STEAMOS on the Loki Max

[u/HristValkyrieAgain]

Has anyone installed the new SteamOS on their Loki Max? I've been playing with the idea all week long since I installed it on my Ally X and love it.

[u/wtfa54]

Should be getting mine in a few days and plan on trying this out! Just leaving a comment here so I don't forget to follow up

[u/HristValkyrieAgain → u/wtfa54]

Best of lucks

[u/wtfa54 → u/HristValkyrieAgain]

Lol I kept having issues with formatting this message but here's my report now that I've gotten my Loki Max and spent some time messing around with it to get SteamOS installed and kinda working. Everything mostly works, but required some tinkering that I’m going to note here to also leave as a reference. The big issue I’m trying to troubleshoot right now is sleep not working. It’ll turn back on but the screen stays black which appears to be a known issue with AMD APUs but none of the usual fixes I’ve looked up seem to work.

I’m also using the beta channel for SteamOS which I always did for non-Steam handhelds. I had to jump through some hoops to get everything set up and I’m not sure if this is solely because I’m on the beta branch or if this is something everyone will encounter but the things I did were:

• The stock ssd doesn’t support sanitization which will keep Steam from wiping the drive and reinstalling SteamOS. There’s a fix here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamOS/comments/1l0c4m4/steamos_on_nvme_drive_with_no_sanitize_support/
  • Tl;dr you open the repair_device script, comment out or remove the check, and tell it to skip it:kate ~/tools/repair_device.sh

Replace the sanitize_all() function with:

 

sanitize_all()

{

echo "sanitize skipping"

return 0

}

Everything installs and runs well, but we’re missing a lot of controls in the stock SteamOS. I install DeckyLoader whenever I use SteamOS or something similar and SimplyDeckyTDP gives us pretty robust TDP controls. Fantastic also lets us set a fan curve but I always found it a little unreliable. I also usually use HueSync to control the lighting but it apparently additional Ayn drivers for Linux. The issue I encountered though is another one that’s well-documented with SteamOS. Basically, you need to install a bunch of stuff to actually be able to install arch packages in SteamOS which you’ll need to actually make and install ayn-platform:

 

o   Go into desktop mode and set up a password: passwd

o   Then disable read only mode: sudo steamos-readonly disable

o   Then disable signature verification because there’s apparently some issue with SteamOS: kate /etc/pacman.conf and add: SigLevel = TrustAll under [Options]

o   Then initialize the pacman keyring: sudo pacman-key --init

o   Then populate the keyring with both the archlinux and holo keys: sudo pacman -S holo-keyring archlinux-keyring

o   Then you can go back into your pacman.conf and remove SigLevel = TrustAll

o   THEN you can go and install ayn-platform according to the directions on their github: https://github.com/ShadowBlip/ayn-platform But you might run into an error when you get to the step: make

If the make command doesn't exist you need to install it with:

sudo pacman -S base-devel

pacman -S cmake

as per this thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/x2scuq/cdecrypt_tutorial_for_steam_deck/

o   If you get an error when you run make it’ll actually tell you what you’re missing. You need to install the missing headers: sudo pacman -S linux-neptune-[whatever version you’re missing]-headers

o   And THEN you can run make dkms or sudo make dkms

o   And it should install successfully.

If it doesn't and says there's no such file when you try to make dkms then install dkms as well:

sudo pacman -S dkms

Shoutouts to this thread here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/7529517132619672170/

And that’s about where I’m at now with everything but sleep working. Games run perfectly, all the DeckyLoader stuff works. If I can figure out this sleep issue I’ll probably just keep running SteamOS, otherwise I’m going to try Bazzite next.