Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
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:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[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.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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I haven’t looked into 1 but from my experience yes, 2 does wipe your changes with every OS update. Coming from another arch-based system it was my preference too but I learned the hard way. Yes it’s annoying but for an immutable distro like SteamOS it’s simpler to install via flatpak.
If you’re using desktop mode in handheld it does take a minute for the trackpads to work because it uses steaminput, and the Steam client needs to start separately in desktop mode. Touch works immediately.
Make sure to put your go-to file paths in Places (I think that’s what it’s called) because navigating Dolphin in handheld can also be mildly annoying.
If you’re using a customizer like DeckyLoader holding off on updates for a week or so until there’s confirmation of stability and compatibility is advisable, but that’s more for handheld mode.
Thanks for the advice! I did already figure out the thing about the trackpads. I found the whole environment to be surprisingly usable in handheld mode, but definitely not ideal.
Thankfully that's not how I'm planning to use it. I ordered a lapdock (specifically this one, which is the only one I've found that ships to my godforsaken country) and it should arrive in a couple of weeks and be the main way I use Desktop Mode. Then I don't need Steam input.
Can you tell me more about DeckyLoader and why I might want to use it? Or just link to a page with that info. I never looked into it, and I'm wondering what's actually missing from vanilla SteamOS.
Deckyloader is a plugin hub for all sorts of customization and QoL changes. I mainly use it for color customization, artwork changes, ProtonDB icons, and HowLongToBeat stats when I’m deciding on a new game.
I also use it to download custom boot animations and sounds. It’s mostly geek tweaks but gives you a sense of extra power over your device on the game mode side.
Here’s the primary website link: https://decky.xyz/