deckian 0.0.1

Dual-booting Debian on a Steam Deck, easily.

deckian

Dual-booting Debian on a Steam Deck, easily.

Why?

When I got my Steam Deck, I tried to dual-boot Debian stable on it with the official installer.

However, the installer was stretched (and in the incorrect rotation!) and it didn't look like it was going to work.

I eventually tried installing Ubuntu on it, and most things were working correctly - But there was no sound, and I couldn't use the controller as an actual controller.

At that point, I decided to just make a script that can install Debian to an SD Card and automatically fix all of the driver issues I had with it.

Installation

After cloning this repository, run the following to install deckian to /dev/sda with the username user (change it to the correct values for your use case first!):

sudo python3 -m deckian bootstrap
sudo python3 -m deckian install-desktop plasma
sudo python3 -m deckian push deckian-plasma
sudo python3 -m deckian install deckian-plasma /dev/sda --username=user

Credits

@iam_tj:matrix.org: Converted the spi-amd kernel module into a dkms module

Known issues

• The built-in speaker does not work
• GNOME (and even gdm) crashes
• XFCE doesn't have a way to disable wireless (as a solution for this problem, I've added rfkill to the list of packages installed by deckian bootstrap)

Features

Feature	Works?	Notes
Display	Yes	Display rotation is broken, but deckian install-desktop handles that automatically.
Wireless	Yes	On XFCE, you can't turn off wireless. However, you can turn it off with rfkill.
Audio	Partially	HDMI audio works automatically. You will need to run audiofix before headphone audio works, and the built-in speaker currently does not work at all.
Controller	No	The Steam Deck controller simulates a keyboard and mouse by default. Disabling that and using it as an actual controller does not work yet.

Desktop environments

Desktop Environment	Works?	Notes
KDE Plasma	Yes	KDE Plasma currently is the best DE choice for deckian, everything works really well.
XFCE	Yes	Wireless cannot be disabled with the GUI, but everything else works.
GNOME	No	GNOME crashes when it tries to load gdm.