Especially since one of the best features is basically unmentioned. Turn on your steam deck and before you sign in for the first time, you can boot straight to the desktop. Just wish there was a toggle in Plasma to boot to desktop by default.
For all intents and purposes, you don’t need to log into steam to play games on the steam deck which is honestly shocking where most new hardware basically requires you to agree to sign in to begin using your device.
Looking at you Windows 11
I bought my Steam Deck simply to support Linux gaming and Valve’s contribution to more open hardware and software. I wasn’t actually interested in handheld gaming.
Roughly a year later, I game about 75% on my Steam Deck vs my very expensive Linux gaming desktop. I love it so much, the convenience of pausing a game, going from my couch to my bed and resuming flawlessly is awesome.
My spouse wanted one too, so now we both can game together easily anywhere.
Looking at you Windows 11
Yeah, I got a new laptop recently with no intention of using the pre-installed OS, but I wanted to boot it up once just to make sure all the hardware was working.
It may have actually taken longer to figure out how to create a local account on W11 than to wipe it and install Linux.
For anyone wondering how to do this - on the first setup screen asking you to pick a language after you turn the laptop on, hit Shift + F10, which will bring up the console. Click on it and type:
oobe/bypassnro
This will restart the computer, and setup will appear unchanged. When you get to the step asking you to connect to a network, select “I don’t have Internet.” This will prompt the creation of a local account. Enjoy your Microsoft account free computer!
If you’ve already connected to the Internet but haven’t created the account, open the console and type:
ipconfig /release
Which will force the computer to disconnect from the internet. From there you can use the oobe command from before to reset and set up without a Microsoft account.
Live ISO FTW
I got mine a couple of months ago and I wasn’t even a Steam user. I love it.
Make sure to check out “Nested Desktop mode”, it’s a great way to have faster access while in the default Game mode
Wait what? How?
Go into desktop mode, open the menu and use the search function to look for “Nested Desktop”. Now right click and add that to Steam. When you boot into Game mode, you’ll see a new item added called Nested Desktop, which you can open to access desktop mode while still in game mode. I found out about this a week ago and so far I use it most for referencing my digital game guides or searching NMS portal codes while still gaming.
Would be cool if it had a hotkey you could hold while powering on that tells it to boot into desktop mode.
SteamDeck is the best Nintendo Switch Online device ever 😉
I was floored at how easy it was to get it to run Breath of the Wild, and then I discovered the 60fps patch for the game. Pretty quickly sold my old Switch after that.
Oof. Unless that’s the only Switch game you play, you are going to have a hard time realising that Switch emulation isn’t far developed enough yet for you to play a lot of your games without issues and just throw away your real Switch. Plus, Nintendo’s takedowns of Yuzu and Ryujinx last year massively slowed down development.
Ironic how it’s able to play more older Nintendo titles than the official console
Welcome to Linux. It works great as a media center instead of your ad-ridden smart TV as well.
There’s also a script for Android TV on the deck that’s pretty good, I didn’t test it yet but I’ll sure as hell be using that for my tv stuff
We both switch years ago on our laptops when Windows 11 became the default windows. Linux Mint ftw
Love Mint, great distro!
I just threw Fedora on my laptop to see what it’s like, as I’ve only used Ubuntu and the like in the past.
I must say, Fedora 41 has been pretty great and rock solid. And it’s Hella fast and responsive compared to Windows 11.
Linux has come a long way
Wait… Could you put bigscreen on the desktop mode, configure it with all the fixings, plug in a dock to TV and get a USB/bluetooth remote?
… Shit that’s better than a mini ATX HTPC at $600 dollar for dollar since you can run away with it
Yes you can, I do that with mine a lot. The one caveat though that is a real bummer is I haven’t been able to get surround sound working on it. Something limits it to stereo output. There should be some way around it, but I haven’t found it.
From what I’ve read, yes.
Will you have access to all codecs as well though? This is the main reason we still keep our Nvidia Shield around from years ago
My Linux PC is a media server/htpc with access to all codecs. I regularly transcode H.265 via nvenc for jellyfin.
You must ensure you’re using a client that can use the codec in question, regarding proprietary codecies like H.265 you will need either a desktop client that can handle it, or verify you have your browser properly configured.
Is there a specific codec you’re concerned about losing access to?
The arch wiki page here lists all the common video codecs as well as packages to install them, assuming you’re on an unlocked steam deck these packages will work, otherwise you’ll need to source them yourself.
First of all, thank you for the reply. I always wondered if we could use our Steam Deck for pretty much everything since we have a dock plugged on our TV, but since we have been using the Nvidia Shield Pro as our media player for more than 5 years, I didn’t get out of my way to inform myself.
The Shield Pro was amazing at the start, until the stock launcher started showing ads (we currently avoid them by using an app for Android TVs called Productivity Launcher).
You must ensure you’re using a client that can use the codec in question
Yeah, this is the reason we had to stop using Jellyfin client and switched to Kodi. I think the jellyfin didn’t have support for pass through for the codec our movie was using and Kodi worked fine.
Is there a specific codec you’re concerned about losing access to?
Mainly Douby Atmos/Vision and such. We currently have our 4k TV connected with eARC to our Soundbar and the soundbar connected to the Shield. The only other thing we connected to the soundbar was our Nintendo Switch dock since I couldn’t make surround work otherwise. PS5 surround works fine connected to the TV and I think SD does too (I will need to test it later because I am unsure and I can’t remember).
Thinking about it now I think I do need to at least setup a way to play our stuff from Jellyfin on our SDs using Tailscale, this way we can access our stuff while traveling. At this moment we only access it away from home from our phones to listen to music.
Linux has never required you to sign up with an online account, you can always just make a local account.
Another bonus: Many very good open source games can be added to SteamDeck by:
- Boot to desktop.
- Search the software center.
- Click install.
- Right-click the new game icon, and click “add to Steam”
- Reboot to Steam mode and enjoy.
Some suggestions: Luanti, Empty Epsilon, Free Civ, Tux Racer, most retro emulators.
I might be slightly biased, but I can also recommend OpenMW for Deck.
Are you using the controller to play it, or a mouse and keyboard?
Done both, but I’ve found I rather enjoy the mix of stick and trackpad, emulated as KB+M
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
Hotkey the apocalypse game would be interesting on a steam deck. I wonder if anyone has attempted to map keys to the steam deck.
I was hugely impressed by how well Caves of Qud handles controller support. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in how these types of games can maintain access to so many different functions.
I haven’t quite found a let’s play of Caves of Qud that sold me on that game. But definitely might check it out again if it works well on the steam deck.
Hotkey the apocalypse game
Heh. CDDA is pretty intense, but I’m a huge fan of how it handles inventory.
The inventory system is great, I tend to find myself going too deep into organizing my stuff, it’s an enjoyable system.
Yeah… There are a lot of things I really like about the game, but every time I’ve tried playing, I get outside the initial starting point (after filling my pockets with frozen meat and shit lol), it gets kind of meh imo… I do like how you can use a smart phone (or flip phone) and it can even act as a flashlight
I have heard good things about some of the mods/variations
You must not have traveled far, the game has some wild locations, military locations and labs are where you can have a lot of fun or die trying.
I didn’t get far, no. Every 3 feet, you see something move out on the corner of your eye and it completely stops everything. Over and over.
I know you can turn that off, but then I just end up dying lol
Add anything with sonic in the name. Like SRB2:Persona.
Sounds like OP discovered the joys of linux.
You can install another distribution on it and make the desktop the default boot option! It’s not how I would use it but it’s a major selling point for me. I’m not stuck with the walled garden, even in the default OS!
Could make it Bazzite, and it would probably work just a well as SteamOS… But yeah, no reason to really do that imo
Replacing it with Bazzite is a great option if you want to do anything that SteamOS is too restrictive for without sacrificing any of the features
Edit: to be clear, SteamOS will let you do just about anything, but the way the updates work will override a decent amount of changes you make, since the OS is immutable by default and designed not to be modified.
Bazzite is also immutable
Steam’s “immutable” system isn’t that bad. It will revert a lot of stuff during OS updates, but Stable doesn’t go through that very often. I put all of my changes into a shell script and reapply it when that happens.
Yeah, I love we can do that if we want, even though I don’t do it much myself
Get a dock and attach it to your TV hours of fun as the family watch you play
I occasionally use it as a streaming device to watch series and movies. Currently going through King of the Hill which is available on archive.org. It’s pretty comfortable with Bluetooth keyboard /mouse.
It is competent too. I can play DBZ Kakarot and Ace Combat 7 at 1080p.
It is still just another Linux distro which doesn’t seem that locked down. I don’t own a steam deck but I imagine it should be possible to set it boot to desktop with some simple tinkering. In worst case scenario, you might be able to install another distro and get all the tweaks and apps yourself. The toggle can be done with some widgets and script ig.
You can I just wish it was accessible on the GUI.
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but you can add Nested Desktop as a non-Steam game and access it from Gaming Mode. Makes it so you can switch between games and Desktop without having to exit the game too. You might have to tinker with controls and the dim/sleep power settings.
Just to make sure you noticed, when you’re in “gaming mode”, you can switch to desktop mode easily by going to power menu (either by pressing the power button, or gui power button) and it’ll offer you to switch.
