I mainly use mine for gaming because I have a desktop and a laptop too, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't use it as a decent semi-portable computer. It probably won't be as convenient is a laptop when it comes to typing on the go, and it certainly won't be as powerful as a desktop, but gaming on a Steam Deck is an absolute joy.
You'll definitely want some kind of dock, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse.
I'm gonna throw Star Trek V in there under the label of "so bad it's kind of good".
spoiler
I mean... where else can you see Kirk fight a catgirl and kill (?) her by chucking her into a shallow pool of water, Spock nerve pinch a freaking unicorn, a screaming satellite, jet boots, a weird little marshmallow dispenser, very cheesy dialog, etc?
Damn, nice collection. :)
I got into fighting games just before SF4 came out with SF2 HD Remix (PS3), the SF3 Anniversary Collection (PS2) and some GGPO, so my first stick was the MadCatz SF4 Fightstick (the smaller/cheaper one, not the original TE), which was fun but also kind of crappy with buttons that would stick all the time and broke in less than a year. Eventually I put some sanwa parts in it though and used that for years until I fell for the Eightarc Fusion, at which point I gave the stick to a friend who was getting into fighters around that time.
I really fell off of fighting games for a few years during the SFxTK/SF5/MvCI era... but with Strive, SF6, older ASW games getting rollback, and all that jazz it feels kind of like 2008 again.
Yeah, we have a couple of Steam Decks over here too, but I've mostly been playing SF6 on my Linux desktop. (Fedora with an AMD GPU)
I agree sf6 is really well optimized (it also runs great on deck).
World Tour Mode is a bit chunky at times, but from what I understand it's just kind of like that in general. I also don't think the mode is that great. As for online play it's perfect. :)
I hope Tekken 8 is the same, as that looks to be a big visual jump from sf6.
Yeah. For what it's worth, Tekken 7 runs like a dream on Linux, though I'm not as experience with Tekken as I am with SF in general, so it's a little harder to tell.
Strive works perfectly these days (had a couple glitches with it when it first came out but those have since been resolved), and a bunch of classic fighters like Xrd, SF4 and MvC3 work perfectly too. Sometimes you have to watch a couple replays for shader compilation hitching to resolve, or at least that was the case last time I went through and tested a bunch of games.
What controller do you play sf6 on?
We have a couple of Qanba Eightarc Fusion fightsticks from the PS3/360 days that are plug-and-play on Linux. I think I usually have them switched to the Xbox360 mode, but I'm not even sure that it matters. (Unfortunately one of the sticks finally lost the down switch last week so I'm waiting for some parts to come in.)
But yeah, generally Linux gaming is pretty much where it needs to be for me. That might not be the case if you're into heavy RT games with a top of the line Nvidia card or stuff with really strict anti-cheat, but for me I basically never boot over to my Windows partition anymore for gaming.
I only play native and proton/wine-compatible games on Linux, but keep in mind that we're still talking about a lot of games.
Recently I've been mostly playing Street Fighter 6 (outside of TotK on the Switch, that is) and it works damn near flawlessly from what I can tell; single player, ranked matches, replays, etc, all work perfectly. I've also played a ton of Elden Ring, Apex Legends, and a bunch of other stuff too.
I used to think that running a VM with GPU pass-through would be cool, but frankly these days I just don't feel like I need it for any of the games I like to play. Your mileage may vary though depending on what games you're into.
It panned out for me. I used to check Twitter everyday, but now I haven't even looked at it in weeks. The Fediverse is the healthier alternative that's better for me, better for the internet, and better for society in general.