4 ms·

This is actually a bit of a match made in heaven for Nix. The Steam Deck runs Arch with immutable root, which means most of the AUR packages won't entirely work

This is actually a bit of a match made in heaven for Nix. The Steam Deck runs Arch with immutable root, which means most of the AUR packages won't entirely work. So you need a package manager which respects immutable root, supports atomic upgrades with Arch and has a package selection similar to the AUR. There are a few options, but the best one really is Nix: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest Given that package management on the Deck is traditionally handled with Flatpak, Nix seems like a great alternative for power users with storage to spare.

mhitza 2y ago
VMs with Gnome Boxes also work nicely on the deck for power users. With KVM, measured via geekbench, the VM incurred only a 5% performance penalty.
- sweeter 2y ago
  I run containers with podman as well as Waydroid for Android apps. I install novel reader applications or whatever and have them open in the background using TTS, while I play.
Rikudou 2y ago
I actually use both, flatpaks for GUI apps and Nix for various CLI tools, setting up my Deck like I described in the article was triggered by me being too lazy to check my local game server's IP on the server itself and wanted to use nmap for that. Long story short, it would be faster to go check the computer physically. But it was more fun this way, even though I didn't have the time to play the game in the end.
capitainenemo 2y ago
Personally, I just mounted an overlay fs against the sdcard on /usr and installed what I wanted against their Arch snapshot and some standalone apps I needed. Every few months I have to rerun an install script though, if I choose to upgrade to their latest release, since I don't want to risk doing that upgrade with the overlay in place. But otherwise it's been working well for a couple of years.
dlcarrier 2y ago
In my experience, Flatpak packages take far more resources than installing the same application with Pacman. Are Nix packages even larger?
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  No, Nix installs each version of a library only once.
  - Vilian 2y ago
    Same with flatpak, both use deduplication

mhitza 2y ago

VMs with Gnome Boxes also work nicely on the deck for power users. With KVM, measured via geekbench, the VM incurred only a 5% performance penalty.

sweeter 2y ago
I run containers with podman as well as Waydroid for Android apps. I install novel reader applications or whatever and have them open in the background using TTS, while I play.

Rikudou 2y ago

I actually use both, flatpaks for GUI apps and Nix for various CLI tools, setting up my Deck like I described in the article was triggered by me being too lazy to check my local game server's IP on the server itself and wanted to use nmap for that. Long story short, it would be faster to go check the computer physically. But it was more fun this way, even though I didn't have the time to play the game in the end.

capitainenemo 2y ago

Personally, I just mounted an overlay fs against the sdcard on /usr and installed what I wanted against their Arch snapshot and some standalone apps I needed. Every few months I have to rerun an install script though, if I choose to upgrade to their latest release, since I don't want to risk doing that upgrade with the overlay in place. But otherwise it's been working well for a couple of years.

dlcarrier 2y ago

In my experience, Flatpak packages take far more resources than installing the same application with Pacman. Are Nix packages even larger?

otabdeveloper4 2y ago
No, Nix installs each version of a library only once.
- Vilian 2y ago
  Same with flatpak, both use deduplication