Ok so origin is apparently being killed off in two weeks, and they’ve already started killing the origin APIs

People with it installed already are able to get some games to work still, but functionality is now broken and the devs aren’t going to try to fix it since origin is supposed to die soon anyways. So I’m not sure what the way to play origin game with friends is now.

TheWINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%'launch option is necessary, so we’ll need to troubleshoot that. I’ll look into it and see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Just swap the buttons to match Nintendo layout, and then there’s a toggle in the steam settings>controller to switch to Nintendo layout

Edit ok actually I guess that won’t work, the b button specifically is special and can’t be swapped looks like.

If you’re not wanting to play real demanding games I would suggest the deck. It’s cheaper, has much better warranty, better input options, etc.

I’d really only consider the Ally if you actually need the extra performance and aren’t worried at all about the cost. if you do decide you want the Ally, I would recommend reading up on their recent warranty scandal stuff first.

According to protondb, you need to replace the EA app with origin.

Check the second review by “L4ZaRu5”, it has a guide.

I don’t think valve will change the price due to tariffs. The deck was originally sold at a major loss to reach valve’s target pricing, and they can afford to lose money on it because it drives game sales.

The deck has sold a lot more than expected, which has brought manufacturing costs down. I suspect the Deck is fully profitable now, but if tariffs make it unprofitable again I’m pretty sure valve would rather eat a loss on the hardware and keep enjoying the increased software sales per steam deck owner.

Glad you found a working driver for the tablet! There are drivers available through aur, but they mention they’re deliberately out of date because the newer drivers won’t support older devices. Looks like quite a mess to identify the newest driver that would work with your device, and that would be on top of needing to find a good way to permanently install it with the deck’s locked down file system.

Unfortunately I’m worried that this will lead to other high budget games all upping their cost as well. Supposedly large studios have been wanting to push up the per-title cost for years now, and have been hoping that a major player will set the precedent first.

The most common cause of deaths from lightning is from ground current, where lightning travels through the ground, goes up one leg, and back down the other leg back into the ground. My understanding on it is that different parts of the ground have different conductivity, and if your feet are on patches of ground with different charge levels the lightning can go through your legs as the most conductive path between the two points. For similar reasons, I was once told that the safest way to move across the ground near a downed power pole (if you absolutely had to for some reason) was either to shuffle your feet while keeping them as close together as possible, or to hop on one foot.

If you’re caught outside during a thunderstorm, the best plan of action is to move as fast as you can to a safer place

institutions such as the American Hiking Society and the city of Bellmead in Texas continue to include it in their lightning safety guidelines.

A lot of times when hiking or backpacking, you may be hours from a safer place. In those cases, it probably is better to crouch than to try to run down a mountain during a thunderstorm.

The actual crouching to lower your height may not help much, but keeping your feet close together to minimize surface contact probably does help reduce your chances of dying to a nearby strike.

Mangohud on the Deck has different layouts built in, the 3rd option iirc is horizontal. There’s also a Decky plugin to let you create custom mangohud layouts from inside game mode.

XenoTilt and DemonsTilt are fantastic, and my 8 year old loved them. They’re don’t really understand everything going on, but they get super excited when they trigger multiball or some cool table effect.

USB-C supports a lot more than USB-A does. Buying a USB-A dock and then using type-C adapters will limit the functionality to whatever the original USB-A or adapter supports (whichever one has lower capabilities will set the limit). It won’t support display over usb-c for example.

Might consider this bundle, some of the games are targeted at kids younger than 6, but it’s a good deal for younger players.

SteamOS isn’t quite ready for other devices yet, but you can install something like Bazzite or Zorin as a great alternative to windows. Bazzite is focused on providing an experience very close to SteamOS, and Zorin is extremely easy to learn for people moving from windows to linux. Linux Mint is also a great option.

You can check protonDB for game compatibility, but as a general rule any game or emulation will work fine as long as it isn’t a multiplayer game with particularly invasive anticheat. All Tom Clancy games should work except for Rainbow Six Siege. It uses Battleeye anticheat, which actually supports linux/steam deck fine, but Ubisoft is currently refusing to enable linux support. People are actively requesting support be enabled daily, so maybe Ubisoft will come around.

It’s still handy imo to know that projects like this will work on the deck. ProtonDB only covers steam games, and the winehq database is focused on compatibility with wine rather than proton.

So my question is will we ever get a proper signal from Valve saying “Yup, it’s now fully compatible with the RoG Ally”. Right now, i’m getting the message “We are slowly adding support for the Ally. Only features x,y and z are not working”.

I do believe we’ll hit a point where they announce official support. But it’s valve time so it’s hard to say when. I’m the meantime I would probably stick to Bazzite, but it’s your call.

Unironically I wouldn’t be surprised if some version of automated AI commentary becomes a thing at some point. I can imagine some people wanting to simulate having viewers who care about what they’re playing, I’ve already seen kids talking to themselves while playing pretending they’re a streamer.

Congrats! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have

Probably comparing her acting in the new Snow White movie to Tommy’s acting.