[techknowlogick]

I love this kind of deep dive into customizing the software/OS on a device you own. Glad that "Tivoization" isn't a concern for the steamdeck.

The most interesting part of the article was the mention of a /nix partition, as I didn't realize the steamdeck supports nixpkgs, after researching it more, they do indeed (not installed by default, but at least it is possible without having to fork an entire os to get it on the device).

[frutiger]

nix has always been installable onto any *nix OS without requiring you to “fork an entire OS”.

You can put the nix store in any writable location and modify $PATH to point to the symlinks directory.

[rollcat]

Not if your / filesystem lacks the /nix directory to use as a mountpoint, and happens to be a read-only image. Something that needs a workaround on macOS.

[frutiger]

It has been a while since I last used it, but I was under the impression that the store location was customisable and thus could be anywhere?

[figomore]

Nix store can be anywhere. But if it’s not /nix Nix will not use the cache (already compiled packages) and compile every package needed.

[alchemist1e9]

Does anyone know what they are using from nixpkgs? I’d be curious since I’m a heavy nixpkgs user myself but unfortunately I don’t have a steamdeck.