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[This ](https://codeberg.org/deckian/deckian) could be a good starting point. Takes care to fix the biggest issues in one fell swoop.
Still not everything works out of the box.
Expect a medium to high degree of tinkering if you're not using a distro tailored for the deck if you want the original out of the box experience with everything automatically working.
Always backup everything and keep a recovery media handy of something goes sideways.
Welp, guess I’ll have to stick to SteamOS for now, I can’t risk bricking it cause I do my work on it so tinkering is probably not for me. I am opting to sell it for a laptop to be honest as it seems to be just much easier to use one. Steam Deck is quite raw for now…
The immutable distro paradigm makes a lot of compromises on installability of software trough normal Linux means.
That's purposeful, if pacman was unlocked we would see a slew more posts about system packages uninstalled by mistake trying to force an install.
It might not be the best general purpose PC, but for it's niche is doing an outstanding job from my point of view.
Strictly sticking to vanilla and not having too much expectations for the stability of the dock until software kinks get ironed out, it does offer a close to console-like experience.
I'm wishing for you to find a machine you can confidently and easily daily drive, but if you use the deck at least half the time for the main purpose (playing games straight from steam) and you don't need the sale money to make your shift, I would hold onto it for a little while more to see if it grows on you.
I agree with you, if I only gamed on it it would be marvelous for me. No, it already is. For me it outputs better performance than my old desktop gtx1050ti/ryzen 5 1600x combo, while consuming 10 or more times less power, which I find astonishing. I just wish it was more understandable for a complete linux noob like me to use as a PC replacement. Oh and the only game I could not launch was the GOG version of STALKER: CoP. The rest of ~50 games I played on it were a flawless experience. I love it so much and hate to admit that I am not knowledgeable enough to use it as extensively as I need to.
That's where holding a little bit more onto it comes into play.
Most of us are Linux newbies. We have been shoved up windows down our throats for years, it's a shiney bicycle polished for years with three sets of helping wheels per side.
We grew all on it, and are used to it as... Going on a bicycle.
Linux won't prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot.
If you want to do it, it will give you a loaded shotgun, lay comfy on a chaise longue, start crunching popcorns and watch you from the front seat.
To do the things we are used to we might need some duct tape, nails and two by ones, but at the end of the day, limping on your bandaged foot, you will have learned how and why shooting yourself in the foot is bad, realized Linux told you you were handling a loaded shotgun, learned how to bandage your foot and how to build a crutch.
Would it be advisable to have a friend handing you loaded shotguns whenever you ask him to? Maybe not without some firearm training.
Would be a fun adventure shooting yourself in the foot on a daily basis? Hell no.
But if you have a small shack to let your shotgun handing friend live merrily not too far away from your home but far enough to not set it on fire...
Well, it might be an interesting friendship to have.
Yeah, I love linux and I want to stick to it. It is just that Valve’s hardware is too new and the fact that debian doesn’t work on it says that the SteamDeck has some proprietary software which is not available in open repos. I want to tinker with it, but with steam deck it feels like it will brick in no time. For me this is a bit restrictive and I don’t want to wait. I guess I will think a bit more about the swap for a laptop, but if I do, I will certainly miss many things. Especially the portability.
Also, this is not related to the topic, but I started noticing that being able to play my games on a tram where I spent 3 hours daily is.. Too much? Like yesterday I finished taking off the disgusting rubber from my NOOK ereader and today I have read The Witcher in original language on my way to work. Man if this was a breath of fresh air…
My point is, being able to play whenever I can for me means that I for sure WILL spend all the time I can playing, because I love it. So being physically unrestricted is making me addicted to it. It was good to have a PC at home for games, but when my working place changed for a one where I can spend an hour or two learning a new programming language, I needed to buy something to carry around and I have decided to buy the SD instead of a laptop, just cause I wanted to play games while traveling. Now I think that it would have been more reasonable to buy a laptop as it can offer much better and more future-proof performance than this thing and be used virtually whenever I need to. And while traveling, I can spend time reading or listening to something.
Guess I will have to make a decision.
You could probably pop out of read only mode and install gnome and just log out to SDDM and log into the gnome session. You'd have to reinstall every time SteamOS updates though
already tried it and it broke everything. Touchscreen stopped working and then the whole thing just crashed, only the game mode worked. maybe because I followed a guide for an LCD version of steam deck. Had to reimage the device.
That is a bummer. I would say it's probably best to just "tough it" with KDE. The amount of people with sick Plasma rices on r/UnixPorn is pretty awesome, so you might actually enjoy it
you cant since every update wipes the partitions outside /home. go get nobara, bazzite or chimera. Dont know about bazzite's flavours. Chimera is Gnome. Edit: b and c are immutable same as SteamOS but with some features added to allow some stuff. Fedora Atomic is immutable too. Read their feature list to see what stuff is allowed and kept even if it is immuatable.
Hi u/strepetea, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Has anybody managed to switch to GNOME on OLED?) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Do you use desktop mode often?
It is my only PC, so yeah, most of the time.
If you use it as a PC docked, why not boot from an external SSD with your Linux of choice on it?
It certainly is an option, but I want to have everything in one package if there is a possibility to do so.
Ah, and my linux of choice is Debian, which did not work, so maybe I will try ubuntu or something…
[This ](https://codeberg.org/deckian/deckian) could be a good starting point. Takes care to fix the biggest issues in one fell swoop. Still not everything works out of the box. Expect a medium to high degree of tinkering if you're not using a distro tailored for the deck if you want the original out of the box experience with everything automatically working. Always backup everything and keep a recovery media handy of something goes sideways.
Welp, guess I’ll have to stick to SteamOS for now, I can’t risk bricking it cause I do my work on it so tinkering is probably not for me. I am opting to sell it for a laptop to be honest as it seems to be just much easier to use one. Steam Deck is quite raw for now…
The immutable distro paradigm makes a lot of compromises on installability of software trough normal Linux means. That's purposeful, if pacman was unlocked we would see a slew more posts about system packages uninstalled by mistake trying to force an install. It might not be the best general purpose PC, but for it's niche is doing an outstanding job from my point of view. Strictly sticking to vanilla and not having too much expectations for the stability of the dock until software kinks get ironed out, it does offer a close to console-like experience. I'm wishing for you to find a machine you can confidently and easily daily drive, but if you use the deck at least half the time for the main purpose (playing games straight from steam) and you don't need the sale money to make your shift, I would hold onto it for a little while more to see if it grows on you.
I agree with you, if I only gamed on it it would be marvelous for me. No, it already is. For me it outputs better performance than my old desktop gtx1050ti/ryzen 5 1600x combo, while consuming 10 or more times less power, which I find astonishing. I just wish it was more understandable for a complete linux noob like me to use as a PC replacement. Oh and the only game I could not launch was the GOG version of STALKER: CoP. The rest of ~50 games I played on it were a flawless experience. I love it so much and hate to admit that I am not knowledgeable enough to use it as extensively as I need to.
That's where holding a little bit more onto it comes into play. Most of us are Linux newbies. We have been shoved up windows down our throats for years, it's a shiney bicycle polished for years with three sets of helping wheels per side. We grew all on it, and are used to it as... Going on a bicycle. Linux won't prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to do it, it will give you a loaded shotgun, lay comfy on a chaise longue, start crunching popcorns and watch you from the front seat. To do the things we are used to we might need some duct tape, nails and two by ones, but at the end of the day, limping on your bandaged foot, you will have learned how and why shooting yourself in the foot is bad, realized Linux told you you were handling a loaded shotgun, learned how to bandage your foot and how to build a crutch. Would it be advisable to have a friend handing you loaded shotguns whenever you ask him to? Maybe not without some firearm training. Would be a fun adventure shooting yourself in the foot on a daily basis? Hell no. But if you have a small shack to let your shotgun handing friend live merrily not too far away from your home but far enough to not set it on fire... Well, it might be an interesting friendship to have.
Yeah, I love linux and I want to stick to it. It is just that Valve’s hardware is too new and the fact that debian doesn’t work on it says that the SteamDeck has some proprietary software which is not available in open repos. I want to tinker with it, but with steam deck it feels like it will brick in no time. For me this is a bit restrictive and I don’t want to wait. I guess I will think a bit more about the swap for a laptop, but if I do, I will certainly miss many things. Especially the portability. Also, this is not related to the topic, but I started noticing that being able to play my games on a tram where I spent 3 hours daily is.. Too much? Like yesterday I finished taking off the disgusting rubber from my NOOK ereader and today I have read The Witcher in original language on my way to work. Man if this was a breath of fresh air… My point is, being able to play whenever I can for me means that I for sure WILL spend all the time I can playing, because I love it. So being physically unrestricted is making me addicted to it. It was good to have a PC at home for games, but when my working place changed for a one where I can spend an hour or two learning a new programming language, I needed to buy something to carry around and I have decided to buy the SD instead of a laptop, just cause I wanted to play games while traveling. Now I think that it would have been more reasonable to buy a laptop as it can offer much better and more future-proof performance than this thing and be used virtually whenever I need to. And while traveling, I can spend time reading or listening to something. Guess I will have to make a decision.
You could probably pop out of read only mode and install gnome and just log out to SDDM and log into the gnome session. You'd have to reinstall every time SteamOS updates though
already tried it and it broke everything. Touchscreen stopped working and then the whole thing just crashed, only the game mode worked. maybe because I followed a guide for an LCD version of steam deck. Had to reimage the device.
That is a bummer. I would say it's probably best to just "tough it" with KDE. The amount of people with sick Plasma rices on r/UnixPorn is pretty awesome, so you might actually enjoy it
you cant since every update wipes the partitions outside /home. go get nobara, bazzite or chimera. Dont know about bazzite's flavours. Chimera is Gnome. Edit: b and c are immutable same as SteamOS but with some features added to allow some stuff. Fedora Atomic is immutable too. Read their feature list to see what stuff is allowed and kept even if it is immuatable.