Steam Hardware

Wine is the base for Proton, which lets windows games run on the Deck.

The interesting bit here is the change to how DLLs are loaded. Currently with Wine and Proton, you do at times need to do a bit of a workaround for games that need specific DLLs for their mods. With this change now in place and shipped in Wine, it means that if the DLL company name attached is not Microsoft (so a custom one supplied with the mod or game), Wine will automatically use it over the Wine version.

Hopefully, the end result will be a number of mods for Windows games on Linux / SteamOS will be easier to run, often out of the box with no extra changes or launch options. And, eventually, Valve will pull the changes into Proton so everyone using it with Steam will see the benefits of it.

Improved streaming quality and connection stability for an app like this can actually be pretty meaningful, so I figured it was worth sharing.

Basically you can now manage the download screen of your deck from a PC client. I haven't gotten to try it yet, but my understanding is that the deck needs to be on for this to work, but it will work if the deck is already in the "screen off downloading updates" state.

Important to note that the results are a bit weird though for the last couple months.

In December, after Win10 EoL, linux achieved a record 3.58% of Steam users. However there was a massive drop in February, down to 2.23% of users on Linux. This was accompanied by a massive spike in Chinese steam accounts (english users dropped from 36% of user accounts in the survey to 22%, while Chinese user accounts jumped from 24% of users to 54% of users). I'm guessing it was a bunch of chinese bot accounts. (edit: as pointed out in the comments, this was probably due to chinese new year. Lots of chinese people hitting gaming cafes).

Now for March, Linux jumped back from 2.23% of users to 5.33% of steam users surveyed. Leading the charge are two unidentified distros 0 64-bit (+17.6%) and 64-bit (+8%).

The unknown distros being responsible for the massive gain is very suspicious, so we'll have to see if that part ends up being correct or not. On the other hand, the surge of chinese accounts that seemingly pushed down linux's percentages last month are now gone, with chinese accounts dropping from 54% of users to 23%.

So ultimately we'll need to wait and see if valve clarifies what "0 64-bit linux" and "64-bit linux" are, or wait until next month to see how things change.

Something is brewing on the RetroDECK Blog!

One of the most requested features is coming in 0.11.0!

This is for multiplying your fps by 3x or 4x, but the input lag, ghosting, stuttering, and other issues make everything worse. Overall I'd recommend sticking to lossless scaling at 2x or not using framegen at all.

So when the news circulated recently that the Lutris developer was using Claude to help write the code (and the angry posts/articles appeared) I figured I'd reach out to Mathieu to hear his side of things.

I chatted to him a little, asking for his side of the story. He goes into some depth on how he uses it as part of his work-flow, the transparency in open-source projects in general, licensing and ownership of code that A.I. writes, safety and so on. Plenty of answers from Lutris, if you're curious on the topic. As ever, you can find the link here:

https://gardinerbryant.com/mathieu-comandon-explains-his-use-of-ai-in-lutris-development/

Wine is the windows compatibility layer that Proton is based on, which is how the Deck plays windows games. So any significant update to wine will directly benefit windows games on Deck, as soon as Proton is updated.

NTsync is the headlining new addition to Wine11. It replaces Esync and Fsync as a much accurate synchronizer. This should:

• Make games run smoother, removing microstutters and improving frame pacing

• Significantly improve performance in some older games that could run into major performance bottlenecks from this. You can see some fps increases here, with many of the affected games getting over twice the fps.

NTsync requires kernel support, but Valve added that in steamOS 3.7.20. Wine11's NTsync hasn't made it into Proton experimental yet, but GE-Proton has added support for it already, so it's not hard to try it out.

Wine11 also improves support for older 32 and 16 bit windows applications.

Ok so, not entirely sure if I'm breaking some format/post rules, but basically:

While FSR 4.1 has officially released, over the weekend, the OptiScaler team managed to release an INT 8 version of FSR4, that they are calling 4.0.2b.

I have spent the last ~48 hrs off and on reworking my Cyberpunk 2077 mod setup on my Steam Deck, and I can tell you that this version of FSR4 is working, on a Deck, on Cyberpunk.

I've got it paired with the FSR 3 FrameGen, in Cyberpunk... seems to be working?

Optiscaler PreRelease:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/114a5w6OF-ehfP_EX293wntguZJ3nfl7B/view

FSR 4.0.2b INT8:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hXhOiBkZS3Oud81-VfFuEiyixA-e-FG9/view

[Disclaimer!]

I am not this YouTuber, I just watched their video and learned about it from them.

I suggest you watch it as well if you would like more info and/or a walkthrough for how to set it all up.

Also... not sure how to 'flair' this properly, as... well, this should apply to the Deck, and also the Steam Machine, and is also arguably News or a PSA... ???

I spent a few days chatting to the RetroDECK team (who are well and truly friends by now!), with the idea that it might be a good chance to focus on their real passion: retro gaming. Too often RetroDECK (which is all about emulation/retro gaming for the Steam Deck/Linux) just gets bottled up and mentioned as being less than it is.

Sure you get the typical emulation projects in there: PS2, PS3, Wii U, SNES and so on, but it really has so much more to offer to users. From odd little projects and engines to things like MUDs, pinball and more.

This was a nice chat with the team, it shows them all sharing what they're so passionate about. Retro gaming in all its forms.

From my friend Lazorne in the interview:

What I hope to do is simply provide people with an easy way to experience those memories again, provided they still have access to their old games. For one person retro might mean the PlayStation 3, while for others it could be systems like the TRS-80 or the BBC Micro.Both viewpoints are valid and that is how we approach the components included in RetroDECK as well.

You can find my article and the whole interview here:

https://gardinerbryant.com/retrodeck-is-more-than-emulation-an-interview-with-the-devs/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44314509

I have been in the process of writing some help guides, and one of my friends graciously lent me his Steam Deck so that I could verify that Fluxer would work on it as well. And I'm happy to say it does. Although I did not plan on just posting a Fluxer Help-Article on Lemmy, I figured while waiting on the Fluxer team to start accepting pull requests and me getting done with my guides, someone might be looking for step-by-step instructions for their Steam Deck. So here it is. Feedback and discussion is of course welcome.

---

In this Help Article we will guide you step-by-step through the process of installing and integrating Fluxer into your application menu on the Steam Deck. Although not required, access to an external physical keyboard is recommended.

The Steam Deck is running a custom version on Linux that is based on Arch, and the CPU architecture is x86-64. This means we could either use the AppImage(x64) option or the tar.gz(x64) option from the download drop-down on https://fluxer.app/downloads

Since integrating the AppImage into the application menu requires additional steps such as manually retrieving the icon .png file this guide will focus on the installation process for the tar.gz.

Before we explain how to install Fluxer from the tar.gz file, let's take a moment and go through what a tar.gz file is. tar.gz are actually two abbreviations put together. "tar" from Tape Archive (sometimes referred to as a tarball) which is an archive file format and the "gz" at the end is short for Gzip(which in of itself is short for Gnu Zip) and it is a compression format. When combined you get an archive that is neatly packed in one file that is now also take up less space.

- Okay, why was that important to start off with?

Well, since it is a compressed archive, that means we can't just double click it and hope it will do much more than perhaps open the preinstalled unarchiver on our system. The fact is, a tar.gz file does not necessarily even have to contain any executable, even if it is an application. In this case with the Fluxer - tar.gz it does contain a executable.

Note: The steps outlined in this help article will primarily be performed using the terminal. The keyboard shortcut to open the terminal is "Ctrl + Alt + T" or you can open it from the application menu under the "system" category and it is referred to as "console".

Installing Fluxer

Let's begin by entering desktop mode on the Steam Deck. Long press the power button on the top of the Steam Deck, this should make a menu appear, from that menu choose "switch to desktop".

Then open the web browser and download the tar.gz(x64) from https://fluxer.app/download.

Once downloaded navigate to your download folder through the terminal by typing the following command:

cd ~/Downloads

Where Downloads is either the default download location, or the folder you chose to save the tar.gz file.

Tip: You can press "tab" on your keyboard to complete the file/directory name. If there are multiple files/directories with the same beginning of the filename it won't auto complete. But if you press tab again, it will show you all possibilities with the same beginning. This is referred to as "Tab Complete".

Now it is time to extract our tar.gz we can do this by using the tar command. Type the following command into the terminal:

tar -xzf fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64.tar.gz

Tip: The options x, z, f stand for extract, decompress gzip, and specify the file. "Specify the file" might seem a bit cryptic, but remember tar is as old as tape drives. In essence the "f" option just says, what comes next is the filename.

You could run Fluxer here and now, cd into the directory we just extracted and then type the following command in the terminal:

./fluxer

But lets install it properly. Because right now, Fluxer only works if you navigate to its folder and run it manually from the terminal. If we move it to a standard system location and create a desktop entry, we will integrate it with your system. This means Fluxer will appear in your application menu, and you can launch it like any other installed program.

Note: make sure you are located inside the fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64 folder for the next step. Use the cd command followed by the folder name if needed.

Next we need to create two directories, copy the Fluxer files and make a symbolic link to the executable that can later be used by the application menu to launch Fluxer.

Type the following commands into the terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fluxer cp -r * ~/.local/share/fluxer/ mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ln -s ~/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer ~/.local/bin/fluxer

Each line followed by return or enter.

Now that the Fluxer has been installed we want to have it appear in our application menu, to achieve this we need to let the system know where to find it. Lets begin by creating a .desktop file with the Nano editor in the terminal.

Type the following command into the terminal:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

Write the following into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxer
Exec=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/resources/512x512.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network;Chat;

Note: Change "USERNAME" to your username

Once done; press Ctrl + O to write out (functionally the same as Save), then Ctrl + X to exit Nano.

And now lets validate the .desktop file, by typing the following command into the terminal:

desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

If this returns no errors we can continue and make our .desktop file executable

Type the following command into the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

And lastly lets update the desktop database. Type the following command into the terminal:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

You will now be able to access Fluxer through your application menu and it will sit in the correct category.

Note: Fluxer will not run properly if added to your steam library as a non steam game on the Steam Deck and launched from within game mode. - This is no longer true

Edit: After some troubleshooting I realized that there seemed to be an issue with the sandboxing and steam wanting to run the app in 32-bit environment.

Solution: All that should be required to solve the situation is to add env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% to the launch option in properties for Fluxer in steam. I did how ever first try and fix the sandboxing issue so if for you the issue persists after adding the launch options. cd into ~/.local/share/fluxer and run the following two commands in the terminal:

sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox

I have no problem installing games via their GoG installer with the Heroic Games Launcher on my main Fedora PC. However on the Steam Deck when I click "Add Game" and then fill in the name and click on "Run Installer First" the installer launches and then tells me that it could no find the other .bin files. I tried moving the directory to other places, but it seems like wine cannot find the files. I checked the directory permissions and all users have read access to those directories, yet they do not show up in the mounted filesystem in wine... (the GoG installer lets you choose another location of the files if it cannot find them)

A lot of older PC games can run just fine on modern phone hardware. I'd buy a SteamOS version of a phone that has some modular or built-in set of buttons and analog sticks. I don't know how the app ecosystem would work for sensitive things like banking but it's mostly a minor issue for me.

Something is brewing on the RetroDECK Blog!