Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

IRunArchLinuxBTW · 2022-10-16 16:56:26

I bought a Steam Deck mostly to use it as a laptop: great hardware, cheap, small and lightweight, official support for an OS based on Arch. I move it between home and my office every day and keep it plugged to a USB-C hub (power + monitor + keyboard + mouse) 99% of the time.

However I'm unhappy with Steam OS: it doesn't really let me mess with the system and keeps complaining and reverting whatever I do.

I would like to remove Steam OS (because it's not easy to make it co-exist with other systems on the same disk) and install Arch Linux instead. But I'm afraid that I'd be losing a lot of the official hardware support. I checked the Wiki and it seems that a couple of things are not fully supported.

Has anyone tried to run Arch on a Steam Deck?

How does it work compared to Steam OS? What runs worse and what better?
Do you miss anything from Steam OS? Did you prefer that one for anything (including playing games)?
Are you dualbooting the two OSs on the SSD? How did you achieve that
Anything else I may want to know before installing Arch?

Erus_Iluvatar · 2022-10-16 17:55:58

You can workaround the "unsupported" parts by running the Valve repositories (which are not listed on the wiki page because they are a derivative distribution).

I've been running vanilla Arch without any Valve software since September 28 (Deck received August 22):

I can not compare the experience since I kept my installation on the micro SD card (which does work surprisingly well, though I've been careful to choose a class A2 card)
I switch between Arch and the SteamOS depending on what I want to do

Hope this can help.

IRunArchLinuxBTW · 2022-10-16 18:17:10

I've had bad experiences with SD cards: a few I had in some Raspberry PIs just died and I lost the data. So I'd prefer to avoid installing Arch (which would become my main OS on the deck) on one. I'd rather install Steam OS on the SD card (but I haven't looked up whether it's possible).

Would you ever consider leaving Steam OS altogether? Or do you think you'd miss out on something important?

Theoretically games should run the same on both OSs, but my fear is mostly about "important" stuff, like firmware updates or pieces of hardware that don't work properly.

Erus_Iluvatar · 2022-10-16 20:09:24

I've bought the Deck as a gaming machine first, so for my use case I would not want to get rid of it. I only tried to replace my desktop with it for fun, but if I wanted to simply use it for the hardware I'd remove completely the SteamOS and use the Valve repositories with a regular Arch installation on the main disk. The only thing you would miss that way are the firmware updates since Valve tied them to the SteamOS updates, otherwise if using Valve's repositories all the hardware works like it does from SteamOS but you are not locked by the immutable filesystem.

I'm not sure the way SteamOS is setup (e.g. A/B updates) would be able to work from the SD card.

IRunArchLinuxBTW · 2022-10-16 21:22:24

OK, I see, thanks for sharing your experience.

I guess I'll try to install replace Steam OS with Arch and see what happens. I guess it shouldn't be hard to revert things if I really need Steam OS for something.

If others have any experience or interested in this, let me know: we may try to fight any issues together.

hmmSalat · 2022-10-26 06:36:05

Hey,

I got my steam deck last week. I'm interested in running arch linux on the steam deck, too. Have you tried yet?

Erus_Iluvatar · 2022-10-27 05:18:03

FYI there is an opinionated user guide at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:P … Steam_Deck where the author shares his experience.

lfitzgerald · 2022-12-27 06:14:19

I got mine primarily for games, and I don't really care about using it as a laptop. However, I'd like to have a more traditional Linux environment for doing various non-game tasks (getting/installing non-steam games, taking notes about games, messing with save files, looking things up online). SteamOS to its credit comes with some nice stuff preinstalled (they even have ripgrep!) but I still want my own stuff.

There's pacman on SteamOS but it doesn't work because the directories like /bin or /usr are read-only. Even if they weren't, updates are distributed as disk images which would wipe whatever packages you install.

I didn't want to wipe the SteamOS and replace it with Arch because it has some nice extra UI stuff and it seems like a bunch of extra busywork to get all that working (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam_Deck).

I thought of installing Arch to a memory card and booting from it, but then I'd have to reboot every time I switch, which is a bit tedious.

I then decided to just create a chroot in ~ and do my Linux stuff inside that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … ting_Linux kind of covers it. But basically:

Enable sudo by going into Settings/Users and setting a password
mkdir ~/arch
sudo mount --bind ~/arch /mnt (pacman has trouble measure free disk space without mounting)
sudo pacstrap -KM /mnt base linux linux-firmware neovim reflector (note that packages will come from steam's repos, which is also why I used -M to avoid inheriting those)
sudo arch-chroot /mnt
reflector > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
nvim /etc/pacman.conf and enable parallel downloads, color
your keyring will probably be wrong, so rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gpg then pacman-key --init and pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -Syu

And you now have a working Arch inside the chroot. You can set up other stuff like a normal Arch install. For GUI programs, you can do https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot … rom_chroot - I tried it for gedit and it worked.

You probably want to make a script that mounts it, sets the display envar, mounts ~ inside the chroot and chroots into it, and starts your favorite terminal so you can do it one step.

A question for more knowledgeable folks: If I'm planning to use Arch like this exclusively, is there anything I can leave out from the pacstrap command? For example it seems like I don't need things like initramfs or linux since I'll never boot it.

Also, how do you get sound to work in the chroot? It seems like SteamOS uses pulseaudio, but I didn't have much luck with the usual methods

Erus_Iluvatar · 2023-04-17 16:40:30

Sorry to necro-post here, but I would love to hear if people have experienced using AMD's amd_pstate with their device ? I have started a discussion on the wiki talk page yesterday, but have not received answers so far.

fer_ · 2023-06-18 14:20:34

Hey man, sorry to bump an old post, but would you mind to share the script you made to automate the mounting, display envar etc?

I followed your steps btw, even the same folder name...

lfitzgerald wrote:

I got mine primarily for games, and I don't really care about using it as a laptop. However, I'd like to have a more traditional Linux environment for doing various non-game tasks (getting/installing non-steam games, taking notes about games, messing with save files, looking things up online). SteamOS to its credit comes with some nice stuff preinstalled (they even have ripgrep!) but I still want my own stuff.
There's pacman on SteamOS but it doesn't work because the directories like /bin or /usr are read-only. Even if they weren't, updates are distributed as disk images which would wipe whatever packages you install.
I didn't want to wipe the SteamOS and replace it with Arch because it has some nice extra UI stuff and it seems like a bunch of extra busywork to get all that working (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam_Deck).
I thought of installing Arch to a memory card and booting from it, but then I'd have to reboot every time I switch, which is a bit tedious.
I then decided to just create a chroot in ~ and do my Linux stuff inside that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … ting_Linux kind of covers it. But basically:
Enable sudo by going into Settings/Users and setting a password
mkdir ~/arch
sudo mount --bind ~/arch /mnt (pacman has trouble measure free disk space without mounting)
sudo pacstrap -KM /mnt base linux linux-firmware neovim reflector (note that packages will come from steam's repos, which is also why I used -M to avoid inheriting those)
sudo arch-chroot /mnt
reflector > /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
nvim /etc/pacman.conf and enable parallel downloads, color
your keyring will probably be wrong, so rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gpg then pacman-key --init and pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -Syu
And you now have a working Arch inside the chroot. You can set up other stuff like a normal Arch install. For GUI programs, you can do https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot … rom_chroot - I tried it for gedit and it worked.
You probably want to make a script that mounts it, sets the display envar, mounts ~ inside the chroot and chroots into it, and starts your favorite terminal so you can do it one step.
A question for more knowledgeable folks: If I'm planning to use Arch like this exclusively, is there anything I can leave out from the pacstrap command? For example it seems like I don't need things like initramfs or linux since I'll never boot it.
Also, how do you get sound to work in the chroot? It seems like SteamOS uses pulseaudio, but I didn't have much luck with the usual methods

DocMAX2 · 2024-03-24 08:55:47

I recently noticed my Steam does not detect the Steam Contoller anymore. Anyone else?

Arch Linux

#1 2022-10-16 16:56:26

Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#2 2022-10-16 17:55:58

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#3 2022-10-16 18:17:10

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#4 2022-10-16 20:09:24

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#5 2022-10-16 21:22:24

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#6 2022-10-26 06:36:05

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#7 2022-10-27 05:18:03

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#8 2022-12-27 06:14:19

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#9 2023-04-17 16:40:30

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#10 2023-06-18 14:20:34

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

#11 2024-03-24 08:55:47

Re: Arch Linux on a Steam Deck

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