Lenovo Officially Announces the Legion Go S Handheld With SteamOS (phoronix.com) 14
At CES 2025 today, Lenovo introduced the Legion Go S handheld gaming console. It marks the first officially licensed handheld that comes pre-loaded with Valve's Arch Linux based SteamOS operating system. Phoronix reports: This first officially licensed SteamOS handheld is making use of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC with Radeon 700M graphics, an 8-inch 1200p LCD touchscreen with VRR support, up to 32GB of LPDDR5x-6400 memory, up to 1TB of PCIe Gen4 SSD storage, and a 55 Whr battery. Pricing starts at $500 USD with availability beginning in May. Sadly this Lenovo Legion Go handheld running SteamOS is making use of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme and not the Ryzen Z2 announced by AMD yesterday with the Zen 5 cores. But at CES Lenovo is showing off the Lenovo Legion Go (8.8", 2) prototype that uses the AMD Ryzen Z2 Go SoC along with an OLED display albeit a Windows gaming device. Additional details are available in Lenovo's press release.
Keeping Microsoft accountable (Score:3)
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If it can run SteamOS then it will most likely run "regular Linux" just fine. The only thing I've noticed that actually stops working without an active network connection is the keyboard themes though.
Year of the Linux, handheld (Score:2)
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It happened a few years ago when the Steam Deck was released, actually.
This is simply a Legion Go handheld with SteamOS installed instead of Windows. Otherwise it's nothing special.
Is this really a gamechanger? (Score:3)
Doesn't seem to offer much that the Steam Deck itself doesn't.
I guess just good to have options? Still waiting on Asus...
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Doesn't seem to offer much that the Steam Deck itself doesn't.
What kind of a hot take is that? The biggest problem with the Steam Deck these days is its outdated processor and graphics core on account of the fact that it is an old piece of hardware. Quite a few modern games run like rubbish, even ones that shouldn't be too heavy like Baldurs Gate 3.
This thing has twice the CPU cores, and a significantly better iGPU two generations past what the Steam Deck offers, and a higher resolution and physically larger display.
What more do you expect? An extra button? A built vi
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Is this really a gamechanger? Doesn't seem to offer much that the Steam Deck itself doesn't.
The game changer is that another party is selling a device with Linux on it for gaming, and that it is supporting an existing ecosystem which will become stronger as a result. It also has much better performance, so you're wrong anyway.
I guess just good to have options? Still waiting on Asus...
That's because you're an uninformed consumer who doesn't pay attention to the industry [youtube.com].
Ok (Score:3)
So instead of having access to the full catalogue of Steam games, as would be the case if it were running Windows, you can now play a subset, many of which may have issues running on this device if they were optimized to run on a Steam Deck with different specs.
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Not so much different specs as *lower* specs. It'll be fine.
Still a bigger library than the Switch (Score:2)
Even the subset of games playable on this handheld is much bigger than the library of games playable on Nintendo Switch.
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many of which may have issues running on this device if they were optimized to run on a Steam Deck with different specs.
This device's specs exceed those of the Valve Steam Deck, so no.
Windows itself has trouble running many older Windows games, some of which run great on Linux using Proton.
If you want, you will be able to install Windows on the device, and then you can have all the fun of maintaining Windows when you were planning to be gaming.