SteamOS 3.6 is live on the “main” update channel, and it is very buggy. (Note: the most bleeding edge update channel is called main. 3.6 is only live on the “main” channel, not any of the stable or beta channels).
I had switched to main to get 3.5 early, and 3.5 had spent so much time in the main channel that it’s been very stable for the last few months. However 3.6 has been rough, game mode would crash and restart everytime a decky plugin did something, and it broke my desktop mode completely. I’ve downgraded to beta-candidate (which is still 3.5) and things are much better.
I know that staying off the most bleeding edge update channels if you want a stable experience is common sense, but I think a lot of people got impatient for 3.5 and may have been lulled into a false sense of security by how stable the 3.5 main update builds were recently.
And I even feel like 3.5 isn’t entirely as stable as it should be. Got some random crashes. Although it’s not nearly as bad as it was a few months ago. So I will stay on beta for now.
Edit: Went back to stable yesterday because of too many crashes. Funnily enough it crashed on my first attempt to downgrade. The second attempt worked, though.
Side note but I was using the stable build but was forced to push up to the beta build because of a stupid bug where using remote play from a desktop would cause controllers to send double inputs for some reason. I tested multiple controllers and even a keyboard, all duplicated inputs.
It blew my mind that a hot fix wasn’t sent out. That’s a pretty big feature to break in a stable branch. I know it wasn’t everyone’s problem but still. I’m not sure what’s going on with the software stuff right now.
I heard it’s not working well with external displays. That’s a no-go for me until external displays are working.
What kind of issues have you heard about? Also are you talking about 3.5 or 3.6?
I heard external displays aren’t working on 3.5
I’ve been on 3.5 for awhile, and they’re working fine for me. I did have an issue where occasionally my TV would reset (go black for a second and then come back on), that I hadn’t noticed before on previous SteamOS versions, but searching online makes it seem like that’s a problem with Vizio TVs and 4k/HDR, not a SteamOS issue. I was able to duplicate the issue using a 4k Chromecast on the TV, and disabling HDR and capping the resolution below 4k completely fixed the issue when using the Deck with the TV.
I expected better of valve. They have the stable and beta channels so they should use them without exception.
The beta users would’ve created enough crash reports for them to notice that 3.6 isn’t stable yet.
Sorry, I think I misled you. The “main” channel is the most bleeding edge update channel name. After that you have beta-candidate, beta, stable candidate, and stable. 3.6 is live on the “main” channel only, so it definitely shouldn’t affect regular steamOS users.
I haven’t touched my steam deck in a month or 2. Is there a process for switching back? Just ignore the pending update, switch the channel, then check for updates again?
Yes, you just pick a different update channel, check for updates, and it will let you rollback to an older update.
There can be problems though, one time I updated and it wouldn’t let me downgrade. I had to wait until the next update fixed it before I could downgrade. And this time when 3.6 broke part of my desktop mode, downgrading didn’t fix it and I had to do a lot more troubleshooting to get it going again.
Gotcha. I dont forsee a problem since my current 3.5 version is probably older than the version on the beta-candidate channel as long as it doesn’t auto-update when I boot it up next.
@Fubarberry That’s a bold strategy, cotton. Let see if it pays off.
