Try New Technology

While working to setup the Steam Deck as a device to game stream (via Steam Remote Play) from my desktop to the living room TV I couldn’t get the Xbox One (wireless) or Steam Controllers to pair to the Steam Deck. Lots of searching online finally pointed to the fact that both of them needed to have their firmware updated before they would pair correctly. Below are details and solutions:

Xbox One Controller:

• Issue: After you selected the controller on the Steam Deck for it to pair, the Steam Deck would show it was paired while the controller still blinked like it was waiting to pair.
• Fix: Update the firmware via the Xbox Accessories App (Microsoft/Window Store). Once you open the app and plugin the controller it will ask to update.
• URL: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3186865169882157042/

Steam Controller:

• Issue: It would never show up on the Steam Deck even when put into pairing mode.
• Fix: Update the firmware via the Steam. Open Steam then go to Settings > Controller > General Controller Settings, if the controller is plugged in it will show up near the bottom and you can click on it which will then sow a “Bluetooth FW” button to do the update.
• URL: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1796-5FC3-88B3-C85F#how

I thought I had gotten all of the NVIDIA out of my machine now that I am running on and AMD GPU, but recently when installing an update to the kernel I saw the “kernel-nvidia###” being installed so I went hunting. Below is what I ended up needing to do, and I learned all this by piecing together multiple forums discussions online plus a little bit of guesswork.

Running find /etc/X11/ -name "*.conf" reported there was a “/etc/X11/mhwd.d/nvidia.conf” file found. I removed the file…actually I moved it to another location to be safe.

Running mhwd -l showed everything as expect:

0000:03:00.0 (0300:1002:73a5) Display controller ATI Technologies Inc:
——————————————————————————–
NAME                           VERSION      FREEDRIVER      TYPE
——————————————————————————–
video-linux                    2018.05.04            true                  PCI
video-modesetting       2020.01.13            true                  PCI
video-vesa                   2017.03.12            true                  PCI

Running mhwd -li showed there was a “video-hybrid-amd-nvidia-prime” config still loaded. I had to do the following to fully remove it:

1. Log Off
2. Press CTRL+ALT+F2 to launch TTY2
3. Run sudo mhwd --remove pci video-hybrid-amd-nvidia-prime
4. Run sudo reboot

NOTE: During the removal process it will look for and resolve/remove any dependency files automatically.

Now when running any of the following: find /etc/X11/ -name "*.conf", mhwd -l, or mhwd -li there is no sign of NVIDIA anywhere.

Posting this here since when I search for “Minecraft save location” online I tend to get told the file is at another location, which is incorrect. Below is the location to the saves on my machine:

~/.var/app/com.mojang.Minecraft/.minecraft/saves/

Just dropping this here so I can refer back to it myself. From the console type in “sudo winetricks –self-update”

Mostly posting this here to help me keep track of the bug.

Looks like on AMD GPUs have and ongoing bug when you have a monitor using HDMI to connect to the onboard (iGPU) or add-in GPU, where the monitor going into “Input Scan” will causing the computer to wake back up the other monitors and they never turn off. There are some workarounds (none work for me), but ultimately it needs fixed or I need to get away from an HDMI connection to my secondary monitor.

Freedesktop.org’s gitlab issues tracker: HDMI connected monitors fail to sleep and instead turn back on when amdgpu.dc=1

SOLUTION (workaround): is to pickup a Display Port to DVI (computer to Monitor) adapter and stop using the HDMI input. In this case once the screens go to sleep the monitor will still go into an “Input Scan” mode, but when no other input is found the monitor will go back to DVI and go to sleep correctly. I was able to test this without waiting for the Monitor Sleep timer to be reached with the following command from the Konsole – “xset dpms force standby”