I can’t see these gaining more popularity over Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo if they are only sticking to do retro.

Right. I don't think they are particularly trying for those markets - although Sony dropping physical media of any kind is probably doing Evercade a favor anyway.

I carry my Hyper Mega Tech Pocket more often than my SteamDeck or Switch Lite, because it is so much smaller.

From my understanding, most indie companies want maximum reach for their games, especially for the amount of time and money they put into things.

Yes. Evercade's gimick is multiple games per cart, rather than exclusives.

Some of my Indie game collection I got cheaper by buying it on Evercade. Some idie devs I have only discovered because they included a game on Evercade.

A few I have bought again on my SteamDeck, to add it to my family library.

I'm doing my part!

What nonsense? I've used nvidia since the early 2000s. There are no more issues than AMD right now.

You got an abnormal issue, and I would help you troubleshoot if you'd like.

Then perhaps you're overthinking it. that is not uncommon for tech types BTW. I've seen more inefficient program code from so called 'geniuses' than anything and I just can't help put my head in my hands whenever they go off like you are rn.

Kuz a child or boomer grandparent could easily run ubuntu and probably never ever have to call IT unless something actually physically busted on their puter. Linux is smart enough to tell them what is wrong.

The fact it told me clear errors such as a drive has days before it's toast was an amazing experience after working blind in windows. Someone computer illiterate could just haul their box and throw it at the geek squad and just tell them to hook up a new drive.

Unlike windows: 'it broke. Go fish.'.

what youre saying is important and true in certain cases, yes. In mine it took me 2 months to adapt my brain and tweak linux to the point it is now working like a well oiled machine.

however my needs were very explicit being that i was building a simulation machine (not AI) i even had it planned down to hardware spec regarding cores, chips and ram for a very specific task outside average gamer use.

your average user might just need a basic game box (they could even just reuse a crap box and itll run. thats the beauty of linux. ) and throw some mint on it which does work pretty much out of the box and with steam you might need some light configuring.

EG: just editing the launch command in general tab when you right click the game:

SteamDeck=1 %command%

or install gamemode and then: gamemoderun %command%

for some games especially old ones you might need to just swap around which proton you use(in compatability menu)

most games dont need any of this as the proton GE updates to iron out all the compatibilty.

But generally speaking, Linux isn’t user-friendly (though I’m not saying it isn’t at all) in the sense that everything is guaranteed to be compatible with it and work immediately, whether it be certain peripherals that require extra setup to work correctly or software that was never specifically made to work on Linux.

On the hardware side, you're really just describing custom PC builds. Pre-built Linux gaming machines exist and do solve the hardware issues.

On the software side, outside of the big asshole publishers, it's a solved problem. Five years ago I shopped super carefully for SteamDeck compatibility. Today, OS compatibility is rarely even a consideration for me. Games just work on the SteamDeck. SteamOS has replaced Windows as the gaming default OS.

Indie devs now use game development frameworks that work perfectly on Linux, in order to get SteamDeck verified.

Even most of my "Windows Only" games just pull the correct emulators and run perfectly, automatically, when launched from Steam.

Gaming on Linux is a very different world, today.

I mean, I'll agree 100% that docking a SteamDeck has been hit and miss, depending on the game. I have about the same annoyances docking a SteamDeck as docking a laptop. I'm not angry at Valve or Windows about that, but I am very impressed with Nintendo.

I haven't had more wifi issues with SteamDeck than with my Switch or Switch Lite, or with a typical laptop.

I don't use SteamDeck desktop mode, except to install my free copy of Luanti, so I cannot comment.

Now, when we dive into specific games - mutiplayer code varies wildly between games on PC, and SteamDeck is still much closer to a PC expeirence, in that regard. If that's your point, I'm with you 100%.

A "Steam Remote Play Verified" badge would go a long way!

Edit: Decky is a mod right? I haven't had anything on my SteamDeck break every few weeks.

Oh! We did have a long running bug where various network stuff never worked quite right after waking from hybernation, which I fixed by rebooting after any time I let the deck sit for awhile.

That was patched pretty recently. It never bothered me much (once I understood the solution was a reboot) because the boot time is like 20 seconds.

I admit, I am pretty technical, but guessing that it might need a reboot after hybernation is something I think I learned from gaming on a Windows laptop.

Still, to your point, a better experience for folks coming from PC gaming than coming directly from console gaming.