I found these grips very helpful https://makerworld.com/models/607677

Without them, my hands go numb after about an hour with the Steamdeck, these make it much more ergonomic for my large hands.

Manual firmware updates

As someone who’s work laptop no longer has Wi-Fi since the automatic firmware update, I like my updates to be manual.

I don’t use GNOME, but from what I’ve read (and from experience with other software that has extensions) they often break when GNOME updates.