Comments by "Gilad Barlev" (@GSBarlev) on "Valve Sent Me The NEW Steam Deck OLED!!" video.

In the early days they definitely used a distinctive box that was covered with Portal memes. They switched to nondescript packaging after reports of unscrupulous delivery drivers stealing the devices.
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@BrodieRobertson No, the internals are completely different, down to the fan orientation. GN actually shows side-by-side comparisons of each an every part—even if you don't know the first thing about soldering, it's striking how many fewer SMT components are on the new motherboard, for instance.
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I'm so excited for you and can't wait for you to really get into it. A suggestion? Don't start gaming on it until after you've done your software teardown, installed a system package manager and customized your device into the ultimate Linux cyberdeck. Because if you game on it first, you're going to end up like me—I fell so in love with the gaming experience that now I'm afraid to break anything 😂
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I think it ships with a 30W charger, which is, frankly, the lowest wattage you'll see in a PD charger these days. Since it uses PD, it will slowly recharge even connected to a 5V/1A brick. But I would recommend a 45W charger (more is good if it has multiple ports, but the Deck won't draw more than 45W from the wall).
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Anti-glare on the old top-tier Deck was pretty nice for gaming while touching grass, but you might want to see if anyone's done a side-by-side with the new OLED panels. 512GB + a 1TB microSD is more than enough storage for the same price as the 1TB model. That said, if it were me today I'd be buying the 512GB deck and swap out the SSD for a 2TB 2230 NVME.
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Steam also supports p2p local downloads. So if you have a 6e router and your Steam gaming library on your desktop, you'll be able to get a lot closer to those theoretical gains.
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@Beryesa. There's a need for an X11 environment on the Deck. Plenty of ancient applications (including games like SimTower) have no route to being Wayland-compatible.
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Similar for me. Steam Deck > Arch > Wayland > XWayland > Rootfull XWayland > Brodie. His XWayland videos are to this day the only resources I've found that explain the what, why and how of running an entire XSession inside of a Wayland compositor (read: SteamOS' Gaming Mode).
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He's had Plasma leads and Glorious Eggroll on Tech Over Tea. He's also literally the best YouTuber to go to for practical news about Wayland (trust me—I've looked for others). All of this to say: I'm surprised, but not shocked.
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@SebSenseGreen 💯. A 5V charger is not something I'd ever want to use on a Deck if I have any other choice.
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Tbf, this isn't his review (and isn't marketed as that). This is literally his unboxing video.
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@theoliverblogs Ooh, I see your point. That said, JSAUX will almost certainly have a transparent backplate or whole-case kit for the updated model (which IIRC has been reported as easier to body-swap than the first iteration). And it's super easy to find cases for the Deck in all flavors these days. But if you feel the itch for the "limited edition" version and your finances permit it, I absolutely wouldn't judge you if you went for it.
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Steam Input is glorious for i3/Sway, just saying.
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@Luci-gh7ud Ah, right. It's the new MacBook Air that ships with a 30W charger. That I regularly use to charge my Steam Deck. Because USB-C, baby!
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They're also clutch for binding to modifier keys when programming keyboard macros (RTS games, Minecraft Java, or, tiling WMs like Sway).
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@terrydaktyllus1320 Steam supports DRM but does not require it. I have bought plenty of Steam games that are DRM-free and can be launched outside of the Steam launcher. Nothing against GOG, btw—I wish them all the best. Competition is good, and we should count ourselves lucky that we have choices.
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You can also launch KDE (or GNOME or, in my case, Sway) directly from Gaming Mode as a "non-Steam game." I believe it has to be a DE/WM that supports Wayland, even though it's technically running in an XWayland container (gamescope). Possibly it's not rootfull?
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@Deinorius XWayland doesn't work in all cases, especially for multi-window applications. Explicitly for SimTower (also, say, Photoshop 7.0 which I have legally and used for over a decade), XWayland + WINE doesn't have support for menus in window decorations.
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@Deinorius I mean applications that would open as multiple windows. Sometimes this would be floating toolbars, other times it would be things like "preview" windows that could be put on another monitor. Note: this was the default mode for GIMP until recently.
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@Deinorius If you have GIMP installed on your system right now, you can still switch back to the old mode by unchecking the Windows → Single-Window Mode option in the image menu bar.
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