Annie D

(apologies, you're the first reply, so you get the super-long rambling answer to a simple question)

I've actually been running it in docked mode all today while working from home, and only took it out of the dock to show that it was actually running on the switch and not something else hooked up to the monitor.

And docked is honestly pretty solid! Definitely a smoother experience than trying to run my older Acer C720 as my fallback workstation.

Switches seamlessly between displaying on the screen in 720p and the monitor and 1080p once docked, working exactly as you'd expected. The Switchroot team did a good job of ensuring things are smooth and resize properly, and I honestly forgot I was using the switch and not a normal computer for most of today! ^_^;

The 4GB ram and low default clock speeds can cause a little slowdown with some heavier applications (like having MS Teams, browser, email and an IDE all open), and file speeds are going to suffer running off an SD card compared to having a SSD. Wouldn't recommend as a serious desktop or laptop replacement, but was more than good enough for some light software development and office suite usage for my day job.

Only real complaint so far (besides needing to manually toggle the on-screen keyboard off) is that if your monitor doesn't have built-in speakers, you have to remind it to use headphones or the switch's speaker for audio as it'll otherwise try to futilely play audio over HDMI. Despite trying to set speakers as default and even setting a script to automate it on login, still seems to need me to quickly poke it over to the right sound device on login.

So far been pleasantly surprised by hardware video decoding, bluetooth, joycons as controllers, etc all working out of the box. The arm64 packages aren't as restrictive as I'd have thought, only encountered a few applications that'd have been nice to have that were restricted to x86_64 pre-built packages.

I'd imagine I'd run into more problems (and hopefully solutions) with more time, but as a temporary measure while waiting on replacement components for my desktop, it serves well enough.

(not yet tested whether box64 performance for x86 emulation is sufficient to be usable, but if it looks promising I might see if chaining wine + box64 can lead to something silly like running Steam on Switch - I'm sure somebody has probably already tried that!)

Well enough that I used it all day today for my job at a small software development company!

I got into more detail in my reply to @xkeeper, but I honestly forgot I was even using a Switch rather than a "normal" computer for much of the day.

Wouldn't recommend it as a long-term replacement to an actual desktop or laptop computer (even if you're just plugging the latter into a monitor, mouse, etc and using it at a desk), but it served better than my ailing old Acer C720 did, which was what I was having to use earlier in the week.

Compared to that, the switch was smooth sailing, with only a few notable moments of slowness and nearly running out of memory during a MS Teams meeting that was solved by not having quite as many Chromium tabs open.

Thank you! I told some friends in a Discord call I was doing this last night and they proclaimed it to be the "most [you] thing we've heard in a long time", which much like your comment, I choose to interpret as a high compliment :3

And a successor to the Wii and 3DS homebrew scenes, the former of which first introduced me to homebrew. Sadly not as supported as PS3 Linux, but definitely a big step up from the PS2 and Wii Linux releases!

So far it's been handling everything surprising well! Got another day of work before I can hopefully return to my desktop, but if repairs are delayed, I'm pretty confident I can still use the switch as my primary computer for work and home for another week with no major issues.

Never underestimate the power of the community~

Shoutouts to the Switch homebrew scene and the Switchroot team in particular for this release - I just followed the instructions and was carefully with the backups, rooting and installation.

If it works, it works! I used the analog stick on a PS2 controller as a temporary mouse once - wouldn't recommend that approach, but when needs must...

Modern problems require modern solutions XD

Yup! It works exactly like you'd expect: the switch screen turns off and the desktop resolutions swaps from 720p to 1080p.

It automatically swaps to outputting sound over HDMI too - this was actually a problem for me as my monitor lacks speakers, but it's simple enough to tell it to use the Switch's speaker (or headphone jack) for audio even when in docked mode.

I got into more detail in my reply to @xkeeper, but have been working remotely earlier today with it in docked mode the entire time and even participated in a MS Teams meeting with no major problems using a usb microphone (haven't tried plugging in my webcam instead, but am reasonably confident that'd also work out-of-the-box these days)

Me, dropping the power cable for the dock behind my desk: ... Quake 3 Announcer: YOU HAVE LOST THE LEAD