The Thelio Major by System76 is their “most powerful gaming system, placing some of the largest GPUs on the market in a machine engineered for quiet, effective cooling.” Today, the case gets a redesign. First, the I/O shield on the back is now removable. This allows the user to replace the motherboard with a different one if they so desire. Though this is for the Major, “other Thelio models” should get this feature as well in the future.

Now that a new Steam Deck client update has reached the stable branch, it has incorporated all the changes from the beta branch since October 18th. This is almost a month’s worth of changes, including quicker startup times if you have a large library of games, reduced size of the Steam client, QR code functionality when logging into your Steam account, gyro enabling for gamepads that don’t support capacitive touch, Nintendo-style button layouts, updated Desktop controller layout, and tons of other features, fixes, and improvements.

Something interesting that I came across yesterday. YouTuber The Phawx recently posted a video going over the Deck’s TDP. Turns out it’s not completely accurate. By comparing the Deck with the GPD Win Max 2 (prototype), he discovered both devices are in “absolute lockstep” – if the Deck’s TDP is set to 15 watts, for example, it will actually use 28 watts. If it’s set to five watts, it will actually use 12.

Cemu – the Wii U emulator that recently went open-source while at the same time adding support for Linux – recently received a commit to add online features for the Linux version. Going by the pull request, it seems like there was very little back and forth to it. One of the developers commented, “Looks good to me. No regressions encountered while testing on Windows.” As such, the PR has been merged into the main branch and already available for download.

A few weeks ago I had talked about Intel’s Optane SSD (the 905p in particular). It’s a ridiculously fast SSD – perfect for reducing the loading time in your games (twice as fast than traditional PCIe NVMe x4 in some cases). Both the 905p and P1600X are back in stock on Newegg: 905p, 960 GB, $399.99 (these use a U.2 connection, you’ll need to use the included M.2 adapter if your power supply doesn’t have the necessary connector type) If you’re looking for something a little less expensive (P1600X uses M.

Those of you on the Stable branch on Deck should have received an update. A new startup movie has been added for BPM, and many issues have been fixed, including the standalone controller configurator showing at the incorrect browser scale. Patch notes are as follows: General Fixed Steam desktop client browser scaling changing when New Big Picture Mode keyboard or controller configurator are opened New Big Picture Mode Added new startup movie for Big Picture Mode (I tried to get a screenshot of this; the new movie isn’t showing up for me) Fixed issue with Desktop version of Remote Play Together dialogs being displayed while in Big Picture Mode Re-worked “Gifts Pending” page to be gamepad navigable Fixed trackpad typing scale in standalone keyboard in Desktop mode Fixed issue where the Main Menu was visible after exiting, then re-entering Big Picture Mode Fixed standalone controller configurator showing at the incorrect browser scale Stopped showing Steam Deck interstitial screens when in Desktop mode Steam Input

Today’s update to Bottles – an easy way of running Windows-based applications on Linux – fixes GameScope, DLSS, updates translations, rewrites the vkBasalt frontend, and adds other QoL improvements. Patch notes are as follows: Backend: Fix Gamescope arguments by @jntesteves Fix DLSS by @cyberphantom52 Don’t use d3d10 & d3d10_1 dll’s from dxvk by @Blisto91 Frontend: Improve bottle details view by @cyberphantom52 Redesign details view by @cyberphantom52 Add grade tooltips by @TheEvilSkeleton QoL improvements by @TheEvilSkeleton Rewrite vkBasalt frontend by @TheEvilSkeleton Minor consistency fixes by @TheEvilSkeleton Minor improvements for drive selection by @TheEvilSkeleton Fixes:

While the DS4 has technically been supported via “hid-sony” since way back to kernel 3.15, Sony is adding official support to said gamepad by adding backward compatibility to their “hid-playstation” driver, which already has support for the DualSense/DualSense Edge. The patch is confirmed to be merged with the upcoming 6.2 kernel. The patch will add support for: USB/Bluetooth connectivity touchpad battery status vibration accelerometer/gyro LED brightness Thanks to Phoronix, as always, for reporting on this.

WinesapOS – the portable Linux distro that lets you use Linux on any flash drive without having to install it – has evolved from alpha to beta to what is now the release candidate. Here’s some noteworthy changes: VirtualBox support in addition to VMware Fusion/Workstation. The latter is recommended for 3D acceleration improved Mac support, with better fan control and Wi-Fi support PolyMC has now been replaced with Prism Launcher for your Minecraft needs improved Xbox and Xbox 360 controller support the NVIDIA Flatpak runtime is now updated whenever the distro is upgraded – this prevents upgrade issues As with the beta release there are some known issues with workarounds:

Some good news for those of you who have a OneXPlayer (at least, if you own the AMD variant). The sensor driver for monitoring and controlling the fan speed will now be merged with kernel 6.2. This is thanks in no small part to Joaquín Ignacio Aramendía (Samsagax), one of the ChimeraOS contributors. Previously, you had to build the driver from source, but in a few months’ time, once kernel 6.