When I was in sixth-form, a friend built a portable case containing a micro-ATX motherboard. No battery, but he could sit down at any of the school computers, plug into the wall, and use its peripherals with his PC. That was more than 25 years ago, I feel old now.
For the non-Brits, "sixth-form" means years 12 and 13 of school - equivalent to junior and senior years of high school in the US. The first and second yearsof sixth form are referred to as "lower sixth" and "upper sixth" respectively.
It's a hold-over term from when secondary education (ages 11 and up) started in "first form" and worked up.
Thanks for the explanation but it shattered the narrative by mind was building about an alien intelligence that slipped up and posted about its memories of its sixth physical form, the result of its fifth metamorphosis.
Interestingly enough, the French do it the other way around, and start counting from the final year (they also start at 0 so it's offset by one).
That's arguably a better system since you can keep adding earlier and earlier years (mandatory school starting age has drifted from 11 to 6 to 3 over the years) while keeping everything consistent.
Unfortunately they messed it up in 1959 by renaming 12th to 7th and giving matching names to the new 13th/14th.
I did this for a while in college ~20 years ago with the original Mac Mini, it worked pretty well. A little clunky given multiple things to plug in but it was nice to have your entire environment with you locally.
If you need to enter the BIOS: bring up the terminal, and write
`systemctl reboot --firmware-setup`
This reboots systemd-powered systems to the UEFI menu. May not work on other init systems, but SteamOS is based on Arch with systemd.
Shouldn't matter what you have as a bootloader, by my understanding it should be communicating with the UEFI directly to pull it off and going over any bootloader's head.
There are two types of technical blog post. One explains to you from a great towering height of immense knowledge how good it felt to use to use npm install and here's why that's exciting, and this is the other type. Written with many apologies for barely being able to do anything while doing everything better than I ever could.
Interestingly, Steam’s first hardware product was a Steam Box: a little computer brick that could boot Steam on linux and let you play all your games on your TV (with a Steam controller or game controller of your choice). The cycle is now complete.
The history is a bit more complicated than that. Valve themselves never released a “Steam Box” that could run games on Linux. They partnered with a few different companies (Alienware, Gigabyte, etc.), who released co-branded “Steam Machines” which were just those companies’s normal hardware design, but with a common set of specs ideal for running SteamOS. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_%28computer%29
You might instead be thinking of the Steam Link, which *was* produced by Valve, and *was* a tiny little brick that let you play games on your TV. But the Link wasn’t running the games itself, it was streaming them from a dedicated PC (which may itself have been a third-party Steam Machine) elsewhere in your home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Link
> "which were just those companies’s normal hardware design"
For Alienware (not sure about the others, but AW was Valve's lead partner on it anyway) you're right in that it was a computer designed by Alienware not Valve, however it was a) very different to other Alienware PCs, and b) Valve were genuinely part of the development process, they didn't just say "hey make a small computer". They also shipped with the first gen of Steam controllers, which were created by Valve themselves. (Unfortunately, due to delays with SteamOS, the first version of the AW "Steam Machine" actually launched running Windows only, but with the Steam Controller, because Alienware weren't willing to delay their launch further and instead developed their own controller-based UI for Windows in a rush job...)
(Source: me, I was in the loop on those goings on at the time.)
To this day, I think the Alienware Alpha (as the Windows version got called) was one of the nicest machines Dell ever made and one of the best small PCs I've ever seen.
There were many years between the Steam Controller (2015) and the Deck(2022). I’m not sure how much of those learnings could still be applied, considering changing technology as well as staff changes.
Maybe Valve has such excellent staff retention that this would be a non-issue. At my previous employers, two years would have been enough to have to start over from 0.
I've disassembled LOTS of devices in my time, and never knew this was a feature that could be used after the initial purchase.
For some years now I've known certain devices like laptops won't power on when bought until first plugged in, but I didn't realise that it could be enabled intentionally after the fact.
Typically the first thing I do when I open a device is remove the battery, so accidental button presses (like i-fixit lists) as the reason for it are a non-issue.
This isn't all that different to how I use my gaming PC - it's off in another room, with a monitor that is plugged in but almost always off (I don't think Windows will boot without at least something plugged in?), Steam set to start on boot, and then I entirely use it via Steam Remote Play from my main PC.
I do use it occasionally - mostly when Windows has thrown up some issue stopping Steam from working properly.
eg. I need to dismiss a dialog that is invisible over remote play, or it won't finish logging in until I close a "finish setting up your windows install" screen.
I still don't understand why operating systems can't properly work without a screen.
I have a Linux "home server" and I haven't found a way to boot up a graphical session with everything working (there were bugs in some applications, like menus not showing up, you couldn't change resolution, etc.).
A dummy HDMI plug fixed it, but still. It's 2025, come on.
Windows will boot without a monitor, or at least, it used to, not sure about Windows 11. But Steam Link mirrors your display, and so doesn’t work without one.
I built a NUC running Windows 11 into a tiny portable server for a project I was building and can confirm it boots and functions just fine without being plugged into a monitor.
I just plug it into a power source and it does what I need it to do, but I can plug a monitor and keyboard (and sometimes a mouse because keyboard-only navigation seems to be getting less and less supported/intuitive...) if I need to perform troubleshooting.
Can confirm that. Using both to connect to the same windows box and sunshine+moonlight is better latency wise for fast paced games. And for games bought from GoG unless you want to configure Steam to launch them :)
Steam streaming is more convenient if the game is on steam and it's turn based or something like that. Also if the (mac) box you're streaming to has multiple monitors, Steam will continue to show the game if you cmd-tab out of it, while moonlight will minimize from the start.
This is one of many reasons why I just don't let Windows touch bare metal. My old gaming rig was a Linux machine that would boot a Windows VM with GPU passthrough, and the control I had over the virtual hardware that Windows thought it was attached to was really helpful for working around a lot of Windows bullshit. Won't boot without a screen? Virtually attach a fake one. Recognizes a device and tries to auto-install the garbage manufacturer-provided driver? Run the better Linux driver (if one exists) and have qemu present Windows with a generic version of the device. Want to debug some issue that requires disconnecting a piece of hardware? Just take it out of the qemu command instead of needing to go physically disconnect it. Want some remote peripheral attached that Windows has no idea how to talk to? Proxy it over the network in Linux and just present it to the Windows VM as a USB device. Having full control over the world that Windows lives in makes it much more manageable.
Same. I only stopped because managing storage became a problem - three huge games came out that I wanted to play.
Were I to do this again I wouldn't do ryzen I'd do at minimum a threadripper, so that the guest can get a USB pcie card and a GPU, so literally every device windows sees and talks to is virtualized. Usb keyboard, mouse, soundcard, etc.
I think LTT did an epyc build where 1 epyc ran 3 full "Desktops" with GPUs, nvme, for each virtual machine dedicated. I just need the one!
Ditto I grabbed a few clearance steamlinks and have all the TVs remote play to my single high power desktop and use a normal browser for media.
I had it running on ASTER at one point, a multiseat windows software so I can be on main computer and others can use steamlink on alternate windows profile and few issues.
Performance was rarely issue, especially even on wireless, and it's nice to have everything happening in 1 box.
This is cool. But now I want a power bank with hot swappable batteries/modules. Or better yet a connector that you can attach multiple power banks to and it gives power if at least one non-empty powerbank is connected.
I've wanted this for ages, Laptop ergonomics are horrible. When traveling I use a portable monitor, keyboard, mouse. Yes it's annoying to travel with all that but worth it not to end my work days with neck pain and a migraine.
I need a somewhat powerful GPU for work, so I'm seriously considering buying one of the more powerful handhelds with removable controllers and just taking them off. The screen would be superfluous but it's probably the most powerful travel PC, at least for the price, that's available right now.
I don't even need the battery that much. But all the options I've seen for SFF PCs that would fit in a backpack look fragile and I wouldn't feel confident carrying them around often. Plus, they're either expensive (because it's a tiny market) or geared towards office work.
On the other hand, the Mac Mini exists and is exactly what I'd want in terms of hardware. Why don't us Linux/Windows folks have this option?
Plenty of NUC hardware is pretty beefy, most more tough than most of those gaming handhelds. I've dropped a couple of Intel NUCs down concrete stairs and they only got a few scratches. They've also had really good Linux support for ages, and had Intel's Iris Pro GPUs for a while. Unsure they'd really fit your needs though. AMD sells a number of APU boards though, they've got modern GPUs. Still not breaking any benchmarks though.
Also, those gaming handhelds are pretty power and temperature limited. They're often a good bit less powerful than a halfway decent gaming laptop, just a more convenient form factor for portable gaming.
> I've wanted this for ages, Laptop ergonomics are horrible. When traveling I use a portable monitor, keyboard, mouse. Yes it's annoying to travel with all that but worth it not to end my work days with neck pain and a migraine.
Have you considered dropping the portable monitor for an angled laptop stand that will elevate the screen to eye level? I've got one that collapses down small enough to fit in a reasonably deep pocket.
There is a bunch of AMD-based tiny boxes for under $1k, and fancier boxes from HP or Zotac with discrete NVidia GPUs for $3-4k. They are somehow larger than a Mac Mini, but still very much the form factor of a small box to push into a backpack.
For gaming, I'd also rather have the Steam Brick, I think. You have a large company with strong interest in the drivers for built-in hardware and external controllers all working smoothly. We also know video over USB will just work. And USB-C power so I don't need a barrel connector to travel, not sure where NUCs are at on that one.
I could accept Pi, with case, storage and battery in single enclosure. That is singular unit with relevant ports open to use and it being usable while charging.
It's hard to tell with a lot of NUC style devices whether they support USB PD as the device being charged but I would much rather have one or two USB power banks as my battery/UPS for the NUC, phone and laptops than anything more specific or inverted up to mains, etc.
There was this "SpaceTop" startup making a laptop with no screen [https://www.pcworld.com/article/1919392/spacetop-is-the-firs...], just a built in case for XR glasses like this (except the case was built into the body). They gave up and pivoted into AI...
I was thinking I'd want to make my own. How hard could it be? Just a phone, keyboard, and usb hub fitted into some framing. I tried 3-4 demos of XReal glasses though and (when I found a pair that wasn't broken, cable damage?) the FOV was much smaller than they seemed to be claiming. I think the bridge of my nose sticks out so the glasses are significantly farther away.
I would love that. Happy for it to be a thin client type of thing too. Imagine a plane where you have room for a keyboard but that is it.
Makes me think: with this your phone is fine. You can run a Linux on your Android then have a thin client. Lots of options!
The laptop form factor makes a laptop fragile. To the point where a 2 yr old XPS has been serviced 20 times (pro tip: get all the top level service options for 3 yrs it was about 30% added to the cost). And I have a probably 12 year old Dell desktop with no issues at all.
I'm on my third xps across 8+ years. 2 cases of services, the first one was a faulty keyboard on delivery and the second was a 1 meter drop into concrete that busted the screen.
Still looking for alternatives for my next one and thinking the System76. Gotta say though, I'm really happy with the xps model so far.
Amazing. Someone ran similar setup with a thinkpad workstation with deadscreen in studio, they fucked up screen replacement but ended up just using bottom chasis hooked up to a externaml monitor for the rest of school.
There were some people doing something similar with the Vision Pro and detaching the monitor from a MacBook Air[0]. It looks really slick, but how well it actually works, especially given the drawbacks of the Vision Pro, is… up for interpretation.
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When I was in sixth-form, a friend built a portable case containing a micro-ATX motherboard. No battery, but he could sit down at any of the school computers, plug into the wall, and use its peripherals with his PC. That was more than 25 years ago, I feel old now.
It's a hold-over term from when secondary education (ages 11 and up) started in "first form" and worked up.
That's arguably a better system since you can keep adding earlier and earlier years (mandatory school starting age has drifted from 11 to 6 to 3 over the years) while keeping everything consistent.
Unfortunately they messed it up in 1959 by renaming 12th to 7th and giving matching names to the new 13th/14th.
We tend not to have a 13th grade, and when that does exist, a PG (post grad) is generally there because they excel at a particular sport.
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In that case, you can usually set the boot order with bootctl and reboot.
You might instead be thinking of the Steam Link, which *was* produced by Valve, and *was* a tiny little brick that let you play games on your TV. But the Link wasn’t running the games itself, it was streaming them from a dedicated PC (which may itself have been a third-party Steam Machine) elsewhere in your home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Link
For Alienware (not sure about the others, but AW was Valve's lead partner on it anyway) you're right in that it was a computer designed by Alienware not Valve, however it was a) very different to other Alienware PCs, and b) Valve were genuinely part of the development process, they didn't just say "hey make a small computer". They also shipped with the first gen of Steam controllers, which were created by Valve themselves. (Unfortunately, due to delays with SteamOS, the first version of the AW "Steam Machine" actually launched running Windows only, but with the Steam Controller, because Alienware weren't willing to delay their launch further and instead developed their own controller-based UI for Windows in a rush job...)
(Source: me, I was in the loop on those goings on at the time.)
To this day, I think the Alienware Alpha (as the Windows version got called) was one of the nicest machines Dell ever made and one of the best small PCs I've ever seen.
At the time, the console market was wide open, with little innovation in terms of hardware, until Nintendo released the Switch.
Even now, I'd be quite happy to own a Valve branded, small form PC that plugs into a TV.
The Steam Link was a kop out to me.
Had to find a friend with a Windows box to run a firmware update to make it entirely Bluetooth compatible. But it works.
First the steam box then the controller, I’m sure they learned a lot from both of those before they released the deck.
Maybe Valve has such excellent staff retention that this would be a non-issue. At my previous employers, two years would have been enough to have to start over from 0.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Enable+Steam+Deck+Batter...
For some years now I've known certain devices like laptops won't power on when bought until first plugged in, but I didn't realise that it could be enabled intentionally after the fact.
Typically the first thing I do when I open a device is remove the battery, so accidental button presses (like i-fixit lists) as the reason for it are a non-issue.
Dead Comment
[1] https://www.amazon.com/BKFK-HDMI-Dummy-Plug-3840x2160/dp/B0C...
eg. I need to dismiss a dialog that is invisible over remote play, or it won't finish logging in until I close a "finish setting up your windows install" screen.
I have a Linux "home server" and I haven't found a way to boot up a graphical session with everything working (there were bugs in some applications, like menus not showing up, you couldn't change resolution, etc.).
A dummy HDMI plug fixed it, but still. It's 2025, come on.
Never used it, but I heard great things!
I just plug it into a power source and it does what I need it to do, but I can plug a monitor and keyboard (and sometimes a mouse because keyboard-only navigation seems to be getting less and less supported/intuitive...) if I need to perform troubleshooting.
note that RDP works without plugs/virtual displays.
Steam streaming is more convenient if the game is on steam and it's turn based or something like that. Also if the (mac) box you're streaming to has multiple monitors, Steam will continue to show the game if you cmd-tab out of it, while moonlight will minimize from the start.
Especially now that they added a 4:4:4 chroma subsampling option which fixes things like text edges in some cases.
Were I to do this again I wouldn't do ryzen I'd do at minimum a threadripper, so that the guest can get a USB pcie card and a GPU, so literally every device windows sees and talks to is virtualized. Usb keyboard, mouse, soundcard, etc.
I think LTT did an epyc build where 1 epyc ran 3 full "Desktops" with GPUs, nvme, for each virtual machine dedicated. I just need the one!
Almost anything works with proton - unless you're playing competitive online games with anti cheats software
I had it running on ASTER at one point, a multiseat windows software so I can be on main computer and others can use steamlink on alternate windows profile and few issues.
Performance was rarely issue, especially even on wireless, and it's nice to have everything happening in 1 box.
I’d much rather do that than purchase a NUC with a built-in battery. Keeping the two pieces separate makes them easier to repurpose later.
Regardless, the market for such a device is relatively small.
I need a somewhat powerful GPU for work, so I'm seriously considering buying one of the more powerful handhelds with removable controllers and just taking them off. The screen would be superfluous but it's probably the most powerful travel PC, at least for the price, that's available right now.
I don't even need the battery that much. But all the options I've seen for SFF PCs that would fit in a backpack look fragile and I wouldn't feel confident carrying them around often. Plus, they're either expensive (because it's a tiny market) or geared towards office work.
On the other hand, the Mac Mini exists and is exactly what I'd want in terms of hardware. Why don't us Linux/Windows folks have this option?
Also, those gaming handhelds are pretty power and temperature limited. They're often a good bit less powerful than a halfway decent gaming laptop, just a more convenient form factor for portable gaming.
Have you considered dropping the portable monitor for an angled laptop stand that will elevate the screen to eye level? I've got one that collapses down small enough to fit in a reasonably deep pocket.
It provides streaming access to from large libraries of HDR content on the go.
I'm imagining a rectangular shape with the track pad right aligned to the keyboard, rather than underneath.
I was thinking I'd want to make my own. How hard could it be? Just a phone, keyboard, and usb hub fitted into some framing. I tried 3-4 demos of XReal glasses though and (when I found a pair that wasn't broken, cable damage?) the FOV was much smaller than they seemed to be claiming. I think the bridge of my nose sticks out so the glasses are significantly farther away.
I still like the idea.
Makes me think: with this your phone is fine. You can run a Linux on your Android then have a thin client. Lots of options!
The laptop form factor makes a laptop fragile. To the point where a 2 yr old XPS has been serviced 20 times (pro tip: get all the top level service options for 3 yrs it was about 30% added to the cost). And I have a probably 12 year old Dell desktop with no issues at all.
Still looking for alternatives for my next one and thinking the System76. Gotta say though, I'm really happy with the xps model so far.
I think I saw in here. In the meantime
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Screenless-MacBooks-masqueradi...
Actually tempted to buy one with a broken screen and ply around.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUa_pPUbpGQ