Couch-oriented gaming distro ChimeraOS gets an update for the month of December, just before the new year. Highlights include: improved Intel GPU driver support for the Deck UI – useful on handhelds that use Intel-based processors screen orientation and resolution fixes for AOKZOE A1 and OneXPlayer Mini Pro improved support for external NTFS drives bug fixes for AppImages and SD card auto-mounting on boot controller support for GPD Win Max 2, OXP Mini Pro, Anbernic Win600, AOKZOE A1 “Format SD Card” button in Deck UI should now work See the patch notes on GitHub.

It’s not really news at this point (that’s what happens when I’m a day late), but Steam now has a Replay feature. This gives you an overview of what your top games were for that year, top genres, the platforms you played on percentage-wise, etc. Let’s go over what I played this year. I played 75 games, 42 of which were new. Top games, ordered from most-played to least, include:

UPDATE (12/29/2022): this guide has been updated to make sure HMM runs! I also have a video. I guess many of the people who have tried adding mods to Sonic Frontiers on Deck have had trouble. And up until this point I’ve had no idea how to help troubleshoot the various issues they’ve encountered. Fortunately SolarNyan came to the rescue with an updated guide. I’ll explain their steps here with pictures and videos.

Steam Deck SteamOS 3.4 shipped to stable Tuesday’s beta Deck client update adds search tab to controller profile configuration, adds a few additional fixes JSAUX announces the ModCase – versatile utility for adding and removing accessories to your Deck. They’re also selling a transparent back plate we’ve hit 7k verified/playable titles seems like everyone and their brother sees the Deck as their hardware of the year. I guess you could also say the Deck has finally put the “Year of the Linux Desktop” joke to an end News Steam Winter sale is live from now until January 5th NVIDIA to shut down GameStream in February Epic Games to pay $520 million for “privacy violations and unwanted charges” Intel to work on a new Xe graphics driver AMD to improve “the Linux experience” when running new GPUs without proper driver support SerpentOS releases its first public ISO Guides you can play Sonic Adventure 2 in HD Interviews did an interview with an Ubuntu kernel developer.

It’s been well worth the three-month wait for today’s SteamTinkerLaunch update. We’ve got so many new features, improvements, and bug fixes with the “Still Alive” update that is v12.0. Those of you who use this Swiss army knife utility on Steam Deck, and those of you who use mods with Sonic Frontiers, should be particularly excited about this update, as there’s some goodies tossed in your way. To start, frostworx, the original author of STL, has stepped down as maintainer.

We’ve got a sweet new release for the excellent ProtonUp-Qt app, for managing all of your compatibility tools for Steam, Lutris, and more. When viewing your game list, you can now check the ProtonDB ranking with the simple click of a button. Super convenient! NorthstarProton and Steam-Play-None have been added as compatibility tools. The former is “a Proton build based on TKG’s Proton-tkg build system to run the Northstar client on Linux and SteamDeck, along with some enhancements out-of-the-box.

If you follow me on Mastodon, you’re probably aware that I’m a bit of a Super Smash Bros. Melee fan. Someone in my Discord went so far as to call me a “Melee head.” It makes sense; there’s rarely a day that goes by without me playing a few singles or doubles matches. Melee is one of those games where it’s not only played for fun; my mind feels sharper, more focused.

PhobGCC. Chances are you’ve probably never heard of it. Allow GitHub to explain what it is: The PhobGCC is a replacement motherboard for Gamecube controllers that reads stick position using magnets and Hall effect sensors instead of potentiometers that can wear out. It offers an advanced digital snapback filter that doesn’t reduce responsiveness and actually improves responsiveness in Melee. It also features gate calibration, swappable buttons, and facilitates installation of discrete switches on the D-pad and face buttons.

Steam’s winter sale just kicked off, and with it are several decent titles on sale. Here’s some recommended games, all of which are Steam Deck Verified: Action Adventure/RPG Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered – 25% off Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales – 25% off Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade – 43% off Horizon Zero Dawn – 67% off Tunic – 10% off Cuphead – 30% off Sackboy: A Big Adventure – 33% off Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time – 50% off Fighting

Looks like Reddit user Spacefish008 got Portal with RTX running on a 5700 XT. They note that they get “~45 FPS on 846x643” on High settings. All that’s needed is the RADV_PERFTEST=rt,emulate_rt %command% launch parameter. The OP explains how this works: It uses DirectX and DXVK exposes the DXR APIs to the game if it detects raytracing support in the underlying Vulkan driver. The Vulkan driver is RADV, which can emulate raytracing via shaders on older-gen AMD GPUs like NAVI10 / RDNA1.