General Discussions

Aurora is written in C# and for some reason Proton is causing SSL handshake to fail. I also only could get Aurora to work with Proton 7.0.1 all other versions wouldn't even let Aurora start. But there are more issues, Aurora uses WMI which requires at least one .NET Framework to be installed but there is none on Steamdeck by default and I don't know how to install it using Steam's Proton.

So unless Valve fixes the SSL issue in Proton (questionable) and unless Valve offers an easy way to install .NET Framework (questionable) you cannot get Aurora to run.

The only solution is to install Windows on it, but the majority of Steamdeck users probably won't do this, even though it supports dual boot.

Further tests showed that Aurora running through Proton is unable to detect a game running through Proton. Either the emulated windows APIs for this arent supported by Proton or processes running in Proton are isolated.

That may explain why people were using Wine rather than Proton for apps. I don't know how far out of date the version of Wine bundled into Steam's Proton is.

That issue was occurring with CE and they had to setup a "prefix" in Wine that included CE and the game in order for it to work.

It looks like I may need to take a crash course in Linux before I get my Deck in case none of this is going to be user friendly to set up.

Yeh, I think you might want to actually get the device before you continue giving out advice about how to use this and do that as none of it actually works on the real thing.

On Linux nothing is user friendly to setup. Sooner or later you find yourself back in typing commands int into the terminal/shell. Even just to transfer files from your Windows computer to the Steamdeck is a pain. Steamdeck only accepts Ext4 partition format, which Windows cannot read so good luck using the MicroSD card. You cannot plug the Steamdeck via usb cable into the computer either. Last chance is to download apps which are bugged or use a network shared folder.

All of this can only be done in desktop mode. For this you have to enable the developer mode first. In Desktop mode there is no virtual keyboard. You can spawn the keyboard from Steam by pressing Steam+B button but that sometimes doesn't work. None of the controller buttons do anything in desktop mode, there is no button for alt+tab for example. So you have to setup macros.

The device is great if you just stay in Steam big picture mode and use it for steam games only. If you leave that path however it's the typical Linux experience, which you either enjoy or you don't.