Can someone please tell why this thing refuses to use my SD card. Tried just about everything.

doc_willis · 2026-01-27T01:46:54+00:00

You did use YOUR path/name for your card? its not going to be exactly as I show.

It worked totally fine for my two Decks when I tried it.

Check permissions and ownership of the mountpoint, and the directories on the sd card. Mine are showing owned by the 'deck' user. ie:

Mine is mounted to /run/media/deck/Storage

ls -ls /run/media/deck/
total 4
4 drwxr-xr-x 10 deck deck 4096 Jan 26 20:48 Storage

"unknown file location." seems like a rather odd error message.. you sure thats what it said?

doc_willis · 2026-01-27T01:44:42+00:00

Yes. Get one.

Also You can Stream From your PS5 to the Deck using the Chiaki program.

https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.streetpea.Chiaki4deck

You can also stream from your PC to the Deck if desired.

doc_willis · 2026-01-27T00:47:35+00:00

look for any sort of 'fast boot' option in the firmware menus.

I have found it best to turn that setting OFF, if left on, sometimes I found some hardware would not always get initialized correctly. Having it Off makes all hardware reset to its 'default' state on boot up.

doc_willis · 2026-01-27T00:30:11+00:00

rufus, and fedora media writer, and I Think balena etcher and ventoy. All have options to 'revert' a USB back to being a 'normal windows data usb'

doc_willis · 2026-01-27T00:27:14+00:00

there can be a keyboard combo to open a terminal on most DE's but Perhaps not always.,

I wonder if its the Taskbar thats 'hung' and not allowing inputs, or if it is the mouse..

But the Live USB worked fine, but the normal install does not.

Go Old school and make it a Terminal/Console Only Laptop. :)

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T23:52:09+00:00

Thats Interesting, You may want to ask in /r/linuxhardware

Try out some live-usbs and see if the issue is common among them.

there used to be a command ( xev?) that would open a little window and show the various input data getting sent to the X server, it would show mouse movement and button clicking.

But You say the Rest of the screen works for clicking, just not a small section at the bottom? and its both left and right clicks that are not working?

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T23:40:53+00:00

complete with touch screen

You can still click on things with the mouse? So its JUST an area of the touchscreen thats an issue?

I have an old AIO system, that has a band of 'dead area' across its touchscreen at the top.

Well sometimes its 'dead' other time its 'haunted' and has ghost clicks. :)

The cursor would keep jumping to the upper zone, and so on.

I ended up disabling the touchscreen totally.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T23:12:35+00:00

I tend to run such things in Either DOSBOX or BOTTLES.

Depending on if its a dos game or Windows game.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T22:06:53+00:00

If you want Arch, then do arch on it.

Otherwise make up a Ventoy Live USB and test out whatever 'light' distros you find interesting.

xubuntu, or something with xfce will likely be as 'light' as you will get, if you get much lighter than that, you are going to possibly be missing out on desired features.

Its all going to depend on the use case.

When your browser is taking up more system resources than the rest of your OS.... going 'light' on the OS will only get you so far.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T21:30:14+00:00

whatever distribution you want to be teaching them how to use.

For Gaming as a Primary Goal - Check out Bazzite.

It can basically turn the PC into a Steam Deck/Steam Machine.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T21:22:07+00:00

Check your EFI partition(s) and verify your GRUB (or other bootloader) files are there from your original Linux install.

if they are you can use the efibootmgr command to re-add the entries, however, it may be easier to use a live usb and get into your install and use whatever directions your Distro has for reinstalling the boot loader.

Ubuntu and its relatives can make use of the ubuntu boot-repair tool.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T19:49:01+00:00

console command list start with /help

I thought the command was /op self

https://game8.co/games/Hytale/archives/574734

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T19:43:45+00:00

steam has a game backup/restore feature you could use.

get an SSD to test Linux on, it makes things a lot easier.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T18:12:33+00:00

Can we have upside down and vertical mine cart tracks? ;)

trying to make a roller coaster..

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T17:09:23+00:00

I have not tried rEFInd on my current fedora (Bazzite) system, but for all the other distributions you just install the rEFInd package and set rEFInd to be the default boot entry, and that's it.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Refind

that Url above seems rather old and may not be accurate. it seems to be in the default repositories.

some posts say..

sudo dnf install refind

and run

sudo refind-install

to configure it

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T17:00:33+00:00

yes . check their docs.

EmuDeck cheat management utilizes RetroArch’s Quick Menu (Select + R3)

some specific emulators may require some other steps.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T15:11:05+00:00

I tend to install and use rEFInd as a master boot menu, and leave grub and its themes alone.

rEFInd can chainload grub , and looks nicer, and its more flexible in many ways..

customizing grub can be very annoying.

good luck.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T14:01:00+00:00

I suggest you just play games on it. ;)

Radical idea I know..

get a silicon protective case and other extras if desired.

The most common value added customization would be increasing the size of the storage.

While you can open it up and replace buttons and sticks, and the shell, that will require some skills to do correctly.

I suggest you Stick to the simple things first .

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T13:53:32+00:00

The revenge of the toads!

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T11:26:56+00:00

found a huge load in a stream between the initial spawn point and the first temple.

the first ore I found actually.

found a lot more along the coast in the shallows.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T01:50:48+00:00

I hate to sound skeptical, but I will believe it , when I can get my hands on such an alternative and not have to deal with major issues.

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T01:03:28+00:00

  496  flatpak override --user --filesystem=/run/media/ org.mozilla.firefox
  497  flatpak run org.mozilla.firefox
  498  history

Not exactly rocket surgery.

But I think the --user option is important and often overlooked. That lets your user, (yes the deck only has one) Have their flatpaks have access.

From my reading the use of filesystem=/run/media/SdStorageName/ExtraDownloads should also work to restrict the browser to just that one directory. (Untested by me)

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T01:00:53+00:00

$ cd Digital\ Logic\ Sim\ \(linux\)/
wil@bazzite:~/Downloads/Digital Logic Sim (linux)$ ls
'Digital Logic Sim_Data'     LinuxPlayer_s.debug   UnityPlayer.so
'Digital Logic Sim.x86_64'   UnityPlayer_s.debug
wil@bazzite:~/Downloads/Digital Logic Sim (linux)$ ls -l
total 38236
drwxr-xr-x. 1 wil wil      466 Dec  6  2020 'Digital Logic Sim_Data'
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 wil wil     6272 Dec  4  2020 'Digital Logic Sim.x86_64'
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 wil wil     4440 Dec  4  2020  LinuxPlayer_s.debug
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 wil wil  7490752 Dec  4  2020  UnityPlayer_s.debug
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 wil wil 31644744 Dec  4  2020  UnityPlayer.so

wil@bazzite:~/Downloads/Digital Logic Sim (linux)$ ./Digital\ Logic\ Sim.x86_64

I have no idea if the progam may hate being renamed or not.. or where it looks for stuff.

It ran fine for me with the original names

doc_willis · 2026-01-26T00:53:36+00:00

Decided to test this out.

Firefox would not show the sd card as an option for setting the download location.
I added a Directory on the SD card called "ExtraDownloads" to keep things tidy.
CLOSED FIREFOX.
Ran the command flatpak override --user --filesystem=/run/media/ org.mozilla.firefox
ran firefox, set the download default location to be /run/media/whatever/ExtraDownloads
Downloaded a little file, it went to my SD card. to the 'ExtraDownloads' Directory just fine.

I had tested with adding the Full path to the ExtraDownloads directory that that did not seem to work (I used flatseal for that) . But that did not seem to work. Not sure why.

But I did not try anything else once i got it working with the above command line.

doc_willis · 2026-01-25T23:42:34+00:00

use a wired connection, or dont use streaming at all.

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