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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to the Steam Deck in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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There are a few hurdles: if there isn't a flatpak for software installs can get tricky. For instance look up about adding tailscale. Remember the system is Steam. You are basically a guest in that environment. It's Arch, but steam is making sure it can boot and restore back to a working steam state.
Second, a single monitor, or using a even less powerful computer with steam link works great. Dual monitors has some issues.
But as a travel PC, I have been very happy with it. I too am a long time linux user, so nothing about the apps or os really surprises me. Linux has been my only os at home for a very long time.
You can install and use a standard distribution through Distrobox, which has a few initial steps to install, but once it's there, you can dnf/apt/zypper/apk/pacman/etc. install any packages completely in user space. (And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox containers lets you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.)
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/
And distrobox-export from within any Distrobox container sets it up so can you access a command or graphical application from that Distrobox transparently without having to manually run a distrobox command.
https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/usage/distrobox-export.md
But, you probably want to not have anything private on your Steam Deck, as there's no encryption, so anyone can take your Deck and copy files off of it. To solve this, you'd want to either have an encrypted loopback file that you use like a pluggable disk (there are some tools for this; "Plasma Vault" is even built into the KDE desktop that powers the Steam Deck's desktop mode, but requires a little setup) or you could run a Linux distro (or other OS) within a VM in GNOME Boxes (available as a Flatpak without having to do anything special). The Plasma Vault solution is more lightweight and integrated, once you install the encryption support it needs.
https://github.com/popsUlfr/steam-deck-tricks#encrypted-vaults-with-plasma-vault-and-gocryptfs
https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes
FWIW: I used my Steam Deck as a desktop when traveling a few months ago and have been using Linux (with GNOME, not KDE — but both are great) for decades.
That’s for the heads up. I didn’t know that it worked that way. I think that would affect me to some extent as I use some things that are not flatpaks.
You can always dualboot with another Linux distro
That’s a good point. It’s hard to see it in the typical light of a PC.