Exclusive: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC
Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux—and it could launch, supply chain willing, by year's end.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that the hardware has been in development for some time, and this week, Valve itself pointed to the device by slipping new hardware-related code into the latest version of Steam, the company's popular PC gaming storefront and ecosystem.
[...] In recent years, the "Switch-like PC" category has exploded. In early 2020, Alienware revealed its first Switch-like gaming PC, but the "concept" device has not yet turned into a commercial product. If you want to buy a similar device today, you're largely looking at products from Chinese OEMs like GPD, One-Netbook, and Aya, who have slapped ultramobile PC processors and parts into a Switch-like chassis.
Rumors point to an AMD "Van Gogh" APU (Zen 2 quad-core with RDNA 2 graphics and support for LPDDR5 RAM), 7/8-inch screen, at a $400 price point for a Q4 2021 release.
Also at Wccftech.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday May 26 2021, @10:48PM
I wouldn't be terribly concerned about it. Steam's Linux support is actually pretty good. I've been tempted to dump Windows for a while. The better Steam's Linux support gets, the more I find myself wondering, why I put up with Windows. There are some anti-cheat issues with some PvP games, though. Mainly, because they are stupid and hackers got incentive.
In the event that you want to play old games, you're actually probably better off trying to play that Windows 98/XP game on Linux. I installed "Civilization II: Multiplayer Gold Edition" on Linux for my Dad and it worked like native. Trying to do the same on a modern Windows machine is impossible without a Virtual Machine or hacked executables available from the community or patches that hack the executable for you, also available from the community. Civilization IV worked great (while I was testing it for a couple minutes), nearly flawlessly, but errored out after playing for a bit (it would just crash after he'd been playing a while), I looked up the solution (some wine settings tweaked) and he's been rock solid since then. He pretty much doesn't use a computer, except at work and to play Civ IV.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"