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)
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.