this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
34 points (94.7% liked)

Steam Deck

18562 readers
24 users here now

A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Link to our Matrix Space

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Moxvallix@sopuli.xyz
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
34
[Solved!] Swapped nvme from old deck into new deck, now headphones don't work (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by beastlykings@sh.itjust.works to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Update: It's fixed! Spoiler tag for anyone who wants to think about what it could be before send the solution.

spoilerI don't know why exactly this fixed it, but Max_P suggested deleting the pipewire and wireplumber folders and restarting. This has solved my issues!

Original post:

Hi there.

I swapped the drive because my old steam deck is the "good" one, the first one we bought. My wife has been using it so much lately, we decided to get a second one. She doesn't need a 2TB drive, so I swapped it with the 512GB one that came with the "new" deck.

Why not just give her the new deck? It's screen is cracked, and it has other issues I'm going to fix. I want her to have the nice one.

The issue is software related, the headphones work fine with the old nvme. Likewise, I slapped a 256GB 2280 drive in there, did a fresh steam install, and it works fine.

Things I've tried:

Searching online, nobody else seems to have this exact issue.

Restarting with headphones plugged in.

Rapidly changing between outputs in the settings.

Going into desktop mode and manually fiddling with the headphones in the audio settings.

Bluetooth headphones work fine.

So far nothing makes the wired headphones work.

I don't want to factory reset my Deck, but I will if I have to. My next step is to do a system repair using the install media, to see if it finds and fixes anything. But it gives a warning about potential data loss if it fails. So first, I am running rescuzilla and backing up the entire drive. I don't have a spare nvme big enough to test that backup, so it's not really a backup, but, that's where I'm at.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Thanks

Edit: added to the things I've tried

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You could try Bazzite instead of SteamOS. It runs the same in game mode, but they seem to do more bug fixes faster than Valve.

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks! But that still involves starting over. Which I guess wouldn't be so bad. I could move most of my game data and stuff over, I just don't want to haha

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

if you end up having to start over anyway I would also recommend this. I've been using it since the first release and I only reinstalled once when putting in the nvme (was the mmc model). before that I had to factory reset twice and reimage once and never figured out what the cause was for any of the problems. plus most of the recommended deck tweaks on steam os are default on bazzite

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is bazzite that good?

I admit I haven't looked extremely deeply into it, other than that it's steamos for things that aren't steam decks.

There's gotta be some caveats, otherwise why are people so excited about stock steamos coming to more devices natively?

I'm not against it, honestly I'm considering it, I just wanna be informed

[–] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I think a lot of the excitement for SteamOS on other devices comes from two things:

  1. People not knowing what Bazzite is, or like yourself, not knowing what it does differently.
  2. The fact that Valve's support for other devices means Linux growing larger again, like the Steam Deck has done originally.

Bazzite is basically like if you handed your Steam Deck to someone that was really knowledgeable with all the time in the world to tinker, and they added all of the third-party quirks and features that Valve would never ship themselves for you. Things like:

  • Decky Loader, which is a plugin manager that lets you add all sorts of stuff to gamemode easily. Stuff like a plugin that'll notify you when any games on Epic, GOG, Steam of itch become free, one that makes airpods work seamlessly, ones to let you run custom themes, animations and sounds, etc.
  • Handheld Daemon (HHD) which lets you do things like change whether the controller is emulating an Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo controller.
  • Lutris, which lets you install games from other stores, or from installer files, and add them easily to Steam for gamemode.
  • OOTB tools to add other versions of Proton like GloriousEggroll.
  • Scripts to set up all kinds of other things, like EmuDeck, Waydroid, SSH, Sunshine/Moonlight and others.

The only caveat I can think of really is that you're relying on a small team that supports it, rather than an industry heavyweight like Valve. However, due to the open nature of Linux, all the tools that they've made for SteamOS are used here as well, there's just a bunch they've layered on top to enhance and modify the experience.

Edit: There's more it does differently but it's hard for me to distinguish it all because I've only ever had a Legion Go and only run Bazzite. As well, you can do all of these things yourself with a stock install of SteamOS, Bazzite just has a better OOTB experience.

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

bazzite is layered on fedora which is the bulk of the system and fedora isn't going anywhere any time soon but with the small market share of linux in general valve does have much more recognition in the gaming community which is traditionally very windows leaning. I've also seen people preferring it because of the arch base but rolling release distros being converted to atomic is an iffy choice. but yeah switching is only worth it if starting over is already necessary. I switched when I did the nvme upgrade.

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Small point, just for the sake of discussion, since you seem knowledgeable and I'm sure you already know:

Upgrading your storage doesn't strictly require starting over. When I went from 512 to 2tb, I just cloned the drive, then expanded the main partition to fit. Worked like a charm 👌

For most people though yeah it's probably easier starting over than fussing with cloning.

I'll be cloning my buddy's 64gb drive as soon as he buys something bigger.

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I keep everything including games backed up and accessible over lan and haven't felt the need to clone a drive ever. If I didn't have space for a game I'd just delete a bunch and local transfer if I wanted to play it later. It really just boils down to distro hoppers gonna hop though...

[–] beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for the write-up!

I might try bazzite at a later date, but for now, Max_P suggested deleting the pipewire and wireplumber folders and restarting, and that's solved my problem for now, thankfully!

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

yeah I'd just stay until an unresolvable problem that needs a wipe comes up