I have installed EndeavourOS on Steam Deck with the KDE Plasma desktop environment with GRUB as my boot loader. It boots and I got Steam, vulkan-radeon, and lib32-vulkan-radeon installed right away and now I am in the process of trying to replicate the way Valve’s SteamOS behaved as I would like the full Linux functionality while in the desktop, but I am having some trouble with a few things. I also just want to make sure I didn’t miss any packages I need to install that would be required to get games to work.
Password/Pin: For anyone who doesn’t know the Steam Deck is a gaming device operated with it’s built in controller. Controllers do not have keyboards which makes putting in a password to login impossible. Once the system is logged into Steam is set to run on startup which then maps the controller to a desktop friendly browsing layout. Valve on SteamOS has an option to set a controller pin for Steam’s Big Picture Mode so when the device wakes up from sleep mode it at least has something keeping you from accessing it without authorization. I have gotten around using a password to login by automatically logging in on startup and disabling screen locking but for a device that I can potentially take into a public area this is not ideal.
Having the microSD card auto mount when it is taken out and put in: I cannot figure out how to make the microSD card auto mount to the /run/media location without putting in the user password. I do not want the microSD card to be mounted to /dev because it can be ejected whenever and Valve also had it mounted to /run/media. When the microSD card is inserted the popup for removable media does not show up in KDE Plasma’s disks and devices but it does show up in Dolphin and I can select to mount it there. For thoroughness, this microSD card was formatted with SteamOS when that was on my Steam Deck if by chance that is effecting something and Valve does more than and a partition table with their software.
Am I missing any packages?: I have vulkan-radeon and lib32-vulkan-radeon but are there any other packages I need for a gaming setup? If anyone is more knowledgeable on Valve’s version of Arch Linux would anyone know if they had certain packages they picked for the Steam Deck that I would also want.
I believe this is everything I was having trouble with. If something else comes up I’ll make a post in this topic about it. Otherwise it’s been a fun experiment so far and if I can iron out these kinks I’ll probably just keep EndeavourOS on my Steam Deck.
I got the microSD card to auto mount on startup by adding it to my fstab with KDE Partition Manager. Can someone check my fstab to make sure it’s done right? I’m treating it as removable media like a USB stick since you can eject the microSD card at any time and I would like it to auto mount when reinserted instead of having to go to Dolphin and do it manually. I also want to know if the mount location is good since I don’t know the standards or if there is a recommended place to mount partitions.
I’m retyping this out so I know the formatting isn’t 100% but should be readable.
In Arch /run is a temporary filesystem, tmpfs, used to store temporary runtime data which is cleared out on reboot.
From df -h:
tmpfs 1.5G 9.7M 1.5G 1% /run
/run/media/$USER/mountpoint is usually used for mounting removable media.
Even though every thing under /run will be cleared out upon reboot, systemd seems to be recreating the “mountpoint” at boot if there is an entry for it in /etc/fstab.
Should I change the mount point then? The microSD is removable media but if I try set it to auto mount in KDE Plasma’s system settings it always asks for the password. This isn’t the case with the USB slot as when I tested it I was not asked for the password, only for the microSD card.
My guess is that being an EXT4 partition, if a partition manager like Gparted was used for creating it, then it will set the ownership to root. That is most probably why you couldn’t mount it as your user.
Not necessarily. I was just commenting what /run is and what is used for.
You could also, if you wish to, create a mountpoint somewhere else in the file system to mount that partiton onto.
For example under your home directory: /home/$USER/SDcard (as an example).
Also, if this is a single user system (that is, no other users will be mounting this partition) I think defaults instead of users should do the job as well.
I change the ownership of the mount folder correct? When I tried using chown on the folder and having defaults in my fstab I am still asked for a password to unmount/mount after login.
My only reasoning for using users was that it stopped the password prompt from showing up. For inserting other microSD cards I am ok with providing a password but for my own that is usually inserted I do not as I trust it.
I think the problems with the microSD card were caused by using btrfs instead of ext4 on my main drive. I decided to start fresh since I find most computer problems to be PEBKAC and starting over with defaults usually helps me determine if I just messed up somewhere. I also set it to not auto-login from the live installer options and did it once in the installed system but I don’t think that mattered too much. Now it detects it as a microSD in the disks and devices menu in KDE Plasma and setting it to auto mount in system settings works as intended without a password. I also noticed more options for suspending the system like hibernate. I thought using btrfs wouldn’t hurt since I wasn’t planning on changing defaults but I guess I was wrong.
installation on Steam deck before, he might answer some of your questions 
