I’m one of those weirdos. It’s my daily driver desktop PC.

I ordered mine with the same intentions as everyone else in the Great Queue of 2022 and waited patiently until it arrived in June. The week before it did, my old laptop finally kicked the bucket.

At first I intended to replace that laptop, but… I docked up the Deck and fell in love. I had already divorced Microsoft and was on Linux anyway, so it was an easy transition, and the Deck is far more capable than that old laptop was, so weirdly… it was an upgrade. More capable on daily tasks, and more portable when I had to be on the go with it. It’s been a great several years, and no regrets.

Nah. Instead I use my desktop PC as a Steam Deck. My arms are getting so ripped from having to carry the whole setup around.

I was visiting a friend by train and took my deck with me. Best experience ever for a good session of Age of Mythology!!

I use my Steam Deck as a PC. I mainly use it for web development. The integration between my containerized services (via distrobox) and my IDE was giving me problems, so I went with Nobara Linux. I don’t do a ton of gaming on it these days, but when I do, it is usually 2d games. They work absolutely wonderfully. At the end of the day, it’s just a laptop, and in desktop mode (with an external monitor and keyboard), it is perfectly capable of everything I need it to do.

Bit late with a reply but I bought one with this use case in mind, thinking it could be a cost effective family PC, but immediately fell foul of the lack of proper user switching. You can sign in to different Steam profiles but on the desktop everything runs under a single predefined user with admin rights. Fine for a single person but no good for a family needing multiple distinct user profiles and access controls.

I’ve installed Windows as a dual boot setup but it makes the whole thing much more of a faff, so it doesn’t get used. It’s back to being exclusively a handheld gaming machine.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case but Pewdiepie was using his as a home server.

I recommended my little brother get a steam deck and dock because it was within his budget, a gaming PC was not. He’s had an absolute blast and been able to play every game he’s wanted to. Mouse and keyboard and display work fine.

Main pc +1 screen + 1GF with 1 Steamdeck with 1 screen

Did girlfriend came with a SD, or SD came with a girlfriend? Can I find them as a bundle?

I guess, most people who buy a steam deck already own a PC.

Would be the same for me. I’d get a steam deck to game on the go, but I already have (multiple) PCs. So why would I replace my PC with a Steam Deck?

It might be an use case for a student or other young person who is getting their first device, but then again I feel if you have only one device, a laptop is the more sensible, more versatile choice.

I’m pretty sure that for most people a steam deck or similar device is a secondary or tertiary device.

I’ve tried mine a few times, always had a poor experience. Compatibility issues aside, the Steam Deck simply isn’t powerful enough to make it a truly enjoyable gaming experience on a big display. I can’t do sub 30fps on a 27" monitor anymore.

When I travel I take the deck and a Bluetooth keyboard with a trackpad. It works fine as a laptop in a pinch. With an external monitor it’s a perfectly serviceable PC.

I sometimes to but it’s not my main desktop PC. I have a notebook that’s much more powerful but when I left the notebook in my backpack besides the apartment door and sat down at my desk already, I may be too lazy to get up again and then grab whatever is the USB-C dockable device nearby. (Sometimes it’s also my Samsung phone for DeX desktop.)

Steam Deck is artificially power-constrained. That affects desktop use as well. Everything is just that bit less smooth than a Ryzen 9 system that’s not constrained to handheld power consumption.

Yep, started of with the stock OS and distrobox for dev stuff. I had occasional issues with multi monitor setup so ended up just using 1 on its own.

Recently put cachyOS handheld on it instead.

No problems with it so far. For gaming I mainly use it hooked up to either a monitor or TV but handheld works fine too.

Dev wise, I’ve gone down the docker rabbit hole and had no issues so far with it.

I mean I need something with a trackpad and keyboard and a bigger screen to work efficiently so if I already have one of those, why would I use the SD for that?

If you don’t need a laptop? Sure, why not.

I have a privacy oriented raspberry pi 400, that i use for my web browsing, banking, office, micro controller and video conversion stuff.

Steam Deck is for games and 3d modelling and other stuff that rp400 might not have enough power for.

Steam Deck is mostly 90% on desktop mode mounted on a dock with external display, mouse and keyboard.

I keep my personal stuff out of Steam Deck because I don’t trust steam + games data gathering.

I alloved my son to scavenge my old desktop PC, because I didn’t need it anymore.

Only gripe is that Arduino IDE is shit on both Steam Deck and RP400, but so far Thonny and micropython has been adequate.