it’s not perfect, but it’s simpler and by it’s very nature doesn’t require the infrastructure we know will be a problem.

Plus, don’t forget screen sharing in discord isn’t very good as is (720p30) if you’re not a paid user.

I originally started that way too but ZigBee has been super reliable for me and faster than my Z-wave network. I think it really depends on what devices you have and if one is misbehaving.

Divinity Original Sin. Currently playing it docked with two Xbox controllers and it runs great at 1080p.

Yes you can, I do that with mine a lot. The one caveat though that is a real bummer is I haven’t been able to get surround sound working on it. Something limits it to stereo output. There should be some way around it, but I haven’t found it.

I haven’t tried, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It was years ago that I set it up, but I belive it wanted an app. I would stick with one designed for local only.

I have an EcoBee thermostat which is typically web managed, however it also supports HomeKit. Using the homekit plugin for HomeAssistant I now get best of both worlds.

If I were to do it again I might consider a Z-Wave or ZigBee thermostat, but living in a cold climate I really appreciate knowing that if for some reason my home auto fails there is a backup service to alert me, or vice versa.

You’re right, it was called the Steam Machine, my mistake. I honestly don’t think it was very influential in pushing Linux gaming forward, it was a first attempt that was ahead of it’s time and Valve kept after it.

The market is flooded with various controllers, but they’re all basically the same. I think what Valve is going for here is not really a new controller to take the world by storm, but a companion controller to help sell the Steam Deck. In order for it to be a true companion it must match all the inputs the SD had so people don’t have to change their bindings. I play the SD docked and I have to say switching between an Xbox and SC depending on the game and adapting my bindings is annoying when it all just works on the native controls.

When Valve made the SC they were starting from scratch and went with an ambitious design, and let’s be frank, no one but a small niche of people liked it because they had grown up with thumbsticks and were unwilling to relearn. With the SD they compromised with both input schemes, which I have to say we need to be grateful for. Look at all the SD competitors and they all ditched trackpads to appeal to the general market. Valve could have done this too.

So largely I agree with you, it would be nice to have a SC 2.0, but I honestly don’t think this new leaked one will sell all that well. It’s just a companion to sell Decks and I’m grateful they are willing to try that.

I can understand where you’re coming from, but this is realistically a better option for Valve and most consumers right now.

When Valve made the original Steam Controller they were trying to kickstart the Steam Box, which at the time played PC games that were not optimized for controller input on a TV. They needed to have a very outside the box contoller to accomplish this, and so they gave the Steam Controller a try. The touchpad inputs with enough custom mapping really were revolutionary, but only for a small crowd that wanted to play Sim City on their TV.

Nowadays, every game has standard controller input. Trying to get people who are used to the joysticks to switch to virtual trackpads is a non starter, even if it could be technically superior in some circumstances. The compromise is what we have now, a full controller layout with touchpads as extras, to maintain that backward compatibility with old PC games. I think it’s the right decision, and this is personally the controller I’ve been waiting for.

I’d love to see Steam re-make the old Steam Controller to give old fans a replacement, and I hope they do someday, but they have to pick their battles as they certainly wouldn’t sell in any volume. In a previous quest for a perfect controller I came across an open source 3D printed one called the Alpakka. Maybe DIY or a startup indie company will pick up the torch where Valve left off to give a true replacement? I hope so because the right controller for the right job is a wonderful thing.

I think you need to take a step back and ask if ARM makes sense if you’re translating x86 instructions 100% of the time. Unless you’re hoping people will develop new games for ARM and you won’t use your SD to play existing titles much, but that seems like a 180° shift to me.

It doesn’t always scale down though. There’s always an efficiency curve so we really can’t speculate. I agree, we have to wait and see.

I wouldn’t count AMD out. The whole reason the Steam Deck is so successful is because of AMDs Mobile GPU, not necessarily it’s CPU. AMD has been able to make some very efficient GPUs lately, so I do belive with a couple new architectures and die shrinks we will get the generational leap they’re talking about.

ARM sounds nice, and it might one day be, but getting x86 translation working flawlessly WITHOUT performance/battery costs at the same time as proton is just asking a heck of a lot.

ARM does best when it’s doing ARM things. Since all games are built for x86 with nobody having any intention of compiling for native ARM, I don’t really see the point. The whole reason i like the Steam Deck is to play older back catalog games, and those are all x86. Apple pulls it off because they only translate x86 when they have to.

Yes. There are a couple different ways to do that.

Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.

The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.

The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.