 First, I will introduce myself. My name is Michal Koneczny. I'm a senior software engineer in the community platform engineering team. And I'm working on Fedora infrastructure. If you are wondering about the head, this is something I'm doing for as a maintainer of riskmanitoring.org. I'm writing a blog post and it's taken as a magical word. And I'm trying to keep it that way. And I decided to vote a head that will represent it. It has, as you can see, the cord that is here or the part of the head is actually blue and white. So it corresponds to the Fedora cores, which is nice. OK, you can find me as Lopez, which is my nickname on the metrics, on IRC, on mailing list. So yep. OK, so let's go for it. OK, so this talk will be separated to three parts. First, I will do some quick introduction to Steam Deck. I assume that everybody who is here actually know what Steam Deck is, otherwise we will not be here. But I will still do some quick introduction. Then I will talk about the installation of Fedora on Steam Deck, how it actually went. Spoiler art, it went good. And then I will talk about Fedora on Steam Deck and how was the experience with it. And at the end, I will do some summarization what is the whole grade the experience was. So first, the Steam Deck. OK, so the Steam Deck is a gaming handheld developed by Valve Corporation. It has custom IMD APU based on Zen2. So it's actually x8664 processor. So it works like any other PC. Just have different controls and different control options. And it's designed for the gaming. It has three storage options with NVMean storage. It has Steam Deck Verified program, which says on the Steam what game is actually verified. It's, for my experience, it's an amazing device because from the time I got it, I didn't even start up my desktop gaming station. So I think it's awesome. It contains Arch Linux based OS 3 system. It is called SteamOS Hollow, SteamOS 3 Hollow. And it's dedicated for the gaming, so it has some perks that you will see. But you can work with it like any other Linux distribution. But in my case, I wanted to try further on it and see how it will work. OK, so first for the installation of Fedora Phone Steam Deck, I decided to have some docking station that I can actually use because the docking station is, it's hard to actually do some things on it without the keyboard and mouse. So I decided to first have the docking station. And I decided to go for the one you can see here. It's from Czech computer store. You can buy it. It's not really cost, it doesn't cost much. You need the power delivery for the docking station, at least 60 watts. The 45 watts is for the Steam Deck itself. And the remaining one are for anything you want to put in, like the monitor or any external devices. I got the charger with 65 watts. The output of this docking station is 100 watts. So if you want to use it, you can use it even for hungrier devices. And what I decided to actually install, in my case, I'm a big fan of silver blue of OS3, OS3 distribution or OS3 versions of Fedora. In my case, I have silver blue and kinoite on my machines. I think the only exception for this is the server. But for everything I'm using, I have OS3-based image. I really like how the OS3 is managing the updates that you actually switch from one OS3 image to another on the Restart. And then you will end up in new system. It's easy to get back if anything doesn't work. And you don't end up in actually broken state, because you can always return to the previous image. At least I never get to this state from silver blue 28. OK, so let's start with the installation. So first thing you need, you need to get to the boot manager. This is done by actually powering off the device. And then when you are powering it up, you need to hold down volume down button. And if you hear some chime, you will just release it. And then you get to this menu. I actually used the USB flash drive. I prepared the silver blue using the Fedora Mediowriter. And the USB flash drive was just hooked up in the docking station. And this was the result of it. OK, I'm sorry for the quality of the images, because I just took it with my phone. And in most cases, it was with different lighting. So every image is kind of different. But now you can see that the Fedora installer is working. This is Anaconda. There is one big issue with the installation. And this is that you don't really have the support for the resolution you need. So I'm not sure what is the support for Anaconda, but the Steam Deck display has 1,280 by 800. And as you can see, you don't see any buttons, but you can press, except for help. So it was just trial and error with top key and enter. In most cases, just to switch to the right one. And this is the installation again. But the worst case or the most difficult thing that I needed to do during the installation was to actually format the drive, because I had the pop-up window that I should choose all the file partitions that I need to actually rewrite. But I didn't saw any buttons. So I just trial and error and just actually get it to install. So yeah, this is another thing that the Carlos is mentioning. If you are doing the install, you need to have at least the keyboard book in, because the controller only touchpad works. So you can move with mouse, but because you don't see the buttons, you can actually press anything. OK, so and this is our first boot. You can see the federal logo on it. I have it right here. So this is how it looks after. I hope it's visible. And later, this is just the first boot, but on the other boots, you will see the Steam Deck logo as well, but I don't have any picture of that. So let's see. And this was the first boot. Welcome to Federal Linux 36. I got through all of this. There were things that worked that didn't work. This is actually the installation was great. The only issue was with the resolution. Otherwise, I didn't saw anything. But yeah, as mentioned here, you really need to have a keyboard connected to the Steam Deck during the installation. And here is just the usage of Fedora on Steam Deck. So this was the first run. What worked? The docking station worked really well. I didn't saw any issue with anything. I plugged in the charging work, everything worked. Resolution worked. On the Fedora, it was set up on the first run. Without issue, the display worked. Battery indicator worked. What is the issue? The sound doesn't work. I looked into this and Steam OS has some kernel modules for their own sound card, or for the sound card in Steam Deck, which isn't really in upstream kernel yet. So you will not have any sound in the Steam Deck. You can have it. I heard that in the Nobara Linux, they have some patches for it. But otherwise, the Steam OS is just the system that is created for it. So in Fedora, the sound was the issue. And the second issue was with the fun. The fun is lower than it is on the Steam OS. Because in Steam OS, there are some software patches that will actually changing the speed of the fun. Because people were complaining that these do load, and they actually do some software patches. But those are not upstream as well. So you have the fun when it's really start working. It's just noisy. OK. And the external peripherals, mouse and keyboard work, this was just connected to the docking station. I didn't saw any issue with them. Problem was with the monitor. You can see that I have a monitor running. The middle one is actually connected to the Steam Deck. And it's just the extension of the screen of the Steam Deck. The mirroring doesn't really work well because you will have the same resolution as on the Steam Deck, which isn't really great on big monitors. The thing that didn't work really on the monitor, the monitor sometimes started as a black screen that built-in display on the Steam Deck when connected to the external one. And this wasn't really an issue. If the GNOME or the Fedora itself detected that the screen is not working, but it actually started with it. And even in the login screen was because the built-in display was the primary one, everything was on it. And you didn't even saw the login screen. So you needed to do it from memory to actually just type enter, type password, type enter. And you don't see anything. This happened sometimes. It's not something that is happening every time. But yeah, it was annoying. And I decided when I was plugging in with external monitor to actually disable the built-in display because it caused other issues, which I will show up later. So no, without the docking station. So I wanted to try how it will be to actually work with it without docking station or use it without docking station. I was very surprised by how the on-screen keyboard is working. But I'm not sure if it's possible, but I didn't find an option to actually have it on all the time or at least on some shortcut because it actually shows up only if you click on any input. But in some apps, it didn't actually detect that you are on the text input. So actually, when I started Steam on the device and wanted to look into the Steam, I didn't get the on-screen keyboard. So I needed to plug in to the docking station and just do it with the keyboard. The touchpad worked without issue. Touchscreen worked without issue. And most of the keys on the Steam Deck works without issue. But they are mapped to something on the keyboard like D-pad is actually working as keys, as arrow keys. The A key is working as enter. The B key is working as escape. And there is some other keys that are mapped to something else. Next thing is working on the Steam Deck. I actually spent one day when I tried to work on it and do some of the things I'm doing on my working laptop. Most of the time, it actually was just to set it up. I needed to connect to a configuration repo I have. I needed to install some apps. I just layered them on top of the Western image. In some cases, I tried some of the flatbacks. So what worked? Terminal worked without issue. I didn't saw actually any device where the terminal didn't work. So yeah, I wasn't really surprised here. The browser worked without issue. As you can see, I have it open on the image on the right. This is actually me creating weekly report for a community platform engineering. So this was what I was trying to do on it. What didn't work were the video meetings. Obvious issue. And this is obvious because the zone doesn't work. So you don't have a microphone or the zone card. So it doesn't really make much sense to do a video meetings. Text editor worked. I used the VIM and Spacemarks also. So yeah, I didn't have any issue with those. I would say that most of the flatback apps will actually work. For the Office Suite, I have here that it worked and didn't work. It didn't work for me the first time. But this was maybe caused by the built-in display issue because it just put in the log that it can't file to open display. And on the other time, it actually worked. So I created part of this presentation on it. So you can see here that this is actually part of it was done on the Steam Deck. And the last thing that I tried was the SSH to it from other device which worked without issue. And this was more or less everything I tried to do as a working on it. OK, so let's switch to the next one. And this is what the Steam Deck is actually made for. So I tried to game on it. For the Steam, I have here that it's more or less working. What didn't work was the flatback version of Steam. Flatback version of Steam doesn't have the Udev rules. So it doesn't recognize the controller. So it's unusable with the Steam Deck even connected on Fedora. And the next thing I tried was the layered Steam. I found out there is some issue with the GPG key in non-free Steam or PM Fusion Steam repository. It just didn't take the key. So in this case, I just did a workaround by just disabling the GPG check, and it came up. I don't think this is a good resolution, but I don't think there is anything bad with the repository when it's actually in Fedora from start. This worked. I have all the Udev rules. I have the controller working in this case. I tried the big picture mode, as you can see on the left image. It worked without issue. Everything was smooth. Everything really worked. The controller, all the things on the controller worked. I was surprised, as you can see, the last thing that the gyroscope worked. I wasn't sure about this on the issue. And the game performance was really well, except the sound. There wasn't any sound. But I tried the aperture desktop, which is the game that was created for the Steam Deck from start. So it actually tries everything on the Steam Deck that is able to do. And everything worked in this case. I even get to the part of the game where you're actually trying to gyroscope, and it worked. So only think that it didn't work, but the game is actually expecting that it can't work. It could be possible that it didn't work. It was when you need to actually use the microphone or use the keyboard to... Yeah, there was one issue with it. You should press F12 when you are trying to take pictures, which the Steam actually didn't recognize it as Steam Deck. It recognizes a Steam controller, which worked. But yeah, you didn't have everything on it. It has all the controls actually worked. But yeah, it wasn't recognized as Steam Deck. So the things that it wanted you to do, it there was keys, actually press the keys. And the F12 wasn't really mapped on the Steam Deck. So I just waited and the game just skip it. When you don't do it in some time, it will just skip it. The same for the microphone part, because the microphone didn't work, because of some driver issues. And this is actually everything I have. There are some links in the slides. I will share them in the schedule on the wiki. So I will look at the questions here. Oh, so first thing is which version of Steam Deck I have. Oh, I have the biggest one, the 512 gigabytes. I didn't want the smaller ones, because I just don't need that much space. But it's better to have more space on the device than just using the SD card. I heard that the SD cards are really, really good. But yeah, I'm just happy with it. I didn't even feel it with 20% of the full space. So I'm happy with it. OK, so next thing is from Carlys. Have you tried Steam Hollow mode up on Steam Deck with Fedora running on it? I didn't know there is any Steam Hollow mode, actually. I looked at the game scope, but only saw that it's just as compositor available, but not really Hollow mode. I didn't try it, because I didn't know it exists. But yeah, it's something I can try. But yeah, I didn't. Next is, did you end up trying Nobara Linux on the Deck? I didn't, but it was recommended to me. I will probably get back to the Steam OS Hollow because it worked really well. And from last update, I saw they actually solved plenty of small issues they had. So yeah, I will get back to this. I will leave it to someone else, some other explorer to actually try it. And next one, what work do you think is required to make Fedora fully viable for Steam Deck? Do you think Fedora Workstation's level could be best suited or would gaming sick fit the bill? OK, so yeah, I actually promised you the summary of this. So the Fedora on the Steam Deck runs well. I think what would need to be done to actually have the Fedora as a viable option on Steam Deck would be to have the HoloMode on it, as mentioned before. Because it's much easier to actually work with everything when you have everything done for the controller. Expect that the controller is actually doing this. But the next thing that will be nice will be to have some, at least for GNOME, to have some keyboard shortcut for on-screen keyboard. Because there are some things that you can do. For in Steam Deck, in Steam OS 3, Holo is actually option to press the Steam key with the X and with the X key and you will get the keyboard everywhere. This is working everywhere on Steam Deck, which would be nice to actually get something like this. And the last thing are the drivers for things that are not really upstream like the sound. The sound was actually the only issue I really have something to struggle with. Because if you get to the big picture mode, it's usable, you can do much with it. I'm not sure if you will not have any issue with it in other games because some of the games, even on the Steam Deck, in the Steam OS, will just say to you that you need to press some keys on keyboard that you don't actually have. You can map them in the Steam input menu, but this isn't really a solution if the game wants it for you and you just need something to map. But yeah, I think the Fedora is actually a good system for the gaming itself. The main reason I think this is because they have most of the time the latest drivers, the latest kernel, so it works with most of the newest hardware. I have Fedora Kinoite on my gaming station and it's working without issue. I really didn't have much issue with it. The issue is usually with the game, not with the system itself. And on the Steam Deck, I think the Silver Blue is actually a good match. Maybe the Kinoite will be better. I didn't write it. But yeah, it was one of the things I actually tried to decide over if I want to try Silver Blue or the Kinoite on this. And Silver Blue was actually the winner in this. OK, so next one. How was GNOME on the deck without any peripherals? In comparison to that, that was chosen for SteamOS. OK, so KD on SteamOS has some things that are actually just added for the SteamOS. Like if you get to the desktop mode in the Steam Deck and you will get to this in the SteamOS and you will get to the desktop screen, there is a Steam running in the background and it will actually enable for you some controller things. Like you will have the shortcuts for making the magnifiers screen so you can magnify part of the screen. You have the shortcuts for the keyboard. You have shortcuts for other things. But otherwise, the controls as such worked on the same on the Fedora. I didn't really need to just get used to anything else that wasn't working on the SteamOS itself. But yeah, I would say that the SteamOS is still better suited for the Steam Deck as it is. OK, so next one. Do you think Valve should have chosen Fedora over Arch? This is their decision. I'm not sure if they will be better with Fedora. They will still need to do the work they did. But I would say that it will be easier for them. It depends when they were actually choosing it. Because the Arch Linux, if it's OS 3, is their invention. I don't think the Arch has OS 3 version. And if they go with Fedora, they could just take Silver Blue or Kinoite and just do the changes on top of it. So I would say that it will be for them. It will be easier. But it depends on them. Creating an OS 3 image isn't that hard, actually. And I see the last question. Who was the storage space usage? The base of SteamOS SteamHolo has been trimmed to save as much possible for games. Who did Fedora fare with storage? OK, so I actually didn't check that. So let me just check it. OK, so there's one more issue I actually didn't mention. If the Steam Deck goes to the black screen, just dimming the screen, it's usually just kidding. It can't be wake up. There is some issue with the display. So yeah, let me just restart it so I can check the space. But yeah, the trimming of the space is something you will need still from the Fedora Silver Board to actually remove everything that you don't really need. Because it will just take out the storage. So yeah, I think the Fedora is a viable option for it. I just need to look in. I can see that the most filled in is boot partition. And for the home, the home partition has only 22 gigabytes actually taken. So most of the space is left for you to actually use it for anything. OK, so you have on this device, you have 22 gigabytes only taken and I have already Steam and some games actually installed. And the last question, I think we are over time. But yeah, it didn't kick me out. So I will just continue. What are your favorite games to play on your deck? So I'm usually playing the single player ones. The Aperture Desktop is really great. It's funny, but it's really short. So I can recommend it to anybody who just want to try it. It's good to try on the new Steam Deck just to see what the Steam Deck is capable of. But the best game I played on it was, I would say that for me, it's the visual novel games, because the visual novel games are really good that you can actually take Steam Deck with you to your bed and just before you go to sleep just going through this visual novel. But I tried plenty of games. I tried some strategies. I tried some FPS. And all of them are actually playable. Some are better for the Steam Deck because they have more console-rated controls. Like, for example, Resident Evil is really great to play on Steam Deck. But I played the Prey, which is the FPS game, and didn't really saw any issue playing it. Because if you want to actually just aim with it, you will use the joystick. And if you want to do some aiming that you need to be more precise, you will use the touchpad. It's convenient. And you can even use the Gejiro scope. I didn't really use it in FPS, but I know people that are actually using it. So this was the last. Oh, yeah. I see that Carly's actually mentioned that some games have also specific optimization for deck from the developers. Yeah, this is true. Especially the ones that are Steam Deck verified are really working out of the box. Only some I saw that actually have the very verified. But didn't have some issues, even then. So it's not 100%, but most of the time, if you see anything that is verified, you will just install it, start it, and it works. It works, and you can play. OK, so yeah, this will be all from me. Thank you, everybody, for staying here with me. I hope you found it interesting. And maybe next time I will game up with another experiment with Steam Deck. We will see.