I love this kind of deep dive into customizing the software/OS on a device you own. Glad that "Tivoization" isn't a concern for the steamdeck.<p>The most interesting part of the article was the mention of a /nix partition, as I didn't realize the steamdeck supports nixpkgs, after researching it more, they do indeed (not installed by default, but at least it is possible without having to fork an entire os to get it on the device).
What a thorough and interesting post. I would personally never do something like this. The most tinkering I've ever done with Linux was in my RaspberryPi era and that's 1% at most. So props to the author
There already are distributions based around elements of SteamOS, geared towards PCs and controller-based usage. ChimeraOS works for me quite flawlessly, including Steam Deck add-ons, like EmuDeck.
I actually just ordered a GPU for my unRaid NAS server just to be able to do Steam Headless via a nice docker image(1) and then use Moonlight (for example) as a client on my Windows laptop. If it works, it's much better than buying yet another piece of desktop hardware just to play games when my NAS is just sitting there idle most of the time. Just need to make sure I keep the power level setting on the Nvidia card to idle when not in use (hopefully a nvidia-persistenced call will do it).<p>1: <a href="https://github.com/Steam-Headless/docker-steam-headless">https://github.com/Steam-Headless/docker-steam-headless</a>
TIL about RAUC (<a href="https://rauc.io/" rel="nofollow">https://rauc.io/</a>) I had been wondering how valve implemented the A/B update scheme.
Interesting read! The A/B upgrade sounds a bit overkill, you can always just pop up a live distro or install a recovery system (on an old version) in a partition in case something goes wrong.<p>I recently moved to Arch after a few years of NixOS (preceded by years of Arch) and I think the fears of the author are misplaced.<p>Arch is definitely a very serious and mature distro and I'd trust them more than Valve.<p>The quality of the packages available for Arch is what made me move from NixOS.
The main repos are updated really fast and AUR has a lot of useful packages.
I recently got my hands on a gaming handheld (the Legion Go) and have used it to get more exposure to Linux. I'd historically avoided it, because it seemed like a perpetual tinker timesink with limited compatibility with things I'd actually want to use. Reading about immutable filesystems and how traditional Linux gives root willy-nilly to all sorts of random software piqued my curiosity.<p>I'm using NixOS, which can indeed be a tinker timesink, but is good for exploration. You can easily try different components, and then completely remove them (aside from some ~/.config pollution) if you don't want to keep them. It's also trivial to patch things before you install them (such as adding some kernel patches to make Linux usable on esoteric hardware like a gaming handheld).<p>There's a NixOS community called Jovian that's reconstructing Valve's random SteamOS tarballs into tagged commits on GitHub, which you can browse as if you were a Valve employee. They've made it so you can install your own copy of SteamOS atop NixOS by adding a few lines to your Nix configuration. They're clearly Linux experts, and you can see from the source that you're getting Valve's packages unadulterated, save for simple adaptations like introspecting instead of hardcoding the power button location.<p>So, if you want a pure SteamOS experience without hosting your own mirror of Valve's update system (or if you want to be able to browse Valve's source without downloading a 3GB tarball), give Jovian a try.<p>Install instructions: <a href="https://jovian-experiments.github.io/Jovian-NixOS/getting-started.html" rel="nofollow">https://jovian-experiments.github.io/Jovian-NixOS/getting-st...</a><p>Mirrors of Valve's source: <a href="https://github.com/orgs/Jovian-Experiments/repositories?type=all">https://github.com/orgs/Jovian-Experiments/repositories?type...</a>
Valve might need some not yet upstreamed kernel features for Steam Deck, but what is the ustpream kernel missing otherwise for gaming? I use it without any issues.<p>As far as I know they also prefer to upstream things in general. I think AMD's amd-pstate / amd-pstate-epp and related work was kicked off becasue of Steam Deck, but it all went upstream.
If you're interested in running SteamOS on a Linux PC, I'd recommend: <a href="https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso">https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso</a>
Tangential: anyone have experience with unity and/or unreal on Linux these days? Last I checked (2-3 years ago), they technically worked but we’re janky and buggy. Is it improved?
I was totally blown away by how good Proton is in the post Steam Deck world. I now play Steam games on my Linux laptop almost daily because they “just work” even when the only listed supported platform is Windows
I wanted to do use SteamOS for our LR PC, our kitchen ambiance PC and our MBR PC but instead installed Ubuntu (upgraded to Kubuntu) then disabled Snap because SteamOS which runs KDE and was a great call by Valve, is built on Arch, a bad call IMHO.