I recently sold part of my inventory to buy my very own deck (yes, I know what happens on the 16th but I’m not in NA and I’m quite content with what I’m already getting for the discounted price) and I wanted to be ready for the day it eventually arrives, so my question is: what tips would you give to a total newbie like me? Any must have apps, settings? Any kind of advice is welcome really.
Don’t do any modifications to ANYTHING until you NEED to. Use the Deck vanilla for as long as possible.
Education. Learn how proton works. Learn your way around the Linux file system. Configure your Dolphin file manager to a “friendly to Deck” configuration.
Don’t try to jump in too deep. Play verified games … avoid any game from a third party locker like EA, Rockstar, Ubisoft until you are comfortable with how everything works.
Avoid emulation until you’re comfortable with where things are and how they work.
How and where could I educate myself in advance about proton, Linux etc? I’m very interested about using the deck as an emulation platform but I will take your advice and wait a bit
This is who I cater to…
Recommended curriculum for the new user
Roughly in order … all of these videos are listed above.
- Ten Things Every New Steam Deck Owner Should Know
- Dolphin Tricks and Tips (New for 2023)
- Proton 101: What is it and how does it work
- Shaders, Caches and You; Understanding Shaders on Deck
- Getting GE-Proton Installed and Running
- Five Ways to Unleash the Power of the Rear Paddles
- Access Deck’s Drives As A Drives on Windows (SSH+SSHFS) - New 2023 Edition
- EmuDeck 101 (Index Card Instruction)
- Ten Things You Need To Know About Emulation Station
Honestly from my experience the only thing about proton you need to know is how to switch versions, add launch arguments and how to find tweaks you need to apply for your game to work properly (you can find that out on protondb)
Sometimes you might need to install a custom version of proton called ProtonGE, which has some additional tweaks that some games need to work, so you could learn how to do that too but most games usually don’t need it, so you can figure that out once you encounter such game.
You don’t need to know much about Linux when using the steam deck. There may be some times that you might need to open up a terminal to set something up like cryo utilities and steam deck plugins but you can just follow a guide, you don’t need to understand what the commands do.
Don’t forget about desktop mode. You have a full computer there. For a while it was my main computer. It’s Linux, but that isn’t been a huge issue for me. It’s generally easier to download programs as you can find most of what you need by searching on the discover app and downloading directly from there.
Decky Loader is awesome. It gives you access to a lot of little tweaks themes and other cool and useful stuff for gaming mode.
Steam Input is amazing. It lets you remap every button to whatever you want it to be. There are a number of games that I didn’t think would be good experiences on the Deck that were absolutely amazing once I to advantage of the extra back buttons and trackpads. Many people have uploaded their own controller profiles so you often don’t even have to do it yourself.
Lastly, don’t forget to actually install and play games.
If you decide to do emulation and have never attempted it before, start small. People get discouraged when they can’t get PS2/3 or Wii U games going when they’d also be pretty content playing an SNES Mario, GBA Pokémon or a Genesis game.
Good one!
Plus the size of moving and then testing… games. Sometimes that just one is enough for the hassle (so take notes), you prolly don’t need 300 retro games.
One per system is a good approach really.
I do enjoy using Emulation Station’s screensaver feature as a kind of retro game roulette wheel for larger rom sets though. Makes it incredibly easy to just press A when you see a game that looks interesting and gets rid of decision paralysis.
I would get the decky loader and get the vibrant deck extension for it. Makes the colors pop way more!
Smell the vents you must
YouTube has all that info bro