When in desktop mode, the power button will turn off the screen but not put the system to sleep, so you could switch to desktop mode for long downloads.

Also, modern OLEDs are very resistant to burn-in. You could probably leave a static image on the screen for 24 hours a day for several months before it would be noticeable.

I’ve got a relatively fancy PC (Ryzen 9 5950X, Geforce 3080 RTX, connected to a 4k / 120 Hz TV) and don’t regret getting a Deck at all. It’s great for playing games when I’m at my desk, in bed, or traveling anywhere. If anything, having a high-end PC is a nice complement to it since I can stream high-end games from that for better battery life than I’d get if I was using the Deck alone.

I was thinking maybe hook them together via USB-C and use konsole for Linux dd command to duplicate over to the oled SD.

You’re on the right path, but that won’t work because the Deck isn’t a host device; you can’t just plug them into each other and see the other one’s storage media.

Also, keep in mind that if you use dd to clone one disk on to another, you’re also cloning the partition table from the original disk. If the target disk is larger, you’ll also have to first expand the partition to fill the whole disk, then also expand the filesystem to fill the partition.

I can tell you what I’d do, but I only use Linux on my desktop computer; there are probably similar Windows tools for doing this, but I’m not familiar with them.

First, assuming you have a computer with an empty NVMe slot or a USB NVMe drive reader and a hard drive that has enough space to hold an image of the original disk:

1. Plug the source disk into your computer, dd to dump the original disk
2. Remove it, plug in the target disk, use dd to copy the image to the target disk
3. Use gparted to resize the partition to fill the new disk
4. Use resize2fs to resize the filesystem to fill the entire partition

After doing that, you can put the target disk back in the Deck and it will probably work, but no guarantees since I’ve never tried it.

Probably the easiest way to get a word processor on the Deck is to install LibreOffice via flatpak (https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/). It should take up about 700 MB when installed, up to you whether that’s too much or not.

It’ll probably work pretty well for your needs, but unless you already have one that works, do some research before buying a portable monitor to make sure you get one that will work with the Deck. A lot of small / portable monitors that use USB connections rather than HDMI require proprietary drivers that will not work on the Deck.

It sounds like you’re interested in visual novels, so I’m surprised you didn’t mention that or list any. But a few I’d recommend that work great on the Deck include:

• The Utawarerumono series (Prelude to the Fallen, Mask of Deception, Mask of Truth)
• AI: The Somnium Files
• The House in Fata Morgana
• The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
• Marco & the Galaxy Dragon