Steam Deck

From ArchWiki
Warning: SteamOS is an Arch based distribution, it has several packages that differ from the official repositories. It is not supported by the Arch Linux community.

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: Mention opensd-gitAUR. (Discuss in Talk:Steam Deck)
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
microSD card reader 1217:8621 Yes
WiFi 10ec:c822 Yes
GPU 1002:163f Yes
Audio 1002:1640 Yes
Bluetooth 13d3:3553 Yes
Gyroscope Yes
Touchpads Yes
Touchscreen Yes
Steam Deck controls 28de:1205 Yes

The Steam Deck is a custom PC hardware from Valve that is focused on gaming. It can, however, also be used as a regular PC, and comes with a customized Plasma session. Also, it is completely unlocked, so one could install any OS they wish on it, including Arch Linux.

Installation

A USB flash installation medium can be used through the microSD card slot or the USB-C port.

While booting up the deck, hold down Volume Down and press the Power buttons. Choose your Arch Linux installation medium.

Firmware

As of October 2022, fwupd does not support any devices in the Steam Deck. Updates for the firmware are provided through SteamOS.

Shortcuts

  • Hold down Volume Up and press the Power button to access the UEFI settings,
  • Hold down Volume Down and press the Power button to access the UEFI boot menu (called "Boot Manager" in Valve's documentation),
  • Hold down ("Three Dots" button under the right touchpad) and press the Power button to access Valve's bootloader menu,
  • Hold down Volume Down+Power+⋯ ("Three Dots" button under the right touchpad) to reset the UEFI settings to their defaults (keep the two buttons other than Power held after the first blink of the LED: the LED will blink during the operation and stop once done, then release the buttons).

Advanced settings

Warning:
  • As opposed to regular UEFI settings available on consumer boards, there are no guardrails after following the instructions below: backup your firmware, it is possible to completely "brick" your device, which then requires an SPI chip programmer to fix.
  • While undervolting will at worst "brick" your device, overclocking or overvolting should be done with the usual caveats in mind.

AMD's CBS (Custom BIOS Settings) and PBS (Platform BIOS Settings) are not accessible by default, but can be unlocked (running the resulting binary will be silent and finish with a return code of 119) to have access to undervolting and overclocking options. These options are then visible when booting into the Steam Deck firmware, but there are restrictions on the TDP settings that can be overcome using a different method of loading the UEFI form browser.

A fix is needed for AMD Van Gogh APU PowerPlay limits to scale properly after higher frequencies are set when overclocking the CPU and GPU of the APU in the BIOS after unlocking it.

Fan controls

The Steam Deck's fan control can be enhanced by a daemon provided in Valve's jupiter repository, but are fully functional without it.

If you are using a mainline kernel, you need patches from Valve's kernel to expose the corresponding ACPI functionality, for example by installing the linux-steamosAUR kernel.

See also