That and I’m sick of games I want to play not working properly.
Right so, if that is your reason a Steam Deck is not your answer imho.
In my experience the amount of tinkering is higher depending on the game on Linux.
Specifically my experience on Steam Deck/Linux was that verified games are fine as far as launching and playing goes (obviously duh!?!) and most of the big releases seem to be verified so you won't have trouble on that front.
Some unverified games will require you to install Proton GloriousEggroll which is a custom version of Proton which integrates some fixes for certain games.
To do that you gotta go there
Install and manage Proton-GE and Luxtorpeda for Steam and Wine-GE for Lutris with this graphical user interface. Based on AUNaseef's ProtonUp, made with Python 3 and Qt 6.
davidotek.github.io
and either download from flathub or download the appimage, when run you can then select to install proton gloriouseggroll and keep it updated.
At which point you'll generally be fine with either Proton-GE. Proton, or Proton-experimental but some games will work better with one or another of those.
Some other games will require further tinkering / trial and error, a few examples following:
Persona 5 Strikers:
the best way to play this game is to use proton-GE and use the following custom launch option
Code:
GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK=protonaudioconverterbin:NONE %command%
By using using this settings the game is playable, otherwise audio would be missing during cutscenes
Note: when I played this there was no fix for cutscenes, only option was to watch them on youtube while playing
FFX + X-2 remaster:
For some reason the game will not launch unless you downgrade proton
DQ heroes 2:
Proton-GE required to play cutscenes
Yakuza 5 remastered:
when i played it back I had audio/video issues and it was annoying as hell during cutscenes, this review which is 3 months old outlines some issues
Digimon Survive:
it had controller layout issues and crashing issues after the first cutscene unless playing with proton-GE, the latter solution is obvious but the former seems to be iffy to fix, you either use a community layout or you need to mod your game (i simply lived with it)
Monster Hunter Rise:
Mods that need D2D don't work (duh!) and mods that are .pak files don't work unless they are updated after every Title Update, not all are.
There's a whole reddit thread about getting Reframework to work
Mind you these are all random examples off the top of my head which I had to look up in order to play my games so as I said your experience may vary depending on what you play, in fact it'll most likely be a great experiece, but overall not all games are verified and some WILL require some tinkering.
As you probably know I play mostly JP games so those are the games I had the most issues with hence the examples that come to mind are those and again experience may vary.
One note which probably doesn't apply to you, but just in case.
I sometimes cheat in my games, and I definitely ALWAYS have at some point cheat engine open to speed up the game on demand to 2x or 3x the speed depending on the game and this is a pain on steam. I'm used to do this on a whim when I feel like I just wanna speed up things, this is not possible on steam deck as you gotta install tools in order to run software such as cheat engine in the same instance of proton the game is running, otherwise CE won't detect the game. This a pain in the ass because I gotta use a tool to launch the game together with CE ALWAYS, just in case i'll need it and if it closes I cannot launch it again unless i relaunch the game.
On a closing note I'll point out that I personally do not like to rely on Proton-GE like I don't like to rely on anything with a bus factor of one.
Some of the issues I listed might be minor, but personally I find that all those small things are the things that annoy me the most.
That said a lot of games work out of the box and fine, so depending on what you play the tinkering might as well be none or very limited, in fact the majority of what you play will most likely be fine so
the spirit of my post is only to make you aware of that, so that you don't go in "blind" expecting everything to work fine from the get go, to do that I "had" to list negative examples for obvious reasons and not the stuff that works (which is a lot).
I have been considering going with just a Steam Deck when the time comes to upgrade so I would like to hear your opinions and objections on this topic. Why would you recommend against using just a Steam Deck as your main gaming PC?
see the above!
I think it's a good option as long as you
know what you're purchasing.