If you want to play retro games check out Retrodeck AND Emudeck. Read up on how they both function before deciding which one to use. One is kind of a bunch of scripts that downloads and installs emulators all over the place and one has them all contained in a flatpak.
Install Heroic Game Launcher for Epic Games Store and GOG.com.
Install ProtonUp-Qt. It is a tool to install different version of Proton (GE).
Install EmuDeck. It is a Emulation Suit for the Steam Deck. It includes various emulators.
Maybe avoid installing plugins at the beginning. Make sure your Steam Deck is working properly first.
Play Games (?).
Almost forgot, before everything, you should drain your battery all the way to 0% to recalibrate it.
To do that, drain the battery to 1%, and turn it off. Turn your Steam Deck on holding the Vol- button, you should boot into the BIOS. Leave it until it turns it self off.
Because the SteamOS may show the wrong percentage, as consequence, you may experience poor battery performance.
I left my Steam Deck untouched for months, when I turned it on, it shown me 60% of battery heath, but doing the recalibration fixed the problem, and the battery heath increased to 86%.
If you have a USB tool to monitor the actual battery capacity, be sure to use it here. Then store the value somewhere you will be able to find later. Like maybe on the device or charger. Then you will be able to determine battery degradation at any point in the future and also determine if there is a problem with the hardware. For instance, if the battery is going dead in half the time it did when new, but the battery still holds 90% of what it did when new, your problem is not due to the battery.
Everyone knows you can customize controls per-game, yet a lot of people don’t realize you can also change the desktop controls. The settings are only available within steam in desktop mode. For example I switched which triggers do right & left click. Also by default the trackpad scrolls in a circle, you can change this to up and down.
The games I pre-bought to play on Deck, these aren’t the games I play on it. I figured it would be good with things like Days Gone, Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, but instead I ended up playing mostly Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the early days. The driving is surprisingly good handheld, far superior than keys and mouse.
It’s Linux, and you can set it up yourself, but there is no option in SteamOS to encrypt your filesystem as-is. This means if your Deck is stolen, they have your data.
If you want a fancy replacement shell you have to de-laminate the LCD screen from the old shell first. Depending on the kit you buy DON’T use a metal spudger for removing the LCD and take your time, or you will have a bad time.
Side note, Ifixit sells direct replacement LCD panels and the kit for doing a better job removing the LCD if you don’t already have them.
Decky Loader gives you some really cool add ons that can help enhance your experience. Lots of different addons are available, but Powertools is popular and can help tweak things to help stretch battery usage a bit, and since I use Emudeck and other non-Steam apps (like the Heroic launcher and the Epic Game Store launcher), SteamGridDB gives images to those otherwise iconless apps.
The right touchpad as a mouse is so intuitive and useful in general, things like the ROG Ally seem less capable (even if they are much more powerful and have better specs than the Steamdeck otherwise).
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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.
If you want to play retro games check out Retrodeck AND Emudeck. Read up on how they both function before deciding which one to use. One is kind of a bunch of scripts that downloads and installs emulators all over the place and one has them all contained in a flatpak.
I forgot which is which
Get a hammock
… and put a ridgeline and a pouch on the line on it so you have a place to put the Deck in when you need it off your hands.
Almost forgot, before everything, you should drain your battery all the way to 0% to recalibrate it.
To do that, drain the battery to 1%, and turn it off. Turn your Steam Deck on holding the Vol- button, you should boot into the BIOS. Leave it until it turns it self off.
Now charge it until completely full.
Why do I need to do that to the battery?
Because the SteamOS may show the wrong percentage, as consequence, you may experience poor battery performance.
I left my Steam Deck untouched for months, when I turned it on, it shown me 60% of battery heath, but doing the recalibration fixed the problem, and the battery heath increased to 86%.
If you have a USB tool to monitor the actual battery capacity, be sure to use it here. Then store the value somewhere you will be able to find later. Like maybe on the device or charger. Then you will be able to determine battery degradation at any point in the future and also determine if there is a problem with the hardware. For instance, if the battery is going dead in half the time it did when new, but the battery still holds 90% of what it did when new, your problem is not due to the battery.
You can check the battery heath in Desktop Mode.
But ye, good suggestion.
I wish I knew how dope it was so I could’ve bought it six months before I did
If you’re swapping out the SSD make sure to remove the SD card first.
Everyone knows you can customize controls per-game, yet a lot of people don’t realize you can also change the desktop controls. The settings are only available within steam in desktop mode. For example I switched which triggers do right & left click. Also by default the trackpad scrolls in a circle, you can change this to up and down.
The games I pre-bought to play on Deck, these aren’t the games I play on it. I figured it would be good with things like Days Gone, Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, but instead I ended up playing mostly Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the early days. The driving is surprisingly good handheld, far superior than keys and mouse.
Encryption is not a first-party option in the software they give you.
What do you mean?
It’s Linux, and you can set it up yourself, but there is no option in SteamOS to encrypt your filesystem as-is. This means if your Deck is stolen, they have your data.
If you want a fancy replacement shell you have to de-laminate the LCD screen from the old shell first. Depending on the kit you buy DON’T use a metal spudger for removing the LCD and take your time, or you will have a bad time.
Side note, Ifixit sells direct replacement LCD panels and the kit for doing a better job removing the LCD if you don’t already have them.
Decky Loader gives you some really cool add ons that can help enhance your experience. Lots of different addons are available, but Powertools is popular and can help tweak things to help stretch battery usage a bit, and since I use Emudeck and other non-Steam apps (like the Heroic launcher and the Epic Game Store launcher), SteamGridDB gives images to those otherwise iconless apps.
The right touchpad as a mouse is so intuitive and useful in general, things like the ROG Ally seem less capable (even if they are much more powerful and have better specs than the Steamdeck otherwise).