I’d honestly stick to proven, well-supported distros like openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora or Ubuntu, especially as a newcomer.

Where on the website does it say what it actually costs? Can’t find it.

A Google search preview from the official Barcelona Asus store “Asus by MacMan” has accidentally revealed what many feared: the ROG Xbox Ally X will retail for €899, while the standard model sits at €599.

Not sure how this would translate to USD 1000 to be honest. Prices in euro usually include taxes, which is what, 21% in Spain? So minus taxes the 599,-€ model would translate to about $550 (taxes not included).

This still doesn’t undercut the Steam Deck which I feel it should do considering it’s likely using the same APU and the Deck is a couple years old at this point, but it’s not as bad as the headline/article makes it sound.

Tumbleweed. Rolling release with automated testing (openQA), snapper properly setup out of the box.

Honestly the entire openSUSE ecosystem. Tumbleweed on my main PC that often has some of the latest hardware, Slowroll on my (Framework) laptop because it’s rolling but slower (monthly feature updates, only fixes in-between), and Leap for servers where stability (as in version/compatibility stability, not “it doesn’t crash” stability) is appreciated.

openSUSE also comes in atomic flavors for those interested. And it’s European should you care.

With all that being said, I don’t really care much about what distro I’m using. What I do with it could be replicated with pretty much any distro. For me it’s mostly just a means to an end.

There isn’t official pricing nor reliable sources out there so I’m going by rumors.

With your calculation you have to keep in mind that the Switch 2 cards have to somewhat match microSD Express speeds, so a more accurate comparison would be these, but they aren’t available in 64 GB sizes.

All I’ve heard is that they’re expensive and with the larger sizes often required for Switch 2 games it’s an even bigger problem than with Switch (1). These key cards exist for a reason. And I’d bet Nintendo takes a margin on these instead of only requiring the publisher to cover the manufacturing costs.

For someone owning both devices and actually trying to decide which version to get, both are decent in portable mode with the Switch 2 taking the lead in docked mode (as the Deck doesn’t increase its power limits in docked mode whatsoever). So I’d probably get the Switch 2 version if I didn’t have a desktop PC to go with my Deck, but I do, so my “docked” experience (playing on my PC) is vastly superior anyway, with the Deck getting the portable part done.

For a technical comparison it’s kind of inaccurate I think. Yes, it’s certainly impressive that the Switch 2 can run this game in portable mode likely consuming less than 10 watts for the entire system while producing okay graphics. And it’s clear that DLSS does a lot of heavy lifting here, but:

• The 8.9 watts figure is likely somewhat inaccurate because it’s based on approximate battery life while playing the game. Even if the game is played from 100% to 0%, there’s still inaccuracies because the specific battery likely won’t have 19.3 Wh exactly. Instead it’ll likely be a bit higher than that when brand new, and a bit lower with 100s of cycles.
• The Switch 2 clearly consumes less power than the Deck needs to achieve “playable” framerates in Cyberpunk 2077, but that doesn’t tell us that much about the efficiency of just the SoC. I’d assume the Deck requires a little bit more juice for its OLED screen and also more for the rest of the system, for example the standard NVMe drive it uses. The “approximately 9 watts consumption” comparison they’re doing makes it look like the Switch 2 is around 3 times as efficient, but that’s not how efficiency curves work. You’re comparing the Deck at a power consumption level that’s probably the peak of Switch 2s efficiency curve.
• Game settings are (currently?) impossible to match. Some can be matched, others are either some in-between on Switch or even “lower than low”, for example some models/geometry. I assume these changes have a large enough performance impact that CDPR thought they were worth to implement just for the Switch 2.
• Scene-specific pixel counting wasn’t really done, so it’s not possible to say which device renders more “real” pixels (even though DLSS certainly seems to make the most out of these pixels).

I still think the Switch 2 is very impressive in terms of performance in portable mode, certainly more than I expected when hearing about the rumored Ampere architecture and the Samsung manufacturing process.

It also shows that something comparable to DLSS (likely FSR 4) would be hugely beneficial to PC handhelds so I hope that the Deck 2 will properly support that. Sad that AMDs Z2 series don’t, but I hope Valve is cooking another custom chip with AMD soon.

Well, at least for the physical edition, they have to account for the cost of the 64 GB game card they are using. Wasn’t that rumored to cost like $16 a piece?

I wouldn’t say we’re over-reliant on Steam, but maybe on Valve to some extent.

If Valve would suddenly stop all their work on/around Linux, that’d certainly affect Proton and also things like the open AMD GPU drivers. Sure, others would likely continue their work (it’s not like they’re doing it all alone now anyway), but Valve certainly brings a lot of expertise and also commercial interest.

While I agree that Proton is awesome, running a game originally released for PS3/360 with enhanced visuals at 60 FPS (instead of 30ish) on a 1660 Ti is hardly anything to write home about.

That was bound to happen at some point. Buying a Google device to then “degoogle” it never sit quite right with me.

Google Maps doesn’t pretend to be good at chess. ChatGPT does.

You’re good, no worries. We’re all just speculating anyway, there isn’t really a right or wrong.

I’d just be surprised if it’d come down in price one model to the next considering prices for tech in general. Maybe Microsoft made a special deal with ASUS, but I think the base model with the Z2 A is what they’ll use to rectify the price of the Z2 Extreme model.

The ROG Ally X’s MSRP is 899,-€ and that’s what it currently costs here in Germany at least. It was as low as 799,-€ though recently, but now it’s back up. Considering this “Xbox Ally X” is the successor to it, I don’t think it’s unrealistic.

Well, at least the base model Xbox Ally has essentially the same SoC as the Steam Deck. The Z2 A has 4 Zen 2 cores and 8 RDNA 2 CUs. It will be configurable up to 20 watts TDP instead of 15 on the Deck, but that’s it. So much for “long in the tooth technology wise”.

Sure, the Z2 Extreme variant will be more powerful, but it’ll also be in a different price category (800-900,-€).

And in terms of user-friendliness: the Xbox Ally will run Windows. It won’t launch into the regular desktop shell (by default), and it won’t have as many services running in the background which might help with performance and battery life, and you’ll probably be able to update drivers and Windows through it. Maybe it will have some preconfigured scripts/shortcuts to install Steam, Battle.net etc. But that’s it. Expect to fall back to the desktop mode (or open a browser, terminal and Explorer window in the new gaming mode) for anything more advanced like installing emulators.

In terms of pick up and play this won’t be much different to the Steam Deck, with the one exception being Game Pass - but even then don’t expect any of the more demanding titles to run well.