I got a Tiling WM working on SteamOS in Gaming Mode

Posted on November 19, 2023  •  1 minutes  • 121 words

https://holo-shed.github.io/dev-diary/04-holoshed-on-the-deck/

The one thing I have disliked most about SteamOS is that Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode are two separate sessions, where you essentially have to restart your Deck to switch from one to the other.

The second thing that’s ground my gears is how hard it is to customize the software on the Deck because of its read-only file system.

That why I was so excited about Steam OS 3.5 enabling Nix packages, pretty much out of the box. The link above is my “diary” of how I safely set up Hyprland, a Wayland-first tiling Window Manager, on my Steam Deck, as a “non-Steam game,” thus ensuring that I pretty much never have to boot to “desktop mode” ever again.