Ever wanted to quickly launch Flatpak applications from the Quick Access menu without having to add them as shortcuts on Steam in Desktop Mode? Or automatically enable the night light when it’s the right time? Or customize the CPU frequency? Play music? Customize the Home screen to look like the Switch’s home menu? That’s all possible thanks to Steam Deck plugins. The best part: just run a few commands from the terminal, and install your plugins from the plugins “store.

I wanted to briefly talk about the trilogy of Metroid Prime games running on the Deck. In a nutshell: it works pretty great. Not flawless by any means but you’d be surprised at how well the controls work. All you have to do to get up and running is to run the EmuDeck script on your Steam Deck. Then copy your Trilogy ISO to /home/deck/Emulation/roms/primehacks/. Exit Steam in Desktop Mode, and add artwork with Steam ROM Manager.

One of the first things I wanted to do after getting my Steam Deck was test Super Smash Bros. Melee. Not just to see how well it performs, but also examine online play and see how the controls feel in my hands. How to Get Melee/Slippi Working on Deck If you’re looking at getting online play set up on Linux, you can refer to the guide I wrote a few months back.

I’m fortunate to have the Huaying fan in my Deck (the quieter fan), but the folks at Linus Tech Tips decided to take matters into their own hands with the Delta fans: putting in a heatsink and fan into the unit. I won’t get into detail about it, but essentially Linus dremel-cut the back part of the Deck so a custom-shaped piece of aluminum could be fit into the device. A heatsink was then applied on top with some thermal paste, and they even went so far as to attach a fan to it.

While Valve might have given me the middle finger by never giving me a review unit of the Steam Deck, I’m now happy to report the one that I pre-ordered had finally shown up at my door this morning. So what does this mean for LGC? Well, I’ve got the following articles planned, in no particular order (I may also not do them if I lose interest): a full review. I heavily debated on this one.

SteamTinkerLaunch – an awesome wrapper for games played through Proton – is now available on Flathub. Seems like the link isn’t available on Flathub directly, but you should be able to install the app with: flatpak install com.valvesoftware.Steam.Utility.steamtinkerlaunch Great news for you Steam Deck owners! Or for those of you who primarily use Flatpaks as your applications. Check out the overview of SteamTinkerLaunch on Boiling Steam.

I wanted to briefly talk about a new site – Steam Deck HQ. In a nutshell, this website covers specific games, how they work on the Steam Deck, and what the best settings are for balancing optimal battery life while maintaining a smooth framerate. Games covered so far include: Hitman 3 Guilty Gear -Strive- Horizon Zero Dawn Firewatch Devil May Cry When accessing the home page of the site, you’ll get a nice banner image for each game covered.

A few weeks ago I had talked about Aya Neo’s new handheld, which will sport AMD’s new Mendocino APU: the Aya Neo Air Plus. As it seems manufacturers are resorting to desparate measures, they go after cheaper processors such as the Mendocino APU to match the price of the Steam Deck. As in the case of the Air Plus, it’s even cheaper at $289, although there’s no mention of how much RAM or storage is supplied.

Small update for Steam Deck users has landed today. Performance has been improved for the Recent Games carousel on the Home screen, and a few bug fixes have been added. Changelog is as follows: Improved performance for the Home screen Recent Games carousel Fixed boot glitching and crashes experienced by some customers Fixed Quick Access volume sliders not working after suspend/resume Fixed an issue in the controller reorder screen where moving to a controller slot higher than the current number of connected controllers would show as ‘!

Small update for today. Several titles on Steam have recently been playable or verified on the Steam Deck. Titles range from: Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (also 80% off till June 8th) Demon’s Tilt Ghost on the Shore Wally and the Fantastic Predators (also received a native Linux port) Arietta of Spirits (already had Deck support but now has better support for 30 Hz) Ender Lilies Great to see more and more developers get on board with supporting the Steam Deck!