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0bff0567 JM |
1 | DeckPC - Day one experience |
2 | ||
3 | This series of blogposts will be about documenting my experience with using Valve's Steam Deck | |
4 | as a regular Linux desktop with its preinstalled SteamOS environment. | |
5 | ||
6 | ## The dock | |
7 | I admit I didn't pick the most *quality* dock for this use case and cheaped out a bit and rushed | |
8 | to purchase without much more investigation than amount of ports. The dock I ended up purchasing | |
9 | was from China and bought from AliExpress. It features a single 4K@30Hz HDMI port, an USB-C power | |
10 | delivery port and 3x USB 3.0 ports. The first hurdle I faced from lack of research was the inability | |
11 | to support my PC monitor's native refresh rate of 144Hz, but instead be capped to 1080p@120Hz. | |
12 | ||
13 | Regardless of this setback, it still feels as smooth to my eyes, so it isn't going to be a dealbreaker | |
14 | or a dispute, return, refund type of deal. | |
15 | ||
16 | ## Peripherals | |
17 | My original premise in the idea blogpost was that I would be using a KVM switch for my peripherals. | |
18 | That idea is scrapped, all of the peripherals are now connected to the dock instead and PC is currently | |
19 | in an idle state until the electricity prices become sane in Estonia - they recently put vast majority | |
20 | of people on hourly billing cycle based on the current exchange pricing, so it is in my best interests | |
21 | to save electricity where possible to avoid having to see an outrageous bill. I may revisit this once the | |
22 | prices are sane again. | |
23 | ||
24 | What I ended up connecting was nothing spectacular, really, just an USB keyboard, mouse and a microphone. | |
25 | I also connected my speakers through my display to a spare 3.5mm slot, if necessary I can also get up to 4x | |
26 | USB ports there for use. | |
27 | ||
28 | ## Out of the box hurdles | |
29 | The first hurdle I had when entering desktop mode with the dock was that the display was without any taskbar | |
30 | or icons - that was a relatively easy fix of going to the settings on Deck's built-in display and marking my | |
31 | PC's display as the primary, not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind for anyone reading who happens to | |
32 | be unfamiliar with Linux. | |
33 | ||
34 | The next hurdle I had was applications from Discover (so flatpaks) being unable to open any browser links at all. | |
35 | This one was a lot harder to get to the bottom of with combined help of based.quest matrix chat, it took about 50 | |
36 | minutes to reach a workaround which was documented in a [SteamOS issue](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/775#issuecomment-1129427573). | |
37 | ||
38 | ## The unresolved | |
39 | I make no secret that I use an offline password manager [KeePassXC](https://keepassxc.org/) and one of its features | |
40 | is the browser integration. Unfortunately, the browser integration currently does not work between flatpak versions | |
41 | of Firefox and KeePassXC. There is some movement on Mozilla's end, but KeePassXC has raised their hands on their end. | |
42 | ||
43 | Despite this setback, it is still possible to use the password manager - just not without browser integration detecting | |
44 | login fields and prompting you to fill relevant credentials for you, that now needs to be done manually. | |
45 | ||
46 | ## How do I like it | |
b5a6753c | 47 | I often forget that I even use the Steam Deck instead of my PC. It only makes me realize when I am putting some load on |
0bff0567 JM |
48 | the machine or try to play a game and find performance to be noticably worse than my PC. That should not discredit |
49 | Deck's performance, though. It is amazing what this device can do in just 15W and I am extremely happy this experiment | |
50 | hit off mostly clean without many issues. I feel confident in being able to just leave my PC on hibernation for the | |
51 | winter ahead where electricity prices are merciless as I know the Steam Deck will be able to deliver on my expectations | |
52 | for daily tasks. | |
53 | ||
54 | I will be making follow-up posts on this experiment going forward, documenting new hurdles and workarounds to anyone | |
55 | else with a Steam Deck looking to use it as a premiere desktop experience. | |
56 | ||
57 | Thanks for reading, | |
58 | - Cernodile | |
59 | ||
60 | ;tags:steam steamdeck handheld linux deckpc | |
61 | ;description:This series of blogposts will be about documenting my experience with using Valve's Steam Deck as a regular Linux desktop with its preinstalled SteamOS environment. |