r/Android • u/crotonaldehyde • 1d ago

News DroidDeck brings the SteamOS experience to Android

https://github.com/Droid-Deck/DroidDeck
145 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

16

u/FurbyTime Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra 1d ago

It's good to have another option for ARM device X86 play; Before this, you had the "run the games on Android in a similar way to emulators" option (Gamehub/Gamenative), and the "Throw out the Android and just run a ARM Linux build with Steam" Option (Rocknix, ArmadaOS, Pocknix, etc), and with this you have "Run the full Steam interface as if it were an Android app" middle ground.

After using it a bit, I'm still partial to the "Throw out Android" option for this, and think if you have a dedicated ARM device you can use it's the better option (Even if that's a simplification that's a bit wrong in practice), but I can appreciate something like this for phones or any other kind of non-dedicated device.

4

u/wy1d0 Fold 7 1d ago

I have an Ayn Thor. I don't play it as much as I expected because it took me days to get it all set up and every time I go to use it, there are loads of updates and notifications and errors to deal with.

I'm wondering if this is the solve to have me just able to pick it up and game and then put it down when I'm done - the reason I bought it in the first place.

But haven't gotten around to trying this out yet to know...

3

u/FurbyTime Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra 1d ago

I think it depends on what exactly you're looking for.

IMO, I never found any of the "Android App" solutions to really feel that good in practice; Android's flexibility is great if you're trying to, say, turn a phone into a variable all in one device, but when you just want a device to do one thing (Even if that "one" thing is "all the games"), it's support of those multiple functions causes the one to feel.. lesser. Partially because of those updates you were talking about; People complain about having an update to run every time you boot up a console, but then multiply that by however many consoles you have and it just gets tedious, especially if the update changes something about how you set things up).

I have a Thor as well, which I initially bought for the express purpose of building a "All in one" device to handle both my Vita and 3DS libraries, but I found when I got my hands on it that I didn't really want to go through the motions of setting it up for that. I felt like it just wasn't worth it when I had my perfectly good gaming PC set up for streaming all of it already.

Getting my Thor set up with ArmadaOS changed my impressions pretty hard on that front. Something about a dedicated OS for gaming made me really appreciate the idea of one of these devices, and, while I still haven't gotten around to setting it up as I want, I could absolutely see myself doing it after I get the Odin 3 that I realized would probably be my "perfect" device.

2

u/wy1d0 Fold 7 1d ago

Sounds like I should try out ArmadaOS instead of Steam OS on ARM?

3

u/FurbyTime Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra 1d ago

ArmadaOS should, at this point, be a more mature project with roughly the same or higher game compatibility.

SteamOS on ARM (Of the many projects from it) are taking the official SteamOS ARM release (for the Steam Frame) and adapting it to be a more general OS; This will STILL require specific optimizations and features built per device (Both in terms of per chip as well as just the device itself), and, if ArmadaOS already supports the device, it quite possibly has those features already.

Both projects (As well as Rocknix for it's Steam integration) use the same FEX and Proton pipeline for actually playing games, so besides any changes ArmadaOS may have made per device to increase functionality (Again, more time to cook and figure this stuff out), they should be about equal in the game department.

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u/mobinschild 11h ago

I'm actively beta testing an ARM SteamOS fork & spent a few weeks using ArmadaOS- this is my experience, but the forks are closing the gap incredibly quickly. All typical Steam Deck functionality works out of the box on Armada, but it has some known bugs (ghost controllers, missing hardware buttons) and limitations (immutable OS/desktop mode differences). SteamOS on ARM forks have in basically 2 weeks jumped to some performant game functionality, but by device there are still major gaps (touchscreen doesn't work yet on my device).

Honestly running new ARM builds on an Ayaneo Pocket DMG feels like the early days of the Steam Deck.

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u/FurbyTime Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra 11h ago

Honestly running new ARM builds on an Ayaneo Pocket DMG feels like the early days of the Steam Deck.

That was actually a thought I had when I was testing ArmadaOS as well; It genuinely has the feeling of Early Steam Deck play where there's so much it can already do, and so much potential they are actually working to actively capitalize on (As opposed to some projects, where it takes them weeks or months to fix issues and this ends up killing the project's momentum).

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u/ISB-Dev 4h ago

I tried this the other day. Got it all setup, installed FTL, but it wouldn't start. Not a great first experience of it. Uninstalled DroidDeck after this.