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It is laborious for Valve’s Steam Deck to flee comparisons to Nintendo’s dominant hybrid console: we have discovered that we use our Decks like higher, beefier Switches, and pores and skin producer Dbrand simply got here out with a parodical Change-themed vinyl wrapper for the Deck. YouTuber SpikeHD went within the different course although: what should you tried to make a Change right into a Steam Deck?
Brief reply is “you’ll be able to’t,” however god bless him, SpikeHD tried to put in Steam on Nintendo’s ageing megahit handheld. The ensuing 12-minute video is a captivating take a look at the digital bowels of the Change, stripping away that “Nintendo Magic” in an absurd science experiment and revealing the sterile, bizarre laptop beneath.
You’ve got already been in a position to run Ubuntu on Change for some time, and this might theoretically allow you to run the Linux model of Steam on a jailbroken console. From there, simply pull up the large image UI and bada bing, Steam Deck unlocked. The primary hurdle is hacking a Change to permit Linux—that is solely possible with older fashions of the console and it is a course of that confused me out simply from watching.
You want your Linux set up on an SD card, a USB C-based “payload” to interrupt the initialization of the Change’s personal UI, and you must quick the digital connectors on one of many Change’s Pleasure Con rails—ideally with a correct instrument, however you may doubtlessly do it with a paperclip. All this actually makes me admire how user-configurable the Deck is out of the field.
From there, after many difficulties, SpikeHD had Linux engaged on the console, full with a wandering mouse cursor because of my expensive previous buddy, Pleasure Con drift. Sadly, that is the place SpikeHD presses towards absolutely the limits of the Change’s decrepit Nvidia Tegra system on a chip. The Tegra has an Arm-based CPU, whereas Steam is simply meant to work on x86 processors like these from Intel and AMD.
SpikeHD may force-install Steam, however not any video games. As a comfort prize, the YouTuber subsequent put in Android with a Steam Deck themed Pores and skin, the closest factor bodily potential to an precise Change Deck. Even when this might have been carried out, I do not precisely see the sensible purposes of this hack—it is a worst of each worlds combining the Change’s withered, low-power {hardware} with max-difficulty Linux DIY shenanigans, however it’s a fascinating and entertaining venture all the identical. Truthfully, I discover the most effective DIY hacks are the absurd, humorous ones that ought to be unimaginable to tug off.
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