[Valve Steam Deck] klinux:
Hi,

It's been a long time that I didn't post a thread on XDA, but I'm back!

I posted the original thread on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/13zcjp3

I will share it here as well for a bigger audiance.

[EDIT]: As promised, below the link to Android image, it should fit on 16GB drive but I recommend a fast sd card (sdxc) or hdd, the ideal would be ssd.

Feel free to share / upload somewhere else, this is the only website that let me upload the big image ~3.7 GB.

https://transfer.pcloud.com/download.html?code=5ZARKEVZkQg9VotswYZQnfNZkk3peGVysHzDCmaumNPnwQgkapr7

[Disclaimer]

Flashing this image to a drive will erase the data inside it, so backup your files before doing it.

[Instruction to get it working]

It's simple: flash the gz image to drive using RUFUS and reboot SD with the new drive holding vol - and power and choose the new drive name, choose the first option on grub, wait a moment and Android should start.

If you choose sd card as host you can use it for SteamOS games as well as the filesystem is EXT4.

[INITIAL POST]

Hi, Before even getting my Steam Deck I was wondering if we will at some stage get a full Android OS for this thing as its form factor is ideal as a tablet but never see it (maybe cause Valve never shared the source code of SteamOS / kernel).

So I started to check Andoid x86 distros and the one that worked well is Bliss Os 14.10 (Bliss 15.8 works but apps are not starting so no go), see my video below (sorry for the noise, I'm on a coffee shop!):

you can launch it on live mode by write the ISO on a pen drive through Rufus to check it,

https://sourceforge.net/projects/blissos-dev/postdownload

Choose 14.10 Gapps ISO

What works:

System starts very quickly and very responsive without crashs, if I didn't thinker it I would say that it was designed for Steam Deck..

Wifi 2.4 / 5Ghz

Bluetooth

Audio through bluetooth

Touch screen, I confirm that it's not perfect but way more better than windows and SteamOS, keyboard is accurate as well.

Left touch pad as a mouse and triggers as left and right mouse buttons.

volume & power button.

I saw that the OS power consumption is very low 4w - 10w which is good for a non intensive apps use.

What's not working:

Audio through speakers / jack

Gyro

Controller is on lizard mode, so not working

HW video decoding is not working on Netflix & Youtube app, but videos are working on Youtube through Chrome.

HW acceleration on games is not well optimized but working.

Well I know that many of you will say why try something that is not working well but as we say Science is not about why but Why not! also you have access to millions of apps already optimized for touch and the size of Steam Deck screen, and of course my prupose is to start a debate and maybe convince Bliss Os devs or other devs to work on it as from my point of view it needs only a small thinkering to get it fully working on Steam Deck.

For info, it works on sd card as well but getting it on internal storage needed some thinkering as the installer doesn't work directly on Steam Deck (screen orientation issue) so I had to install it on a sd card through my laptop, resize SSD on steam deck and clone the partition and label it "android-x86", copy android EFI starting files from my laptop (grub and EFI\Android) and paste them on EFI of Steam Deck (on partition 1) rename "Android" folder to "boot" in order to start by Steam Deck boot manager.

[CREDITS]

All credits goes to Bliss OS devs that makes this possible, I'm not developer, just a user with some knowledge that find an interesting thing and would share with the amazing community.

[DEPRECATED, sd card image above

For sd card the procedure is to add a small fat32 partition on sd card and copy EFI boot files and label it as "SYSTEM"

If you consider this interesting, I can prepare an image file ready to go that you can flash on an sd card and try it, if so please let me know.]

Happy thinkering!

Klinux