Sounds dumb, you don't need the battery, display, game controller or small form factor for a server. Just get a single board computer.
Id say there's no harm in playing around to see what happens, but I agree that there's no practical application to this. At least that I can think of.
Not the most optimal solution but it is entirely self contained and has a long lasting “UPS”.
I mean you can but it’s a big waste of most of the hardware. Better to use an old desktop or laptop as a server
Meh.
Probably not going to be worth it for a while, but some folks in a couple of years are going to have old Steam Decks they can't use anymore for gaming, and they might benefit from this. If nothing else, I hope that this becomes one more way to recycle one more piece of technology.
Are there any benefits to doing this over having a dedicated server with a vpn you can connect to for outside the network?
Because otherwise this seems like unnecessary performance overhead on a device which I'd like to squeeze as much performance out of in order to play games...
You get to make a video and get some views
It's a bit like using a laptop for a server, which does have some benefits like lower power consumption and an automatic UPS. But it has the disadvantage of having to put most of your storage in an outside enclosure, which you'd need a UPS for anyway. If you need to run something durable with low storage requirements and high uptime requirements laptops make sense.
This, however, does not.
y though?
Eh, looks like a (sorta) fun project. But you can turn pretty much any Linux machine into a home server, so this isn't really that surprising - and as plenty have pointed out here, there are better hardware choices.
I have a file/dns server in my basement that is built of my desktop upgrade leftovers. Every so often I swap out the mobo/cpu and reinstall a Debian flavor of some sort. Run my setup scripts, start up my docker services and hey, presto! My server abides.
It seems like more of a "fun project". I wouldn't waste the resources, but I have servers already. I could see this as a great way to try out self-hosting if you haven't before. As long as you don't remove SteamOS (in the video, he kept both) then, it's not hurting anything.
Unfortunately he lost me when he said he dual booted Debian. Was hoping for something with docker/distrobox that could allow for root without being wiped on updates. I already dual boot SteamOS and windows 10, and run very small solo servers for things like Everquest.
My ideal solution is finding a way to containerize a server like that, launch it via game mode along with the client to make the most use of Steam Input. I can do it on the windows side of the house, but requires things like Glosi and playnite to get setup, and just isn’t as streamlined as I would like it to be.
