On a Deck in Gaming Mode the Steam menu and the QAM are driven by the SAME physical controller the client forwards, so opening either one moved the game on the host as well as Steam's UI — a second, invisible player. Steam Input masks a normal game here; it cannot mask us, because masking happens on Steam Input's virtual pad and we deliberately forward the REAL one (28DE:1205 — the virtual pad has no gyro, trackpads or paddles). SDL ships the exact behaviour we want and it is on by default: presses are dropped while the process has windows but no keyboard focus, releases still get through. It CANNOT fire on a Deck. gamescope resolves focus per Xwayland ctx and the client sits alone in its own, so the Steam overlay — which lives in the root ctx — never takes our X focus away and no FocusOut is ever generated. Measured on glass: with the QAM open, X input focus inside the client's ctx stayed on its window for the whole 4 s, while GAMESCOPE_FOCUSED_APP flipped to 769 (Steam) and GAMESCOPE_FOCUSED_APP_GFX stayed on the app. So the signal is explicit. `overlay_focus` watches those two atoms on the gamescope root ctx — which is NOT our own $DISPLAY under `--xwayland-count 2`, hence the socket-directory walk and the flatpak filesystem line — and the presenter ORs it with window focus into one `set_masked`. Masking is deliberately not `set_forwarding`: that closes the slot and sends GamepadRemove, so the game would see a controller UNPLUG every time somebody opened the QAM. This keeps every slot open and only stops the transitions, after flushing what the host believes is held so a stick deflected at overlay-open stops steering instead of freezing at its last value. On the way back, held buttons are adopted rather than replayed — the A that picked a QAM row must not fire in the game as it closes — while axes are re-sent, since a stick has no press to ghost and SDL only speaks on change. Fails open throughout: no gamescope, no X, or an unreadable signal all leave forwarding exactly as it was. `PUNKTFUNK_OVERLAY_MASK=0` opts out.
Packaging punktfunk for Fedora / Bazzite
The punktfunk host links system FFmpeg (NVENC on NVIDIA, VAAPI on AMD/Intel, with a GPU-less software-H.264 fallback), PipeWire and Opus. This page covers packaging it for the Fedora Atomic / Bazzite world (rpm-ostree + bootc), where most of those deps are already present; the NVIDIA-specific notes below apply to the NVENC path.
👉 Ubuntu/Debian hosts install via
aptfrom Gitea's package registry — seedebian/README.md(apt update && apt upgradefor new builds).
👉 End-to-end Bazzite setup walkthrough (install → udev/group →
host.env→ service → firewall → verify → troubleshooting):bazzite/README.md. This file is the higher-level packaging rationale.
packaging/
rpm/punktfunk.spec # the RPM (builds punktfunk-host from source with cargo)
bazzite/host.env # gamescope-default config for a Bazzite appliance
bazzite/README.md # step-by-step Bazzite setup guide
bazzite/*sysext*.sh # the no-layering path: build/install/publish the systemd-sysext
bootc/Containerfile # bake punktfunk into a Bazzite-based atomic image
copr/ # COPR build-from-SCM settings
The other packaging targets have their own READMEs: debian/ (apt),
arch/ (pacman binary repo + PKGBUILD + SteamOS sysext),
flatpak/ (the client), windows/ (host installer +
drivers), plus kde/ and linux/ helpers. NixOS / Nix users get a flake (flake.nix at the
repo root) with reproducible host + client packages and a services.punktfunk NixOS module —
see nix/README.md.
What's needed beyond base Fedora
| Dependency | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
ffmpeg-libs with NVENC |
RPM Fusion nonfree (ffmpeg, not ffmpeg-free) |
NVIDIA driver (libnvidia-encode, libEGL_nvidia) |
Bazzite -nvidia images ship it; plain Fedora: akmod-nvidia + xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda |
| gamescope, PipeWire, wireplumber | Bazzite ships these; plain Fedora: dnf install gamescope pipewire wireplumber |
opus, libei |
Fedora base / updates |
On Bazzite the only genuinely new runtime bits are ffmpeg-libs (RPM Fusion) + opus +
libei — the rest of the stack is already there. The default backend is gamescope
(packaging/bazzite/host.env), which the host spawns headless per session — no desktop login.
Option A — systemd-sysext (recommended; no layering, no reboot)
On Bazzite / Fedora Atomic the recommended install is the systemd-sysext image — rpm-ostree
layering is a last resort per the Bazzite docs (it slows every OS update and can block upgrades),
while a sysext overlays /usr at runtime, survives OS updates, and updates in one command with
no reboot. CI wraps the same RPMs below into the image, so content and channels are identical.
curl -fsSLO https://git.unom.io/unom/punktfunk/raw/branch/main/packaging/bazzite/punktfunk-sysext.sh
sudo bash punktfunk-sysext.sh install # then: sudo punktfunk-sysext update | status | remove
Full walkthrough (incl. the F43→F44 rebase behavior and migration off layering):
bazzite/README.md.
Option B — Gitea RPM registry (per-host, rpm-ostree layering)
The host's RPM is published to unom's self-hosted Gitea RPM registry (CI builds it on every
push), mirroring the Debian/apt setup. Add one repo file, install, and track
updates with rpm-ostree upgrade — no COPR account needed. Full guide: rpm/README.md.
# GPG-signed pkgs + Gitea-signed metadata → gpgcheck=1, repo_gpgcheck=1 (see rpm/README.md)
sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/punktfunk.repo >/dev/null <<'REPO'
[gitea-unom-bazzite]
name=punktfunk (unom, Bazzite)
baseurl=https://git.unom.io/api/packages/unom/rpm/bazzite
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://git.unom.io/api/packages/unom/rpm/repository.key
https://git.unom.io/api/packages/unom/generic/punktfunk-keys/1/RPM-GPG-KEY-punktfunk
REPO
rpm-ostree install punktfunk && systemctl reboot
# updates: rpm-ostree upgrade && systemctl reboot
Option C — COPR (per-host, rpm-ostree install)
- Create a COPR project, enable build-from-SCM pointing at this repo, spec path
packaging/rpm/punktfunk.spec(seecopr/README.md). Under External Repositories add RPM Fusion nonfree soffmpeg-develresolves at build time. - On the Bazzite host:
# RPM Fusion (for the NVENC ffmpeg) — usually already enabled on Bazzite rpm-ostree install \ https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm \ https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm # enable the COPR + install punktfunk sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/_copr_punktfunk.repo \ https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/enricobuehler/punktfunk/repo/fedora-$(rpm -E %fedora)/ rpm-ostree install punktfunk systemctl reboot
Option D — bootc (image-based, atomic)
Layer punktfunk into a Bazzite image once, then rebase any number of hosts onto it — no
per-host drift. See bootc/Containerfile:
podman build -t ghcr.io/<you>/bazzite-punktfunk -f packaging/bootc/Containerfile .
podman push ghcr.io/<you>/bazzite-punktfunk
# on the target:
sudo bootc switch ghcr.io/<you>/bazzite-punktfunk && systemctl reboot
First-run setup (all options)
ujust add-user-to-input-group # virtual gamepads need /dev/uinput (then re-login).
# On Bazzite use ujust, NOT `usermod -aG input` (atomic OS — it won't stick).
mkdir -p ~/.config/punktfunk
cp /usr/share/punktfunk/host.env.bazzite ~/.config/punktfunk/host.env # edit (gamescope app, etc.)
systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-host
# Management web console (pairing + status) — pulled in by default (the host RPM Recommends it;
# `--no-install-recommends` / headless-only boxes can skip it). Enable it and read the login password:
systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-web
journalctl --user -u punktfunk-web-init | sed -n 's/.*password generated: //p' # then open https://<host-ip>:47992
Pair a stock Moonlight client (mDNS-discovered), or connect the native punktfunk/1 client — via the
web console at https://<host-ip>:47992 or directly.
⚠️ COPR caveat: COPR's mock chroot has no
bun, so a COPR build produces onlypunktfunk+punktfunk-client— notpunktfunk-web. For the console on a COPR/bootc host, install from the Gitea RPM registry (Option B — it carriespunktfunk-web; the sysext image includes it too), which is also whybootc/Containerfileinstalls from there rather than COPR.
Why not Flatpak (for the HOST)?
The host needs unsandboxed access the zero-copy NVENC path, /dev/uinput, the PipeWire
graph and the compositor's privileged protocols — a Flatpak sandbox fights all of these.
An RPM (or the bootc layer) installs into the host system where those just work.
👉 The client is a different story — it IS shipped as a Flatpak (the only viable Steam Deck install path: SteamOS
/usris read-only and lackslibadwaita/libSDL3). Seeflatpak/README.md. The client sandbox only needs the GPU render node, Wayland, PipeWire audio, the network and hidraw — all expressible as finish-args.
Building the SRPM/RPM locally (Fedora only)
git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=punktfunk-0.3.0/ -o ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/punktfunk-0.3.0.tar.gz HEAD
rpmbuild -ba packaging/rpm/punktfunk.spec # needs the BuildRequires from the spec
# (0.3.0 = the spec's default %{pf_version}; the prefix and tarball name must match it)
(Not buildable on Debian/Ubuntu — use a Fedora toolbox/container or COPR.)