| 1 | --- |
| 2 | title: "DeckPC - Day one experience" |
| 3 | date: 2022-09-10T19:47:33+03:00 |
| 4 | tags: ['steam', 'steamdeck', 'handheld', 'linux', 'deckpc'] |
| 5 | 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." |
| 6 | aliases: ["/deckpc-day-one-experience.html"] |
| 7 | type: blog |
| 8 | draft: false |
| 9 | --- |
| 10 | |
| 11 | This series of blogposts will be about documenting my experience with using Valve's Steam Deck |
| 12 | as a regular Linux desktop with its preinstalled SteamOS environment. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ## The dock |
| 15 | I admit I didn't pick the most *quality* dock for this use case and cheaped out a bit and rushed |
| 16 | to purchase without much more investigation than amount of ports. The dock I ended up purchasing |
| 17 | was from China and bought from AliExpress. It features a single 4K@30Hz HDMI port, an USB-C power |
| 18 | delivery port and 3x USB 3.0 ports. The first hurdle I faced from lack of research was the inability |
| 19 | to support my PC monitor's native refresh rate of 144Hz, but instead be capped to 1080p@120Hz. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Regardless of this setback, it still feels as smooth to my eyes, so it isn't going to be a dealbreaker |
| 22 | or a dispute, return, refund type of deal. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | ## Peripherals |
| 25 | My original premise in the idea blogpost was that I would be using a KVM switch for my peripherals. |
| 26 | That idea is scrapped, all of the peripherals are now connected to the dock instead and PC is currently |
| 27 | in an idle state until the electricity prices become sane in Estonia - they recently put vast majority |
| 28 | of people on hourly billing cycle based on the current exchange pricing, so it is in my best interests |
| 29 | to save electricity where possible to avoid having to see an outrageous bill. I may revisit this once the |
| 30 | prices are sane again. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | What I ended up connecting was nothing spectacular, really, just an USB keyboard, mouse and a microphone. |
| 33 | I also connected my speakers through my display to a spare 3.5mm slot, if necessary I can also get up to 4x |
| 34 | USB ports there for use. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | ## Out of the box hurdles |
| 37 | The first hurdle I had when entering desktop mode with the dock was that the display was without any taskbar |
| 38 | or icons - that was a relatively easy fix of going to the settings on Deck's built-in display and marking my |
| 39 | PC's display as the primary, not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind for anyone reading who happens to |
| 40 | be unfamiliar with Linux. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | The next hurdle I had was applications from Discover (so flatpaks) being unable to open any browser links at all. |
| 43 | This one was a lot harder to get to the bottom of with combined help of based.quest matrix chat, it took about 50 |
| 44 | minutes to reach a workaround which was documented in a [SteamOS issue](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/775#issuecomment-1129427573). |
| 45 | |
| 46 | ## The unresolved |
| 47 | I make no secret that I use an offline password manager [KeePassXC](https://keepassxc.org/) and one of its features |
| 48 | is the browser integration. Unfortunately, the browser integration currently does not work between flatpak versions |
| 49 | of Firefox and KeePassXC. There is some movement on Mozilla's end, but KeePassXC has raised their hands on their end. |
| 50 | |
| 51 | Despite this setback, it is still possible to use the password manager - just not without browser integration detecting |
| 52 | login fields and prompting you to fill relevant credentials for you, that now needs to be done manually. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | ## How do I like it |
| 55 | 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 |
| 56 | the machine or try to play a game and find performance to be noticably worse than my PC. That should not discredit |
| 57 | Deck's performance, though. It is amazing what this device can do in just 15W and I am extremely happy this experiment |
| 58 | hit off mostly clean without many issues. I feel confident in being able to just leave my PC on hibernation for the |
| 59 | winter ahead where electricity prices are merciless as I know the Steam Deck will be able to deliver on my expectations |
| 60 | for daily tasks. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | I will be making follow-up posts on this experiment going forward, documenting new hurdles and workarounds to anyone |
| 63 | else with a Steam Deck looking to use it as a premiere desktop experience. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | Thanks for reading, |
| 66 | - Cernodile |