Things you wished you knew before setting up your Deck?

million@lemmy.world to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 73 points –

Got a Steam Deck on the way, anything I should know before I dive in when it arrives?

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  1. Install Heroic Game Launcher for Epic Games Store and GOG.com.
  2. Install ProtonUp-Qt. It is a tool to install different version of Proton (GE).
  3. Install EmuDeck. It is a Emulation Suit for the Steam Deck. It includes various emulators.
  4. Maybe avoid installing plugins at the beginning. Make sure your Steam Deck is working properly first.
  5. Play Games (?).

Almost forgot, before everything, you should drain your battery all the way to 0% to recalibrate it.

To do that, drain the battery to 1%, and turn it off. Turn your Steam Deck on holding the Vol- button, you should boot into the BIOS. Leave it until it turns it self off.

Now charge it until completely full.

If you have a USB tool to monitor the actual battery capacity, be sure to use it here. Then store the value somewhere you will be able to find later. Like maybe on the device or charger. Then you will be able to determine battery degradation at any point in the future and also determine if there is a problem with the hardware. For instance, if the battery is going dead in half the time it did when new, but the battery still holds 90% of what it did when new, your problem is not due to the battery.

You can check the battery heath in Desktop Mode.

But ye, good suggestion.

Why do I need to do that to the battery?

Because the SteamOS may show the wrong percentage, as consequence, you may experience poor battery performance.

I left my Steam Deck untouched for months, when I turned it on, it shown me 60% of battery heath, but doing the recalibration fixed the problem, and the battery heath increased to 86%.

Does Heroic Games launcher work for all games on those launchers? Or is there extra configuration required?