MudMan

Cool. So not totally screwed then.

It's normally 1-2 days where I am (not the US, incidentally).

Still, I mean... pretty sure I can survive that long without a toaster (or... you know, go outside and buy one from a shop).

As screwed as a society with same-day online order delivery can be, I guess?

I have a minifridge I use for drinks (admittedly it's a relatively large household). It has the advantage of having an easily accessible plug, so you can even easily run it on a battery or generator in emergencies. It's not super cold, but it beats room temperature.

I'll say that sounds way less crazy to me, being from a relatively rural area. I know multiple people with chest freezers on the side. Health regulations have made butchering pigs at home very impractical, but chickens are still fair game (if a lot more paperwork than they used to be).

I think maybe I'm spoiled by the movies, but... I kind of hate it? I hate all the ways they had to cherry pick Dune stuff to turn it into a survival crafting MMO like Conan, especially in the parts where the lore fits worse than Conan. And the story is extremely videogamey. I think the new films are already a bit overly literal when it comes to choosing between the politics and the psychedelia, but man, does Dune Awakening do videogame-ass videogame dream sequences.

The disconnected, patchy reality of the original Cryo Dune got to the right feel accidentally, but there's something to seeing the setting reduced to a skin over Conan Exiles that seriously rubs me the wrong way.

See? Told ya.

The honest answer is that word is "middle class", but you'll all be mad at me for saying it out loud.

That's... an interesting use case.

Since we're hijacking the thread to explain the weird reasons to own a Go, I have some egonomic requirements that make large and heavy handhelds a bit or a problem. I'm also the one person in the universe that thinks the Switch Joycon are fantastic and wishes more split controllers were available, for that same reason.

Unfortunately the Go controllers are... exactly what I want botched beyond recognition, is the best way to put it. They're too large, you just can't grip them correctly without accidentally pressing a bunch of buttons, the d-pad is mediocre at best... definitely not it.

I hate that I'm with you in kinda wanting to give them another chance with the Go 2, but man, is that a lot of money to sink into something that isn't that much of a performance upgrade.

Frankly, for your use case I don't know that the Legion Go would be my pick. There are a bunch of laptops I'd rather use instead, and compact mouse options aren't that rare. That said, a tiny Linux tablet is a pretty unique proposition. If you're thinking of an upgrade I'd still give some thought to the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 2025 edition, which has the newer Strix Halo AMD APU and Bazzite has started supporting explicitly (still in Beta, but hey). Definitely not the previous Z13s with dedicated Nvidia GPUs, but with explicit support it may be an interesting (if VERY expensive) choice for gaming and editing workloads. They also support the Minisforum V3, but that's not that much more powerful than the Go. They seem to be heavily discounted now, though, so maybe there's a next-gen incoming?

And that's my surprising takeaway for Bazzite: They seem to be the only distro doing the legwork for these dedicated portable form factors. Not just handhelds but tablets and laptops, too. It's a bit of a shame that it's a bit of a quirky distro to daily drive. I think it shows that there is a bit of an untapped market for something like this that the mainstream desktop distros are not targeting well. I don't necessarily need to go to Fedora's page and pick between twenty versions with slightly different DEs, but it'd be nice to punch in the model of my old ASUS gaming laptop and get a download that I know will support my dGPU and do proper power management out of the box the way Bazzite does with its supported devices.

Oh, hey, a unicorn. I say to you, neigh.

I'll be honest, the eGPU thing is a step too far for me, but I'm mildly impressed to learn it works. AMD, I presume? As fas as I know Bazzite don't even provide a build with the Nvidia drivers on top of the Legion Go customizations, right?

I think Bazzite, at least dual booting, is a bit of a no-brainer for the Go because man, is Lenovo's Windows software frustrating to use. I don't understand why Lenovo decided to have two separate dedicated buttons for it, neither of which is a Home button. Whatever money they got from their stupid game launcher app serving you ads and sponsored links (I have to assume somewhere between 50 and 75 cents, given their market share) is not worth how frustrating that is.

Bazzite's customizations are faster, more flexible and more convenient... and you get to use the other button to open your launcher's menu, as nature intended.

I'll say that less bonkers handhelds are much better to use even on full fat Windows. If you own a Go, though, you can absolutely see how Lenovo were first in line to tell Valve "just hook us up, we suck at doing this on Windows ourselves".

It HAS been posted a bunch. Unfortunately I haven't seen more thorough testing from more technical outlets since (all of those seem to be too busy with the Switch 2 to spend time in the Go S).

I did see a much smaller channel do a three way comparison between Windows, Linux and Bazzite on the Legion Go 1 and claim some better performance, but in normal use definitely not the 2x battery life Dave2D is reporting, which is consistent with my own experience owning a Legion Go 1 with the Z1 extreme and dual booting Windows and Bazzite since pretty much day one. From that experience I'd say performance is also heavily game-dependent. Gonna guess it has more to do with hitting memory limitations than anything else (incidentally, if you happen to own a non-Deck handheld, particularly one of the more niche ones built from laptop parts with a bunch of RAM, make sure to check how much VRAM is being allocated, it can make a big difference).

It'll be interesting to re-run some of those checks more rigorously when the ASUS Ally with the trimmed-down Windows build drops.

It's an interesting talking point to me because I suspect this has much bigger reach than the devices themselves. I wonder if anybody here owns a non-Deck device, and how many Decks are even owned. The Switch 2 ended up outselling the Deck in like a week, and best guess it'll have outsold the entirety of the PC handheld segment by the end of the summer, definitely before the holidays.

I have lots of thoughts on where PC handhelds are at the moment, many of them not particularly positive, but it really feels like at this point in time nobody is talking about them as real products you may want to use and instead more as some proxy in online debate about PC software and hardware opinions.

You can't hear it from there, but I am screaming in non-native English speaker.

Or, to put it another way, every single song you know released before 1995.

For reference on how this is different (and how it's not) to previous instances, here's mainstream-AF PC World magazine in February 2020:

Windows 7 was understandable before; now it’s a liability. With no security updates and a still-vast market share, Microsoft’s operating system will be a big, juicy target for hackers.

We recommend migrating to Windows 10 if you’re able to, and have a guide explaining your Windows 10 upgrade options (go.pcworld.com/10up) . If you perform only basic tasks on your PC—email, web surfing, and documents—then Linux is a viable, user-friendly option these days. We’ve got a Linux beginner’s guide (go. pcworld.com/lnxg), too, and better yet you can try it for free with no risk to your main Windows 7 installation.

You can probably still upgrade to Windows 10 for free (see page 103), too.

I don't have APC's issue on hand, but if anybody wants to share how that compares, do go ahead.

For some additional reference: https://vivaldi.com/blog/replace-windows-7-with-linux/ https://www.ghacks.net/2020/01/14/windows-7-support-ends-today-here-are-your-options/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-and-how-to-replace-windows-7-with-linux-mint/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHBBN0CqXk

Short term history is so fun and so weird.