OK, thanks for the hint. I just found out that you will only be prompted to update if you:

1. power everything off (shut down deck completely, don’t just sleep it)
2. remove all peripherals connected to the dock (except network cable if you use that for your connection)
3. start the deck
4. if there are any updates for the the dock, they should show in the options of gaming mode

here’s to hoping the updates will allay the display issues

I vaguely remembered it offering me updates when I first set the dock up (purchased the dock much later then the deck). I’ll make sure I have the latest version.

Good to know. It was a common problem with XCOM 2 for me.

Whenever possible I tried to get around this distorted audio noise after resuming from sleep by first opening a pause menu and then sending the deck to sleep. It seems to occur less the less audio channels are used by the game engine at the moment that you sent the deck to sleep.

What’s the difference between run time program data and temporary files? Is /tmp just for system level processes but not for user space?

Ideally you’ll adjust both in game settings and deck settings for each game with in-game settings taking precedence as they give you access to fine tuning custom tailored to that game. The deck settings are great to tinker with when you want longer battery life especially. If it’s inside the dock and charging while you play you needn’t worry much about optimization (frame rate limit, heat limit, half rate shading, etc.) and can leave it at the sensible defaults.

The Steam Deck per-game control layout is very helpful for games that don’t come with native controller support or those that don’t let you rebind controls inside the game itself.

I don’t own the games you mention, so I can’t suggest specifics but my general way of setting up a game is:

1. install the game and get it running at all
2. use in-game options to find a resolution and layout comfortable from your preferred playing posture/position
3. enable frame rate overlay in the steam settings
4. start with default or auto detect settings for graphics or look up what others recommend online in sites like protondb. if you hit a comfortable frame rate (40-60+ for me personally) keep increasing the graphics quality settings in game as long it remains fluid to play. Don’t need to do it all in one session. I usually minimally increment the graphics settings at the start of each gaming session and simply revert once it’s no longer fluid.

That likely means they’ll put thought into a pleasant controller layout (including steam actions) as well. Good stuff.

git gud

not a meme per se but I always found the command abcde confusing:

user1: How to best rip this music album??

user2: Oh simple: abcde

user1: 🤔🤔?

abcde stands for ‘a better CD encoder’, the more you know

I mean taking the screenshot is the easy part, getting reliable OCR on the other hand …

In my experience (tesseract) current OCR works well for continuous text blocks but it has a hard time with tables, illustrations, graphs, gui widgets, etc.

Is that what the Steam Deck uses? It’s pretty useful.

You can export all your bookmarks to a single JSON file. it’s a format designed for storing and exchanging data between machines just like this.

Also good for making local backups of your favorites.

You’re right. What I actually wish for is a “export selection” functionality so that you can quickly drag a rectangular selection and export that.

Oh I wish GIMP had a “export visible” functionality. My workaround is usually to “copy visible” and then paste to a new image.

I tried using Krita instead of gimp but found it hard to do color management: adjust levels, exposure, color curves and such. At the time I simply couldn’t find any dialogs to do many of those tasks.

i see a keyboard , but no track pads. track pads are really versatile and a key feature of the deck. this keyboard doesn’t look to comfortable to use either. Maybe it’s ok ish if you put down the device on flat ground and are seated, but typing on this thing while holding it in your hands is going to require some amazing thumb agility.

I have a small Bluetooth keyboard paired with my steam deck that I use whenever I need to input longer stretches of text. it works out just fine.

I mean you could alias the glob option as the default but I clearly see your point about standardized default behaviour.