Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

I’m so glad I hesitated on getting Binding of Isaac on Switch. Getting a Deck and being able to seamlessly continue with my 500 hour save file was worth the price of admission all by itself honestly. It plays super well, and being able to suspend and resume in a portable format is perfect for small games like that. Highly recommend.

Yeah, I really liked my Switch for travel and PC ports of indie-ish games. But since I got my Deck I haven't spent nearly as much on buying (let's be honest, often re-buying) those games for Switch.

And I hear you on how the Switch versions seem to get updates late (if at all). And the performance suffers even when it's an older or not exactly a resource intensive game, like how Invisible, Inc. stutters constantly.

I still have my Switch for Nintendo games, but for everything else I now use my Deck. And since it may be awhile before I get to Mario Rabbids or Bayonetta 3, that means I haven't been playing my Switch very often. Recently when I took a 2-week trip, I didn't even bring it (because carrying two portable consoles seemed excessive.)

jamos5 wrote:

I’m so glad I hesitated on getting Binding of Isaac on Switch. Getting a Deck and being able to seamlessly continue with my 500 hour save file was worth the price of admission all by itself honestly. It plays super well, and being able to suspend and resume in a portable format is perfect for small games like that. Highly recommend.

What control scheme are you using? I tried playing on the deck (for the first time) and I was having a tough time.

PWAlessi wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

I’m so glad I hesitated on getting Binding of Isaac on Switch. Getting a Deck and being able to seamlessly continue with my 500 hour save file was worth the price of admission all by itself honestly. It plays super well, and being able to suspend and resume in a portable format is perfect for small games like that. Highly recommend.

What control scheme are you using? I tried playing on the deck (for the first time) and I was having a tough time.

What problems are you having? Do you normally play with keyboard? The only difference between playing on the Steam Deck or playing with an Xbox controller is that I can bind on of the back buttons to R for resets.

Seeing as Skyrim was mentioned, I'll do a little self-plugging, just in case anyone is a huge fan of Skyrim's Wabbajack Modlists. It's a niche topic, in a niche area of modding, but I was glad I could finally give something back to the community after so long.

I've done *a lot* of testing with various Wabbajack modlists on the deck, and have the process of getting them running on the deck/linux pretty well cultured now, so I wrote a guide:

Wabbajack Modlists on Linux/Deck

It seems to have been very well received on the Wabbajack and other modding discord channels. Lighter modlists work better than the heavy ones, needless to say, but it's amazing that any 700+ mod modlists works at all, through Proton.

PWAlessi wrote:
jamos5 wrote:

I’m so glad I hesitated on getting Binding of Isaac on Switch. Getting a Deck and being able to seamlessly continue with my 500 hour save file was worth the price of admission all by itself honestly. It plays super well, and being able to suspend and resume in a portable format is perfect for small games like that. Highly recommend.

What control scheme are you using? I tried playing on the deck (for the first time) and I was having a tough time.

I just used whatever default profile there was, with one small edit to reset my run when I hold the right control stick. Left stick moves, right face buttons shoot. I usually play on a PC keyboard, so upgrading to full 360 degree movement really upped my avoidance game.

I will say it was a bit awkward getting used to the bomb and items on the shoulder buttons, but after a run or two it became second nature.

Thanks everyone! Maybe I am just terrible at it.

Playing WoW on my steam deck makes me giggle like a kid again…

Steam Deck OS 3.4 Preview adds support for 8BitDo Ultimate Wireless controller dongle

Happy about this since I bought one (works great on the Switch and now I can use it on the Deck too!)

I don't understand why it needs a special patch. To me, the controller sends a properly formatted Bluetooth signal saying "button A pressed" and the Deck should just know - because it follows the Bluetooth standard.
However that must not be the case

Maybe for security considerations? Something in the handshake, say? Seems to me that Bluetooth is a huge sidechannel for attacks.

While it already worked in the Bluetooth mode, it didn't without a load of tinkering with the dedicated low-latency dongle. Nice to see Valve move quickly to support third-party pads like this. Must admit my own temptation to pick one up has increased. Seems like a nice controller, especially nice with the back paddles too.

The patch is specifically for dongle support (Bluetooth already worked). So it seems more like what Farley was thinking. Whatever the dongle does must be more complicated than aping a Bluetooth signal.

TheGameguru wrote:

Playing WoW on my steam deck makes me giggle like a kid again…

Are you using one of the community controller profiles? I figured WoW would predate gamepad friendly control schemes.

ccoates wrote:
While it already worked in the Bluetooth mode, it didn't without a load of tinkering with the dedicated low-latency dongle. Nice to see Valve move quickly to support third-party pads like this. Must admit my own temptation to pick one up has increased. Seems like a nice controller, especially nice with the back paddles too.

The patch is specifically for dongle support (Bluetooth already worked). So it seems more like what Farley was thinking. Whatever the dongle does must be more complicated than aping a Bluetooth signal.

TheGameguru wrote:

Playing WoW on my steam deck makes me giggle like a kid again…

Are you using one of the community controller profiles? I figured WoW would predate gamepad friendly control schemes.

Blizzard added controller support two expansions ago so they are now into the third expansion and continue to improve it. I use an add on called ConsolePort which puts a really great gui over the blizzard functionality as well as improving it in several ways. It’s not as good as FFXIV but it’s totally playable.

Robear wrote:

Maybe for security considerations? Something in the handshake, say? Seems to me that Bluetooth is a huge sidechannel for attacks.

Following the link that looks like the non-Bluetooth version of the controller that uses their proprietary 2.4GHz wireless tech.

Edit: just realized I pasted the wrong video link. Fixed now.

Already shared by Wiz, but it's almost time for the Game Awards/Steam Deck Giveaway.

I thought they were already started by I got the timezone wrong, ha.

Ha. I missed most of it picking up my kids and feeding them.

Edit: Yup. Didn’t win

I didn't win either.

So I guess this means Milf Hunter isn't a goodjer?

He? Is on Reddit.

Decided to join the Deck gang. Hope it gets here before my holiday trip in two weeks

Hope so too, so good for gaming while traveling. I suggest setting it to 40 refresh and fps while you're away from a charger, makes a huge difference in battery life and not a huge visual difference.
Happy gaming!

polypusher wrote:

Decided to join the Deck gang. Hope it gets here before my holiday trip in two weeks

Secret admission they are milf hunter?

If I got it for free I'd wouldnt have felt so guilty yesterday

Aaaand it's shipping already! I got the cheapest version with a 512gb SD card on the way and a deck. Anything else that would take time to ship that I should consider? I have xbox and even Steam controllers so I'm good there. I have a good Anker battery pack that can charge anything in a pinch. I'm also getting the official Dock.

Edit: 2nd question based on a comment from March:

Usually, my Switch is always in standby modus, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the Deck. If you aren’t using it, power it down.

Is that the experience others have, like 5%+ lost overnight on standby?

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/MIm4Yga.jpg)

SSD upgrade successful! The Xbox Series X SSD from eBay seems to be working: https://www.ebay.com/itm/115623744701

About to go to bed, so haven't tried installing anything yet.

Process wasn't without hiccups. My first attempt the USB drive I put the Recovery image on was so agonizingly slow I started over. It took 5-10 minutes just to boot into the Recovery OS.

Then I attempted to use a spare MicroSD. But I learned that you cannot flash *recovery* from the Deck's MicroSD slot. You can *boot* from the MicroSD, that's how I run Windows. But you cannot run the Recovery image from the MicroSD, you just get a series of "zstd data corrupted" errors.

Popped the MicroSD into an adapter and plugged it into the USB-C port, worked fine.

After the recovery process finished and the Steam Deck rebooted, I ran into some odd errors (I can't remember the exact text, something about it not being able to download updates) but the fix was... rebooting.

Then I ran into an issue where I was stuck on the boot screen because Steam said I had to be online to update. The fix for that was... patience. Eventually the message goes away and it boots normally.

Once you finally update Steam OS successfully and reboot once more, everything's fine, no errors since (knock on wood).

I went with this particular SSD because it's 3.3v 1.1a, not sure if that'll make a huge difference in battery life, but why not.

Since it was a XSX drive, some of the space seems permanently reserved for Xbox stuff. There's 852 GB of "usable space" compared to 931 GB on a regular 1 TB drive.

Overall not too painful of an experience compared to other console upgrades I've done like adding an optical disc emulator to my Dreamcast or Saturn.

polypusher wrote:

Aaaand it's shipping already! I got the cheapest version with a 512gb SD card on the way and a deck. Anything else that would take time to ship that I should consider? I have xbox and even Steam controllers so I'm good there. I have a good Anker battery pack that can charge anything in a pinch. I'm also getting the official Dock.

Edit: 2nd question based on a comment from March:

Usually, my Switch is always in standby modus, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the Deck. If you aren’t using it, power it down.

Is that the experience others have, like 5%+ lost overnight on standby?

I read somewhere that the Deck has smart enough battery management to know to not keep charging your battery when it is full. So I've felt secure enough to pretty much keep it charged as much as I want.

I don't power it off. That would make it much less useful to me. Being able to wake it from sleep and immediately jump back into whatever I was playing makes the machine invaluable. It's almost like magic.

It drains a bit when its sleeping, but as you said its probably no more than 5% overnight. But like I said I mostly keep it plugged in, and I use the thing every day so its not like I'm booting it up after a week and finding it at 20%.

The only other purchase I'd recommend is a good USB-C extension cord for playing in bed.

Yeah. My experience is that it holds a charge fairly well.

I keep it docked when not in use (handheld).

ccoates wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/MIm4Yga.jpg)

SSD upgrade successful! The Xbox Series X SSD from eBay seems to be working: https://www.ebay.com/itm/115623744701

About to go to bed, so haven't tried installing anything yet.

Process wasn't without hiccups. My first attempt the USB drive I put the Recovery image on was so agonizingly slow I started over. It took 5-10 minutes just to boot into the Recovery OS.

Then I attempted to use a spare MicroSD. But I learned that you cannot flash *recovery* from the Deck's MicroSD slot. You can *boot* from the MicroSD, that's how I run Windows. But you cannot run the Recovery image from the MicroSD, you just get a series of "zstd data corrupted" errors.

Popped the MicroSD into an adapter and plugged it into the USB-C port, worked fine.

After the recovery process finished and the Steam Deck rebooted, I ran into some odd errors (I can't remember the exact text, something about it not being able to download updates) but the fix was... rebooting.

Then I ran into an issue where I was stuck on the boot screen because Steam said I had to be online to update. The fix for that was... patience. Eventually the message goes away and it boots normally.

Once you finally update Steam OS successfully and reboot once more, everything's fine, no errors since (knock on wood).

I went with this particular SSD because it's 3.3v 1.1a, not sure if that'll make a huge difference in battery life, but why not.

Since it was a XSX drive, some of the space seems permanently reserved for Xbox stuff. There's 852 GB of "usable space" compared to 931 GB on a regular 1 TB drive.

Overall not too painful of an experience compared to other console upgrades I've done like adding an optical disc emulator to my Dreamcast or Saturn.

I ran into a bunch of hiccups too. Mine didn't respond for like 5 minutes after doing the image no matter how long I held the power button down. Reminded me of some of my early 2000s PC builds and scared the crap out of me!

I’d agree with that 5% figure as well. The nice thing is that reboots are fast. The Deck has been designed with both ease of use and accessibility in the OS. A rare combination for a console.

I like it a lot for travel, and for games that are best with controllers.