Getting my steam deck tomorrow. Already had Linux like steam deck on my laptop a while ago (didn’t work well because fuck Nvidia)
But wanted to know what you all think is important to put on a steam deck, that’s not something that’s not what duckduckgo says with the websites it has. (I worded that horribly)
What are some niche things can I could do/install/play on the steam deck that most people wouldn’t really do or think about doing?
I don’t know a lot about Linux as I wish but I know a ok ish amount. Just wanting to find anything really interesting or useful to do with my steam deck
Also anybody know any casual games I can play randomly on public transit and don’t have to sit down and play. Things that I can just easily stop. (Something like balentro kinda way you can just stop whenever)
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1 - Check the headphone jack
2 - Buy a decent screen protector
3 - Enjoy it
Optional > Use a cheap dock and a bluetooth controller (don’t wast money on the original) x a great console experience from your tv. Also great for watch movies and youtube with adblock.
I’d it’s an OLED model, test the headphone jack. Many decks have constant hiss/static/noise on that port - you can get it RMA’d if you contact support, but that means you’ll be sending it away for 10 days or so to get sound board replaced.
Other than that, I recommend installing DECKY which is an ad on that in turn allows installing useful plugging such as incorporating deck compatibility rating into games displayed, better power management, etc
I find KDE connect to be both useful and interesting to use. It’s not really recommendable in and of itself but it makes connecting between your various devices very effective, like file transfer, clipboard sharing, remote control etc.
With regards to casual gaming, I personally don’t have anything to recommend because that’s exactly the kind of game I try to avoid. I like involved games, interesting, with a story, a purpose, requiring thinking and such. But what I can say is that the steam deck is so effective with its sleep functionality that you can very casually play any involved game no matter how much time you have.
It is so easy to be back in the game: I’ve played the witcher 3 a lot (highly recommend it if you have not played it) and it is a very involved game, but I’ve been in and out for even just a few minutes thanks to sleep. It takes one second to be back in the game fighting some enemies and takes a second to pause the game and put the console back to sleep in my backpack. You don’t have to restrict yourself to casual games to benefit from casually playing, with the steam deck.
Setup Nixpkgs. Learn Home-Manager. If anything doesn’t exist on Flathub, install it through Nixpkgs instead of disabling immutability and resorting to pacman only to have it wiped after an update. And for temporary tinkering, use nix-shell.
The determinate.systems Nix installer directly supports the Steam Deck.
Never used Nixpkgs, but isn’t it a bit more advanced and not really for beginners?
Comparatively, yes. But trying to install apps or programs on the Deck if they are not on Flathub is quite a common use-case, I find. And it’s a lot more stable and less frustrating than temporarily installing packages through Pacman!
as a nixos user… dear sweet Dog, no, please no
I also only got my first deck last month a d went through a similar though.
I’d suggest:
- Play with it a bit stock. It’s a great experience and you really don’t NEED more.
- If you have any interest in playing older consoles, Emudeck is an amazing experience and worth it for the ‘oh wow’ factor
- Add Plex / streaming though flathub/discover and add to steam for travel streaming
- Consider decky for a few QOL menu additions
- For pick up and put down games review threads on indies for games you’ll love. Balatro, Hades, Dave the diver, dredge, undertale, into the breech, FTL, the list is quite long and there are utter gems, but it will be dictated by what you enjoy
Does Emudeck work flawlessly out of the box for you or did you need further settings? I set up a Gameboy Advanced Emulator on my Deck two times, the second time via Emudeck. Both times it worked the first time I started it but afterwards not even a window popped up.
Been great for me but I have had to clear config a few times to get settings to stick. Been mainly playing switch/with though, haven’t tried GBA. I have done writeups years ago on manually setting up emulators/steam rom manager, so I think they’ve done a great job automating a lot of it away… But at the end of the day it’s still a fiddly proposition
The main thing IMO is to get some hands on time with it. Figure what you want, what you like, and most importantly what you would like to see improved… and go from there. See if you prefer to use it as a console, or if you want more of a gaming computer and use regularly the desktop. Maybe you’ll want a dock and how you want it will depend on your needs. You get my point :D
Anyway for the laptop see if you like https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/ specifically the Nvidia one so it has the drivers pre installed. I use it “everywhere”
Got the dock with it, it will be basically a replacement for my laptop and I nobora is one of them it tried and for some reason my specific laptop and Nvidia just doesn’t work well for gaming on Linux. Spent literally days on random shit that and everything I found didn’t work or made it worse.
So it will be like a semi replacement for my laptop and a console on my big screen tv basically.
Well replacement for everything that microcrap hasn’t forced on to me that I can’t use on Linux. I’m just going to sunshine to my old laptop anyways and put the laptop near my cluster of server type computers.
A thing about the official dock, maybe it’s just my setup BUT: it drains the battery. It doesn’t look like it, but if it’s off or suspended, the Deck loses charge while connected to the dock, then you grab it to use it (and the battery is like 97%!) but within 5 minutes it’s completely dead. Again, it might be just my setup, but now I unplug the Deck from the dock once it’s off.
Thank you, I will look out for that. If it does I’ll just return it as defective and get a dock somewhere else. Much appreciated, thank you.
It takes days to actually drain the battery a significant amount, you’re not going to notice it during the honeymoon phase :P
I noticed it because my Deck lives most of the time on the dock.
Only useful for desktop mode, but KDE Connect is great for syncing clipboards, sharing files, and even remote mouse and keyboard input between a smartphone and the desktop environment.
It’s a game changer compared to using the touchscreen keyboard. Especially with a dock using it as an occasional media PC.
There is a decky plugin that lets you turn on kde connect in game mode, though you have to pair in desktop mode first
I really ought to look into decky sometime, huh??
Oh definitely
There’s plugins for tons of things from customization (like custom boot and suspend animations) to tools (like mangohud for performance/energy monitoring) to quality of life (like kde connect or syncthing or teamspeak right in the sidebar)
And it’s super easy to install and update, just go to their website in desktop mode and download and run the executable to install it, and then you can just install plugins and update without needing to leave game mode
Documentation is a bit sparse at first
To get to linux mode you have to go to the power/shutdown menu
To open the keyboard in linux mode push x
You can use the two little trackpads to type on the keyboard and also to move the mouse around
Archive.org is amazing for archived retro games
If you find yourself taking and sharing a lot of screenshots outside of Steam. Install the Shotty plugin for Decky Loader to have then organized and accessible without needing to dig into Proton prefixes.
And then, access your ~/Pictures/Screenshots folder over SFTP from your phone or some other PC for efficient shitposting!
P.S. I use Solid Explorer on Android for SFTP.
P P.S. Set up SSH as soon as you can. It’s saved me a lot of effort when I boot-looped my Deck by creating a bunch of circular symlinks 🙃
A thing to do: Look up how to install Nested Desktop into Gaming Mode (a quick YouTube video will show you how to set it up in about two minutes). In short, it allows you to access most of the functionality of Desktop Mode when you need those things, without actually having to officially switch over (think of it as Gaming Mode’s Desktop Mode Emulator).
Saves you bunches of time in the switching back and forth, as it’s almost instantaneous. I use it all the time, as stuff like web browsers also work better on the Desktop side.
As for casual games you can play for short bursts and put to sleep whenever… you already mentioned Balatro, that’s a great one. I love roguelikes and deck builders for this purpose in general. Recently, I’ve been playing a ton of Cobalt Core, I’d highly recommend as a great pick up and play and quick stop.
That sounds pretty handy, I’m gonna have to check that out myself. Thanks!
Thanks for that. Didn’t know about nested desktop. Pretty easy to install and use, too. Just not sure how to close it properly.
YW! It shuts down either with the Steam button menu like any other app or game, or you can double click the Return to Gaming Mode icon. Either one.
I will try that, thanks.
I’d say check out these CryoByte videos:
If you don’t have a separate device to steam link with your deck, I’d recommend getting a Bluetooth keyboard. Even if you do, the keyboard would be handy if you’re out. It really helps with navigating the desktop mode when you need to mess with that side of it.
If you plan to use yours as a laptop replacement, get Bazzite (maybe CachyOS, but I don’t have experience with their handheld version). SteamOS is great, but the major drawback for daily computing is that every update will wipe out your modifications to the core system (not your home directory). Bazzite and some others will give you a persistent system with each update.
For gaming, Hades works flawlessly. It’s easy to pick up and put down, doesn’t consume a lot of battery, and the story/gameplay are phenomenal.
Make sure to also check out RetroDeck/EmuDeck and Decky Loader to extend what your Deck can do
I disagree. You should not immediately go and replace the OS as soon as you get it.
Most modifications to the root filesystem persist through updates just fine. You simply need to add the relevant exclusions for your customizations. See the Development and Modding section here.
I have a significant amount of modifications to Steam OS, including an encrypted home partition (while excluding the steamapps subdirectory via bind mount) protected by TPM.
The only time an update breaks anything is if the kernel or initramfs updates, requiring me to re-enter the LUKS password and reenroll a new TPM protector. And this is only because they don’t support Secure Boot, so my PCR selection is limited. And I was on the Beta update channel for a while updating almost weekly without issue.
Bazzite supports Secure Boot…😉
But thanks for the info! I’ll be looking at it more closely later.
First off, welcome! You’ll love the steam deck. I don’t have any specific hidden gems but if you’re planning on using this a lot on public transit, look for smaller games to play like Dredge. Anything too intensive will drain your battery a ton faster than a smaller game. Plus it will heat up and fans will be going bbrrrrrrr. May be worth getting a portable power bank if you can’t charge on transit. Also the largest SD card you can get to add to that puppy. Enjoy!
Regarding battery, learn how to utilize power draw slider. Unless necessary, play games on 30-60 FPS. Your battery will thank you for that.
Set up parsec and play windows games Set up windroid and play android games
Also steam deck sleep feature is so fucking good you can stop anywhere
