it could become the new standard for industry benchmarking/testing

Exactly. We are already seeing game companies specifically mention the Steam Deck in patch notes. This will give them a standard item to validate compatibility against. Any game company that wants to make sure their game works well will have a Steam Machine on-hand to QA with.

And I fully agree with you on benchmarking. It will be a very standardized system to point to in game reviews.

However, Steam offers numerous deals several times a year, so it will be worth the investment. In the long run, owning a Steam Machine or PC will pay for itself.

And you also don’t have to pay monthly for multiplayer!

I hate, hate, hate when I fix something and I don’t know why the fix worked (or what the fix even was…). I want my suffering to result in something learned so it doesn’t happen again.

is it the fault of my 15 year old amd fx cpu, or is it linux? I have a gtx 6700

It’s your CPU. If you are up for purchasing new hardware, a Ryzen processor (5000 series or better) will be a massive upgrade and are very prevalent on the used market.

For an external drive? I guess I have never experienced that since external drives are already pretty slow.

Yeah, you will generally have a better time with exFAT, which is a format both Windows and Linux works with well. All my external drives get formatted as such.