Hello there gamers!

Ever since the handheld boom since 2022, I wanted to use one because of the concept; play any game anywhere and without the annoyances of a PC. I bought a Steam Deck OLED earlier this year, but because of personal reasons I am now using an ROG Ally (Got it at a huge discount) . This is my experience of using the device for over 3 weeks now.

Disclaimer: I am a Linux user (Left Windows in 2016) and I don’t play games which require anti-cheats, so this post might seem biased. However, I’ll try to be as much factual as possible. I’ll list the pros and cons of both the OSs as per my personal experience.

The Windows experience

There is nothing new to say, everyone knows the first bootup process. Enter your mandatory Microsoft account to access the device. I know there are workarounds for a local account but I didn’t want to jinx it. You get greeted with Armory Crate which shows how to manage your device.

Positives with Windows on the ROG Ally

• Launch any game with no restrictions. It’s just a Windows PC.
• Nearly everything works out of the box (Not everything though)
• Asus’s Armory Crate (AC) is decent at what it does
• Asus’s BIOS is very well made
• AMD’s software center offers lots of options regarding graphical fidelity

Annoyances with Windows on the ROG Ally

• [major] The OS is not controller-centric at all, this is probably my main gripe about the device. A user buys a handheld and expects it to behave like a handheld. Steam’s big picture mode helps but it’s severely restricted in terms of capabilities.
• [major] Certain games (usually older) do not install smoothly on the device. You have to manually tinker to get it working. Tinkering on a touch-screen device is not a fun experience.
• [major] Game launchers do not support a controller OOTB (GOG Galaxy/Amazon Games). I did not try Epic but last I heard the Epic interface also does not support a controller.
• [major] No central hub to control all system/graphical settings. You have to switch between multiple applications and windows. You need to update Windows/AC drivers/MyAsus separately.
• [major] Most of the times, the Windows keyboard interferes with the Steam onscreen keyboard. We have AI baked into Windows and it can’t even detect if there is an existing onscreen keyboard.
• [minor] There is no cohesive design among the different components of the system. I remember hearing about Microsoft’s Fluent design framework several years back but it seems like app developers have not adhered to it. It’s quite jarring to switch from the Windows interface to AC, MyAsus center, AMD Software Center, and other than AC, none of them support controllers.
• [minor] Because of how application windows and the AC appear on top of each other, the game window or AC sometimes lose focus and it feels like the interface has frozen. When this keeps on occurring multiple times it becomes quite annoying. You need to manually tap on the window to get the focus back on the window you want.
• [minor] People recommend using Playnite to manage games from different launchers. The idea seems good in theory, until you find out it requires you to install all the launchers anyway. The only serious advantage is that you can launch the game using a controller.
• [very minor] You can’t turn off the RGB permanently which is persistent across a reboot. (Note: It’s possible I’m dumb and did not fiddle with the settings enough). I fixed it by setting the RGB color to black.

Overall, the ROG Ally with Windows is not a pickup-and-play device. I felt like I just bought a Windows PC with a touch-screen instead of a handheld. Let me iterate by saying I’m not anti-touch screen but it should not be a core requirement of the UX; using the touch-screen once a while is fine. If you are forcing the user to use the touchscreen for non-gaming/non-essential reasons, you have failed in UX. Some of the annoyances vanish if I’m using a keyboard/mouse, but then it just becomes a PC (PSA: This is supposed to be a handheld, not a PC. If I wanted a portable gaming PC, I would have got a laptop).

If you notice carefully, I didn’t even talk about Windows telemetry, Copilot, Recall, mandatory Microsoft account, ads baked into Windows, nagging by Edge, and other issues because an average gamer doesn’t care about it. I just wanted to focus upon how Windows performs as an OS for handheld gaming.

Moving over to Bazzite

I used Windows for a week but I grew tired of it. I don’t want to sound dramatic but gaming sessions had me go like “here we go tinkering again”. I do testing and tinkering at work already, I don’t want to do it at home again. So I decided to just format everything and install Bazzite on it. I saw that Bazzite has a growing community and Valve has no update on when they will release SteamOS for the ROG Ally. Bazzite it not perfect, but it does a way better job compared to Windows.

Annoyances with Bazzite

• [major] Some SteamOS features not yet available OOTB (Finer TDP/fan controls)
• [major] Big picture mode does not support remote viewing/streaming (It was crashing for me)
• [minor] Loss of focus between webpage and the game, but this happens very rarely.
• [minor] Bazzite offers Xbox, Steam and PS5 controller. However, it’s not clear (in Handheld daemon) which controller should one use for the best experience. I understood that PS5 needs to be used in order to use gyro.
• [minor] No support for AMD’s fluid motion frames.
• [minor] No support for the fingerprint sensor
• [minor] The installation process requires a physical keyboard to be connected to the Ally if secure boot is enabled. Either it was not mentioned in the installation guide or I’m too dumb to understand instructions.
• [very minor] The installation wizard requires interaction with a touch screen and the buttons are very tiny.
• [very minor] Slight interface lag when using the quick access shortcuts (75 ms instead of 25 ms)
• [very minor] Bootup process is slightly slower compared to SteamOS
• [very minor] Buying games through Heroic still needs touchscreen (Launching does not require the touchscreen)
• [very minor] There is no mention of how to view the Bazzite shortcuts (It can be viewed but requires minor tinkering).
• [very minor] Bazzite does not support the screenshot shortcut OOTB. I had to adjust some settings to get it working (No, I did not use the terminal). The only time I had to use the terminal was for installing SimpleDeckyTDP which was just a single command.

However, most of the cons mentioned above are explicitly stated by the Bazzite team in the FAQ. It’s because of a device limitation or a functionality tied to the firmware which is not yet available on Linux, so I can’t really blame them. On the other hand, all the major annoyances that I had with Windows are fixed in Bazzite.

Some of the positives of Bazzite

• Right after the installation, it offers a simple welcome screen which recommends some helpful applications.
• Bazzite recommends using the Heroic launcher. I’m using Epic/GOG/Amazon games through Heroic and never once did I see any of those launchers during gameplay. This is a core requirement for a handheld device. I don’t want to tap at unnecessary screens to start the game.
• Decky Loader plugin manager => manage your system and increase the functionality of your system using the controller. I believe Decky Loader is missing on Windows
• Proton => All the tinkering required to get a game working is done in the background by Valve. The user doesn’t have to tinker. I am a bit shocked that I have to tinker less in Linux compared to Windows to get games working. Old-school Linux users know this was not the case a decade back.

By the way, Bazzite has a fully fledged desktop interface but it needs to be switched on manually. This separation is essential in making the user feel like they are now exiting gaming mode. On Windows, you are always in desktop-mode. I have to admit, I was spoiled by SteamOS because of which the above mentioned points affect me so much compared to an average Windows gamer. Also, the SteamOS experience is even more polished than Bazzite.

Conclusion

Listen, I am not trying to say “Window bad”. I want the Windows folks to know what they are missing from a gaming UX perspective. You should really put the pressure on Microsoft to fix these issues. Windows users should try the SteamOS/Bazzite interface (Not Steam Big Picture mode. It’s not the same) once to understand what a modern day gaming interface should look and feel like.

Image source: TechDweeb