Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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I have a Steam deck, here's the answers to my knowledge:
Yes, you can connect a keyboard and mouse, and even in SteamOS they let you access KDE in a separate "Desktop mode"
Not sure about multiple monitors but you can connect at least one. There are docks made for it to do just that (the USB C cable has display port support I think)
It runs a 4 core/8 thread AMD laptop chip so assuming you get a mouse/keyboard it should work pretty well.
It has a 5W mode in the power settings in SteamOS so I'm assuming around that much at idle.
You can put other distros on it, it's completely unlocked. You could even put Windows on it if you wanted. I'm not sure how easy the install process is though since I've just left SteamOS on mine.
Now I want to get MacOS on one just to make gamers twitch
Not sure if this counts but (Reddit link warning) someone managed to do it in a VM
That's just as gross as I was imagining 😬
You can even put Windows on it if you feel like committing blasphemy
Most usb-c ports with DP alt mode support up to 1 monitor at 4k@60Hz, or 2×1080p@60Hz, and I believe 2×1440p@30Hz. It comes down to bandwidth, so I think that as long as you're fine with one monitor running at a slower refresh-rate or lower resolution, you can have your primary screen displaying in high-res.
Of course, you have to also take into consideration the GPU performance, running higher resolutions will usually degrade performance!
Probably not great for games but it could totally drive a 1440p or even 4k monitor if you're only using it for web/office/media playback. I'm curious to know if other people are using it as a general computer.
Edit: some people are totally using it as a general computer: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/frame-of-mind-developer-ended-up-coding-the-game-on-steam-deck-for-a-year/