I recently bought a Steam Deck and I have a lapdock on the way, intending to use the Deck as a dual-purpose gaming handheld and laptop replacement. So on that front, I was wondering what more experienced users could tell me about using it.

I did read through the official FAQ, and a few questions pop up. In no particular order:

  1. Is there a way to boot the Steam Deck directly into desktop mode, without going through the Steam environment first? (Strictly as a time saver)
  2. In practice, how well does sudo steamos-readonly disable and installing things from pacman work out for you? In particular, I want to use PWAs For Firefox and it requires this package in order to work. Do packages actually get wiped with SteamOS updates, as the FAQ warns?
  3. Is it possible to re-enable the read-only filesystem after installing a package, to safeguard it from accidental changes?
  4. Any other tips, tricks or warnings you’d like to share.
  • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.deOP
    4·
    17 days ago

    Thanks for the advice. I’ll consider it long-term, but want to stick with SteamOS for now. I gave a more detailed reply to a different comment if you’re interested in reading it.

    • Björn@swg-empire.de
      3·
      16 days ago

      Hmm, yeah I read that. I think you are just not the target audience of SteamOS. It’s more or less meant for people who don’t want to tinker.

      If you’re already familiar with Cachy it’s probably a great choice. Personally I went with OpenSUSE which was quite a hassle to get set up like I want. Especially since I couldn’t be bothered to hook up a keyboard. But I think Cachy has all the stuff I had to add manually already integrated.