Do you think Aurora is a good choice for beginners? A friend of mine wants to switch and I’m still looking for a good match.

It should be immutable, use KDE, have Nvidia drivers pre-installed (or a easy UI for installing them), not be maintained by a single maintainer and should not have non-OS applications like Steam pre-installed.

Aurora so far seems to be the best choice.

You had me at “No Java”.

I never heard of this game until it came out on Steam but I bought it on launch and was not disappointed. Really fun game.

Also, I noticed that the remaster update dropped today. Might just hop back in.

The Redux upgrade is available for $20 or with an active Switch 2 Online Membership*.

*Additional charges may apply; dedicated servers not included

Maybe an e-book reader like KOReader? https://flathub.org/apps/rocks.koreader.KOReader

Plenty of them support local HTML.

I assume you tried adding a new printer through KDE? There’s usually no driver needed if all you need to do is simply print/scan.

Does it fail with both options?

Which one, Bedrock or Java?

For Bedrock there is an unofficial launcher: https://flathub.org/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher (Disclaimer: Never tried it)

For Java there is the offical launcher: https://flathub.org/apps/com.mojang.Minecraft

Alternatively, for Java, there are also the much better unofficial launchers like Prism: https://flathub.org/apps/org.prismlauncher.PrismLauncher

Played a few hours of Last of Us 2 last night. Ran pretty well (80-100fps) on highest settings in native 1440p but with a 7900 XTX I can of course just brute force through it.

Surprisingly, the game ran flawlessly out of the box. Didn’t need to add the SteamDeck=1 variable like in the other newer Sony games.

Does not run with Proton-Tkg for some reason, so no HDR for now.

I don’t really mind tinkering with it, already know my ways with emulation on PC. However, I have no knowledge on Linux and that’s what worries me a bit.

If you know your way around PC emulation, you’re not going to have any problems. EmuDeck takes care of installing all emulators. You only have to manually add your key files, firmware, BIOS, etc. It works just like on Windows and the KDE desktop is in many ways identical to Windows.

https://www.emudeck.com/

You might also want to check out KDE Connect. It is pre-installed on the Deck and can pair with your PC for remote input, file sharing, etc.: https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

So the Steam Deck can run the PS2 emulation and play these games (just as the PC can?).

Yes, the Deck is an emulation beast. Finished Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, Ico, Wind Waker HD and Echoes of Wisdom entirely on the Deck.

Most of the games of the Switch I’d like to play are the Mario games. I can name them all if necessary but will do it later (at the moment at work).

The less demanding games like the Mario Party games and Mario Kart run with no issues in all emulators.

For more demanding games like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey, you might want to grab the last yuzu EA AppImage that released. You can find it quite easily by searching but you can also DM me if you need it.

For reference, the last release was version 4176 with an MD5 checksum of 9f20b0e6bacd2eb9723637d078d463eb.

Can the Steam Deck run Breath of the Wild without issue?

There are 3 ways to play Breath of the Wild on the Deck:

• Ryujinx/Ryubing (installed by EmuDeck out of the box)
• yuzu (no longer available)
• Cemu (the Wii U version)

I spent dozens of hours in Breath of the Wild on the Deck in yuzu to collect a few Koroks when I’m bored. Since I dumped my savegames from my switch, I just started where I left it on my Switch.

Ryujinx unfortunately struggles running Breath of the Wild, it runs the most demanding areas at about 20 fps. Which is on par with how the Switch natively runs the game but yuzu can reach 30 fps easily in those areas. Ryujinx also has quite severe shader stuttering when first entering an area, which yuzu does not have.

Cemu runs the game flawlessly, but it is the Wii U version. Doesn’t make much difference which version you play on PC since you can mod either to look good. I just played on yuzu because my savegame was from my Switch.

Death Stranding really clicked for me when “Bones” by “Low Roar” in the first real delivery mission comes on. Takes slightly more than an hour to get there and even then, it definitely is not a game for everyone.

Heavy emulator user here, the Deck made my Switch obsolete but I did play Tears of the Kingdom on my PC so I can run it at 60fps. On the Deck, ToTK can struggle to reach even 30 in many areas without community modpacks. Smaller titles like the latest Zelda and Metroid run flawlessly.

However, the Deck can also run every other console up until Switch/PS3/Xbox 360 as well as my full Steam and GOG library and it has a full desktop on it.

If you don’t mind the tinkering to get the emulators configured, the Deck is a no-brainer for me.

If you want to save some money, you can also get the smaller Steam Deck. It is trivially easy to swap the SSD if you later decide you need more storage.

• jellyfin didn’t like when files used periods instead of spaces.

At least that can’t be the problem since my entire library (except music) uses periods instead of spaces.

Then again, I spent quite some time organizing my library when I first started using Radarr and Sonarr. Ever since those manage my library I had no issues in Jellyfin.

BOY

Wow, I haven’t used Plex in years but this reads like some Windows 11 installation guide with all those checkmarks and hidden options.

There must be something about GNOME in particular that some people love, and others hate.

GNOME is heavily opinionated.

As such it gets praise from people that share that opinion and gets hate from the people that do not. Many other DEs are much more configurable, giving a broader audience the possibility to adjust everything to their liking.

I really wish GOG would do more to support Linux and the Deck. I started buying a little bit more there ever since Heroic came around but overall the Steam experience is still vastly superior.

(grateful for flatpaks for once!)

That’s how I run my system right now. Fedora KDE + pretty much everything as Flatpak.

Gives me a recent enough kernel and KDE version so I don’t have to worry when I get new hardware or new features drop but also restricts major updates to new Fedora versions so I can hold those back for a few weeks.

I made a similar switch as you but from Ubuntu to Fedora because of outdated firmware and kernel.

You can install repacks pretty seamlessly in Bottles.

https://flathub.org/apps/com.usebottles.bottles

Create a gaming prefix, move all installers into the prefix and hit “Run executable” one by one for each installer.

Although if you can afford it, Baldur’s Gate 3 devs deserve the money. Great game and available DRM free on GOG and Steam.

You don’t have to use the terminal, if you installed regular Fedora with GNOME, you can just search for “Sound” and it should come up with this:

If you installed Fedora KDE you can search for “Sound” as well and it should look like this:

Do the audio settings show your onboard audio device?