Hello!
I often see people with different setups to dock their steam deck and play, steam deck docked to portable monitor, custom stands, TVs, or whatever.
But I've only seen people using it as their main PC while actively searching for it, and I get the feeling that that's not a very common use, and that surprises me, as I believe its a hell of an offer to buy the cheapest model (like now 330€ LCD), and run that docked as your PC. When you want to play or bring it to the couch, you can do so because you got a cheap steam deck not a cheap pc. (I know laptops exist, but c'mon)
Anyway, my uses for the steam deck are:
- Gaming (Town to City is my new favourite)
- Programming
- Studying
- Consuming media
- Breaking and fixing my home server
Normal stuff for a PC with the added bonus of
- I get tired and go to bed
- I get tired, undock it and dock it back on the living room to play on the couch
- Get out of classes to rest and play it on the car for half an hour
Anyway, I'm getting further and further away from the title, but again, this thing fascinates me. I used to have;
Main pc + 2 screens
then it was
Main pc +1 screen + 1GF with 1 Steamdeck with 1 screen
And now
1 me with 1 steamdeck and sometimes both screens (which really impressed me when I first saw it), and my gf with my used to be main PC.
And so, for you, what are your favourite or niche use cases for it? Do you daily drive it as a PC? Do you feel like the steam deck lacks anything for a good desktop experience?
pd. Yes, I really made the post image for this one post, and it absolutely took me too much time for what it is.
I only use the 256GB LCD Steam Deck as my desktop that I do all my work on (graphic design, web development, illustration, Blendering, etc.)
I have it permanently hooked up to a stamd/dock connected to my monitor external storage and graphic tablet, with the keyboard and mouse being wireless. I get to put videos or reference boards on the built-in display that works as a cute little secondary monitor too.
I'm still on SteamOS stable. Almost all my apps are Flatpak, but I also have Nixpkgs set up for anything else. Also Distrobox, I suppose, but since installing Nixpkgs I've not had to use Distrobox at all. Occasionally I miss having a newer kernel. But not enough to want to install any other distro.
It's been a blessed couple of years. No complaints!