The Grass Was Not Greener - Official SteamOS on the LeGo

Bazzite
1

Hi all, I just spent the past couple of days testing out SteamOS v3.7.7 on my Legion Go.

I’m happy to recommend not wasting any of your time as its quite a poor experience, below are some points I’ll raise:

  • No Handheld Daemon: You don’t appreciate this awesome piece of software until you don’t have it.
  • SteamOS is locked at a very low TDP so games out of the box perform poorly.
  • Desktop environment has more bugs than a motel that charges by the hour.
  • Audio Crackle, if you suspend and resume in a game, you will have the dreaded audio crackle, and nothing fixes it but a complete reboot, the device is so touchy, even if a low flying Swallow fly’s past your house at its maximum unladen airspeed, it will trigger audio crackle, its completely rubbish, worst experience ever.
  • You must install DeckyLoader, then manually install SimpleDeckyTDP as for some reason, it has been removed from the DeckyLoader store, after this, you can actually crank up the Z1 Extreme beyond the performance of a Raspberry Pi 3.
  • TDP can be erratic, at times it seems to get stuck in RPI 3 mode and wont budge, you will need to mess about with SimpleDeckyTDP a little, then all of sudden it will hit 30+ watt TDP mode.
  • Compared a few games, one to point out is Doom Eternal, performance seems to be good on SteamOS except for the aforementioned audio crackle, but its much better on Bazzite, running same thermal meltdown mode on Bazzite will hit triple digit frame rates with ultra nightmare on at 800p with clean crisp audio, on SteamOS it hovers around 75fps.
  • Until Dawn on SteamOS is a slide show with, you guessed it, crackling audio! On Bazzite, 45+ FPS with no audio issues.
  • Some games had a tendency to completely lock up my device on launch, this results in me have to mash the power button down for 10+ seconds like I’m trying to shut Windows down on a Surface tablet…
  • Desktop mode keeps trying to open Firefox every time I log in, it seems to be fixated on Firefox like fat kid and a cup cake, I uninstall it, then it opens Discover and tells me there is an issue and I need to install Firefox, its like the GUI is possessed or something, the GUI also seems to self impose a sticky key like “Shift” making it impossible to click on anything properly, you cant even logout or shutdown, so once again, I’m mashing that power button like I’m trying to procreate with it.

There is a lot more issues I had, I tried to like it, but I put Bazzite back on the Legion Go this morning, and the relief was overwhelming, the first thing that felt like bliss was seeing that sweet sweet Handheld Daemon pop out with a double press…ahh so good :wink:

If Steam and Arch want to support other handhelds, they have a very long way to go, personally, I think that these alt consoles should be partnering with Bazzite, they should donate funds and in turn you can do an even better job at supporting their devices.

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