I have no other words for it - Valves Steam Deck is clearly dark magic.
They've somehow managed to coax Linux into running a huge chunk of Windows native games without any major issues.
They've also somehow managed to do this in a tiny ass portable form-factor.
They've built a handheld that is, in my opinion, more comfortable to hold than a Nintendo Switch - even if it is a bit on the chonky side.
It's wild, really.
That's not to say I fully endorse anyone just going out and buying one - not that anyone *can* just go out and buy one, seeing as there's a huge wait list. But even if there weren't, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone.
This isn't me being a Gatekeeper - I think anyone who'd enjoy owning one *should* own one.
No, this is me saying it's not a console, it's a gadget. It's still very rough technology.
In the week that I've had it - not even a full seven days as of writing - I've had to reinstall the OS twice. Once because I decided to replace the internal storage, and once because a system update didn't apply correctly.
Resetting to factory default wouldn't normally be a deal breaker for me, but this little computer does not come with any sort of "factory reset" or OS restoration partition. Nope, OS re-installation requires creating a bootable USB stick (or bootable micro SD card) and running it from that.
Which, again, isn't a huge lift, but it's terribly slow and extreamly picky. The first USB stick I tried just flat out failed - it never made it to the desktop, so I couldn't do any installation.
The second stick I tried took well over 15 minutes to get to the desktop, and the Steam Deck shows *nothing* on screen while waiting. So I had to go on faith that it might, maybe, someday boot.
The SD card booted in a much quicker three minutes, so from now on that's going to be my recommended way of restoring the system. I've bought an 8 GB micro SD card which will exist *solely* for system restores.
Why Valve hasn't seen fit to include some form of system restore I don't know, and I'll probably never know. It makes no real sense, it's only a couple hundred MB so there's no real reason not to include it.
Hopefully future versions of the OS will do so.
But, yeah, the damn thing - when it works - is pretty amazing and I look forward to seeing what becomes of it in the future.