There's a massive cultural thing in the US about the iPhone being the preferred phone and if you don't have one it must be because you're too poor to afford one. Obviously this is a result of marketing and isn't universal but it is a surprisingly widely held view.

Given that, showing up in a group chat as a lone blue bubble marks you out as the inferior group member (in some people's eyes). It doesn't matter so much 1:1 but if there are 10 people the odd one out stands out.

I think the stuff about "experimenting" with limited editions is because they're trying to find ways to make it hard for scalpers to buy them. That's why they've got stuff about having a Steam Account in good standing etc.. Maybe it's actually working!

It absolutely discusses phone size - in some detail both in the intro and as part of the reviews.

I'd get this instead: JSAUX Docking Station Compatible with Steam Deck/ROG Ally, 5-in-1 Steam Deck Dock with HDMI 2.0 4K@60Hz, 100Mbps Ethernet, Dual USB-A 2.0 and 100W USB-C Charging Port for Valve Steam Deck-HB0602 https://amzn.eu/d/c71hbV8

It's a fairly well known dock for the Deck, and seems (based on feedback on Reddit) that it's more reliable than the official one if anything.

That was my conclusion from research, so I've got it and it's worked flawlessly for several months.

Yeah, but then they get flexed and you are on at the wrong time. It really is worth the effort to get something set up.

I've never had to do this sort of thing in a lab, but I now feel I know exactly what that feels like! You have my sympathy!

Isn't dust what you get when things disintegrate?

GeForce Now is Nvidia's game streaming service.

It's just psychologically nicer. It's a bit like it being nicer to get on with work when my desk is tidy (not that I tidy it that often)

I do it, because it makes a massive difference to me how tidy my bedroom feels and how welcoming the bed looks at the end of the day. I just have a duvet though, so it's 10 seconds of pulling on each corner until it's reasonably even - not going for perfection!

I've been using the absolute simplest option - just use normal desktop mode and then KDE Connect for control. KDE Connect connects your phone to anything, and then can use phone touchscreen as mouse for the deck.

Do not declare your undying love for someone. It puts way too much pressure on, and unless they're in exactly the same mental place it's unlikely to go anywhere.

Instead, just ask them if they'd like to go on a date. That obviously communicates that you're interested in them, and gives a good starting point to build a connection.

I agree, it's a bit annoying. Maybe you could put it in desktop mode, and configure it to turn screen off but not go to sleep? It'll still do updates then.

I've been playing more single player games. My PC has mostly been for multiplayer stuff with friends - Siege, Deep Rock etc. My Deck has opened up time to a load of Single Player things - AAA things like Spiderman, Control, Mad Max and indie stuff like Black Skylands.

Plus I had a load of work travel in the first part of this year. The Deck made hotel rooms much more pleasant!

Malapropisms are by definition accidental.

I'm glad to see some variation in this space (I almost said innovation except that it's a combo of the Deck and Switch). But it's still running Windows (see above) and it's going to be around twice the price of a Deck.

Yeah, the ROG Ally particularly makes zero sense to me and misses the point. It runs Windows and it doesn't have the touchpads.

The touchpads really broaden the utility of the console, from being able to select small UI elements in normal programs to being able to play more mouse enabled games (FTL being the most recent for me).

And Linux is the real special sauce - nobody seems to get why Valve did all that work rather than "just" putting Windows on it. Windows isn't a selling point (you can put it on the Deck if you want), it's slow, the UI doesn't work well on that screen and you lose out on being able to suspend games etc.

Interesting - I'd always thought that G-Sync etc meant the other way around. Thanks for the explanation!

Desktop Linux had been a bit behind the others on display features due to the legacy of X. As everybody moves more to Wayland that better enables these sorts of things, they're catching up.

You can update your version of Fedora through the updater software as well but it's a very clear separate process that is initiated manually.

Distro version updates bring major updates to key packages - the one you'd notice most would be to Gnome, the desktop environment. There will be other things too that get only bugfix and security updates during the life of that version, and then after a while that version will lose support and you won't get any updates at all (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/lifecycle/).

Updating is very safe and reliable. I've had my Fedora install at work for 3 years, updating periodically and it's working extremely well.