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Comment by andybak | Hacker News Reader

I've got a Steam Deck and I've been curious about using that as a music composition tool. The controls offer some interesting possibilities as performance inputs.

The problem is that all Windows or Linux music apps tend to presume a large monitor and a mouse and keyboard. I've not found anything terribly usable.

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Can steam deck run any Linux application? You might have fun designing creative abstractions in Pure Data meant to fit in the UI. Then, if you can hook it up to a keyboard, you might be able to take advantage of the user inputs on the steam deck & keyboard to make an ersatz OP-1.

> Can steam deck run any Linux application?

Yes. It's amd64, so you probably don't even need to compile it, either.

On top of that, it's basically just Arch linux with a complicated filesystem scheme. Flatpaks are the recommended distribution mechanism, but you can do whatever you want. It comes with KDE and an X server out of the box.

That's a really interesting idea! With the dual trackpads plus all standard controller inputs and the paddles on the back, the Deck is really uniquely positioned here.

You could try plugging in a monitor via HDMI. If you don't have a dock (the JSAUX one is cheap and gets great reviews, but I personally have the official one) you can get a pretty cheap USBC to HDMI cable nearly anywhere. I found some in stock at a random walmart on a road trip. Was able to plug the deck into our van's built-in entertainment system (it still blows my mind that there are now vehicles with TV screens built in).

If you do end up doing it, I'd love to see a video/blog post/whatever about it

I got the JSAUX dock while waiting for Valve to release the official dock. Never bought the official on release, the Gen 2 JSAUX with the extra USBs is awesome. Docked my deck to my TV and its both a media player as well as my console, almost never remove it except to dust :D. Also, the USB has recognized all peripherals I've thrown at it (I use desktop mode 98% of the time) and the ethernet works as expected.

Nice! I've been amazed at what a great console it is. I love docking it and hooking up controllers and doing local co-op with my kids. Some of the best times we've had as a family in the last 6 months were playing Shredder's Revenge with the deck docked to the TV. that game and many others work wonderfully with these cheap XBox 360 controllers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09WQGQ6D2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

If only we had taken the issue of accessibility seriously 30 years ago, and realise that it isn't about pesky blind people wanting to participate in the society, but actually about being able to run software with different interfaces seamlessly, this problem wouldn't even exist today ...

UI is hard and subtle and a touch interface for sighted people might be radically different from a touch interface for people with impaired vision.

Bitwig and LMMS work in the Steam Deck although touch mode in bitwig is indeed a bit odd due to monitor size assumption.

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