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I did see lots of youtube videos using theese handhelds as "gaming pcs", or from someone whose main workflow is office work... I'm having a hard time find any article about general development. At max, I did find some reddit comments saying they use a Steam Deck for gaming dev, which makes a lot of sense if the Deck is the target.

Is it viable to use a gaming handheld as main dev machine? in c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

[–] Jedi@bolha.forum 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

To really succeed as a developer, I’ve sometimes needed to be willing to make risky changes to my development machine, that I’m not willing to do to my gaming machine.

My plan is to install BazziteOS (Fedora Silverblue derivative) on the device to have a "stable" OS with all the dev environment on distrobox containers or something like that.

I'm not sure if it's going to work, though.

Is it viable to use a gaming handheld as main dev machine? in c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

[–] Jedi@bolha.forum 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I’d strongly recommend against it. Nothing to do with specs or viability but psychologically you’ll want to play games - they’re enjoyable.

This is my main concern, if I'm being completely honest.

But that also applies the other way arround. I'm a bit of a workaholic, so most of the time I open my current notebook on the sofa I start to code. Having a device without a physical keyboard may stop me from on working outside my workroom or coding during vacations, for example.

Is it viable to use a gaming handheld as main dev machine? in c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

[–] Jedi@bolha.forum 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

It is 24GB of RAM (12 GB x 2), but from my research, 8GB are dedicated to video memory. So it leaves 16GB "usefull" for development.

Also, display is not a concern as my monitor is 1080p.

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Is it viable to use a gaming handheld as main dev machine? (bolha.forum)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Jedi@bolha.forum to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

19 comments fedilink

Hello fellow devs.

I'm in need of a new machine as I had a little mishap with my notebook. For a long time, I thought on buying a gaming notebook as normally they should have the best hardware for my personal (gaming, light video edit) and professional (full stack web dev) needs.

Next week, Asus will launch the ROG Ally X officially on my country. So, I'm wondering if it could be a viable alternative.
The other possible devices would be ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) and Lenovo Legion Go, as Steam Deck is not available here.

I work from home for a foreign company. I have a monitor, a wireless keyboard, and a usb trackball already. I bought them to use with a mac mini my previous company lend to me. I do not have a desktop and do not intend to buy one right now.

So... My questions: Does any of you have experience using a handheld device as a main dev machine? Are there any cons I'm not considering?

Thank you!

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