For context - I’m working on getting an emulated Everquest server up and running, but hitting dead ends (probably due to my newness to Linux in general) and seeking some guidance from the community on what I’ve tried and best path forward.

My ultimate goal is to get it running on SteamOS - I have it fully operational on my actual server machine running Ubuntu, but trying to get it working here so I can just connect locally (i.e on a plane) so I don’t need to connect externally. Here is the situation and obstacles;

I've been trying for a minute now to get EQEmu setup on the SteamOS side of the house for ease of launching with client, but running into obstacles in several different directionns, and wanted to see if someone had some guidance on best path forwarrd.

First Route - VM - Linux Mint - Docker - I have a successful server up and running via Gnome Boxes with a Linux Mint guest OS - then docker and akkstakk running on it.

The obstacle - I can't seem to bridge the connection of the guest OS with host OS (guest can ping host, host cannot ping guest). If I can bridge (no pun intended) this gap, it'll most likely be the route I go

Second Route - Distrobox - Ubuntu When running Distrobox directly on SteamOS - I'm trying to get the linux install running - however there is a multitude of issues with permissions being denied. This is likely due to SteamOS' immutable system. To bypass it, it is possible to offset this via turning off read only. However, I don't want to pursue that route, as anything written to the file system gets wiped on update to the OS.

Third Route - WINE - Lutris - SteamOS Another route I've tried is utilizing WINE with the windows installer. I think this could help bypass some of the restrictions of the system while having it run on that.

Obstacle here: Running the .bat file yields the following message - mariadb-10.0.21-winx64.msi: File Not Found Installing MariaDB (Root Password: eqemu) LOADING... PLEASE WAIT... "sh" isn't a recognized shell. Please open an issue at https://git.rootprojects.org/root/pathman/issues?q=sh warning: couldn't access "C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin": CreateFile C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.0\bin: Path not found. PATH not changed.

I tried manually executing mariadb and perl, but it still hangs up at both. I see that i ntuser, it's still not finding them.

So all that to say, trying to find a way to make this work. I'm the closest with the VM, but can't figure out the connection there. Distrobox would be a mess of troubleshooting, and WINE I feel could almost work if I could get the PATHs to work (maybe).

Any input or guidance is widely appreciated for such a niche request.

Wanted to post my experience so far for others that are in the same niche as me, as I didn’t find much on it looking around.

• Prior to moving my SSD to OLED, I made sure I was current on updates with SteamOS, specifically I was in the Beta branch.

• I also made sure to download the new APU/SD card drivers on my windows partition. Someone managed to find a wifi driver that works for Windows here - https://oemdrivers.com/network-qualcomm-qcnfa765

• Haven’t found a working Bluetooth driver yet for windows, so be forewarned on that

• After the above, I just plucked out the SSD from the LCD over to the LE OLED model - as others have mentioned, be careful of the ribbon cable. I managed to bend back the protective plate enough to get at the screw holding the SSD in place, it was easier getting out than putting back in, but after about 5 minutes of carefully keeping the protective plate peeled back and making sure SSD was properly seated, was able to get screw back in

• After initial boot with my 2tb SSD, selected the SteamOS boot, got into it, immediately ran another update, restart, and boot straight back to SteamOS.

• I use Clover as my boot manager, so went into desktop mode and ran the tool, made sure to re-enable the efi partitions again and changed the theme.

• Restart now brings me to the boot manager, selected my Windows 10 partition

• On boot, it was oriented in portrait mode (sideways), super easy fix by changing back to landscape

• Ran APU, SD card, WiFi drivers, everything with those are more operational

• Windows still missing audio and Bluetooth drivers, but is otherwise functional

Figured to post this to make sure others know what to expect, overall much easier than I thought it was going to be.

So I recently moved from Stable to Beta to capitalize on Distrobox being added natively to the deck. I used Distrobox a lot late last year, then after I upgraded to a new SSD, went entirely fresh and stayed in Stable channel.

The problem I’m encountering, I can create a container (created 2 Debian containers and a Fedora container), but I can’t enter any of them. I tried removing and creating new ones to no avail. This is the output I get below. Wondering if anyone has encountered this or if it’s just me, or if there are recommendations on how to troubleshoot.

deck@steamdeck ~)$ distrobox enter debian Container debian is not running. Starting container debian run this command to follow along:

podman logs -f debian

[conmon:e] Include journald in compilation path to log to systemd journal Error: unable to start container "0abddd5ce95420fcfa7b670862258704a724fb270c18176d6e3602a2d99018c6": exit status 1