Windowed Mode: Using Apps that require browser login & source control

[NeilAlex94]

Hi there,

I recently bought a SteamDeck and I've been impressed at how powerful a device it is. I'm looking at trying to really utilise the Windowed mode as much as I can in my day-to-day life when travelling.

As a game designer, I often need access to apps like GitKraken or other source controls like GitHub desktop - which are both available on the Discover. However when I download this, I attempt to log in to my Github account on this which requires a browser popup which never appears when I click the button meaning I cant use these apps properly.

Apps I've found have the same issue are:
- GitKraken
- GitHub Desktop
- PhPStorm

Has anyone encountered this problem and knows how to fix it? It would be a great help! I have to travel for work next week and I really want to see what this brilliant piece of kit can do!

As a side note, I did have a similar issue when setting up the Slack app. However, I could actually right click on the login button and able to copy the actual link used. Sadly this doesn't work for the apps above though!

I also tried to download the Linux version of GitKraken from the actual website, but I cant even run these .rpm .tar .deb file types! Doesn't help that I'm a total newbie to Linux so wondering if I'm missing something there?

Any help/ideas would be great!

[tfk]

Rpm is Redhat's packaging format, Deb is Debian's. Tar is an archiving format. Those won't work as SteamOS is Arch based. You could extract the tar version but then you have to install it and the SD had a read-only file system.

I would stick with the version from the Discover store. Maybe you can launch the app from a konsole command line? See if a login can be performed there or maybe see what errors are reported.

Apps from the Discover store are flatpaks which may need some extra permissions. Flatseal can be used to manage those Its also available from the Discover store.

But first try to find out why you don't get the login pop-up.

[NeilAlex94]

@ tfk

How do I run these apps from Konsole? Just tried typing the app name in there, came up with:

"bash: gitkraken: command not found"

(sorry, again I don't use the terminal line at all really so bit of a novice)

[tfk]

flatpak run com.axosoft.GitKraken

[NeilAlex94]

Tried that there, the konsole actually produced a lot of fail errors citing permissions to load different modules

The GitKraken app itself thought did load, but still the same issue :(

I'm guessing I might need to learn to run Git commands manually via command line instead, unless any other ideas?

[tfk]

Yes. FlatSeal, available in the Discover store. You probably need to give GitKraken permissions to access whatever it wants to access.

Open FlatSeal, locate GitKraken and select the permissions it needs.

[retrogunner]

Here's a couple of alternatives other than using flatpaks. As a game developer, it will likely provide you complementary solutions to using Flatpaks.

Of these two, my recommendation is distrobox[github.com] with podman-static:
Easy peasy instructions: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/09/distrobox-can-open-up-the-steam-deck-to-a-whole-new-world/
( git is baked into SteamOS. I just cloned it and did everything locally)

Solution 1. Use https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox . In the extras directory is a script to install podman-static . It's compiled for Alpine Linux x64 but runs just fine having all the deps baked in making it extremely portable.

The podman-static a godsend. So much better that trying to get podman running via linuxbrew (a 4.5GB install) or some other fumbles I had using Arch downloaded packages to do a local install with a `PREFIX=`

Technically, you can get away with the extras script to install podman-static, but distrobox makes managing the containers so so much easier (it's a really nice shellscript wrapper).

Using this solution, you can install any Linux distro you want, all access to your HOMEDIR, allows for networking, X11/Wayland GUI, and more.

I've looked over the distrobox script, researched the maintainer of the podman-static build. IMHO, I'm comfortable with them. As to why https://podman.io doesn't offer static builds is beyond me. It's stupid simple and would promote further usage given docker cannot do the same.

Being a container, it will store all the stuff to /var/lib which is mounted from /home/.steamos/apps/var . All the container work will be preserved between Steam OS updates, but will eat away at your /home mountpoint. So, you might need to move games over to an SD Card or upgrade your 2230 NVMe if ya gotsta have moar space.

As containers, you would be able to perform container operations and have multiple isolated instances running at the same time -- keep tools in one container while having Arch & Ubuntu test container instances, etc.

Solution 2. Use https://github.com/ValShaped/rwfus which manages an OverlyFS for Arch's `pacman` and `/usr`.

Using rwfus would allow you to directly install Arch pacman packages without having container operations & its associated extra storage consumption. There is a *potential* after a Steam OS update, you might have to run rwfus and do a pacman update (cause something is newer in Steam OS causing version drift.)

Help this helps. Cheers, retro.

[NeilAlex94]

Hi folks, thank you so much for your suggestions!

I tried the FlatSeal suggestion tfk but sadly didn't work. That main issue seems to be consistent - you cant login via a weblink if it comes from a button.

Thank you for the ideas retro - I had a thorough read and started getting these things set up. I did in the process of this come across another source control in the discover store - SmartGit.

I downloaded it and gave it a bash, and this allowed me to pull and push my projects with no issues at all! I had to authorize GitHub through this app, but instead of relying on a button like GitKraken, it also provided a physical link which worked like a dream.

Seems a bit silly to me to not have the UI functioning to allow someone to access a link to login, hopefully this gets fixed in the future!

Thank you again so much both!