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.
  • emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    5·
    1 day ago

    As long as you’re using and plugging in your steamdeck reasonably often(every couple of days) the suspend mode is fantastic and there’s little reason to ever do a full shutdown or reboot in my experience. Boot into desktop mode the first time, and then just use the suspend mode to stay there, switching to gaming mode only when you want to play games. It also doesn’t take very long to switch from gaming mode to desktop mode or vice versa, I find the main time killer is the initial boot up into gaming mode the first time after shutdown.
    Or you can just load games out of desktop mode, a recent update fixed a lot of the issues I had with the steam overlay not working in desktop mode and denying access to the powerful steaminput configuration options. That all works flawlessly now in desktop mode as well. I haven’t actually switched back to gaming mode for some time, since I use desktop mode to install games anyway and test the installation, it’s easier just to stay in desktop mode now.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      2·
      1 day ago

      the suspend mode is fantastic and there’s little reason to ever do a full shutdown or reboot in my experience.

      Thank you, that’s quite useful to know!

      Slightly off-topic but you reminded me. Have you tried using Steam Deck as a “Steam Controller” for PC? I did look up an article on that once and at first glance it seemed to involve a bunch of caveats. Haven’t tried it properly yet.