After a year of waiting, I got my hands on the Steam Deck. Countless hours of waiting for the glorious email. Finally received my deck and I’m excited to dig in.

My Deck Stats

Hardware: Steam Deck US 512 GB
SSD: 512GB Kingston OM3PDP3 NVMe SSD

Useful Commands

  • Open SteamOS Virtual Keyboard = Steam + X
  • Load up Boot Manager = Vol Down + Power
  • Load up BIOS = Vol Up + Power
  • Interative Admin Terminal = Terminal -> “sudo -i”
  • Force Close a game on Yuzu = “Ctrl + Q” (can be bound to L4/L5/R4/R5)

Some Notes

Jotting down some notes so I don’t say “how did I do that again?” 100x a day. May be useful for you

Open Terminal

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode

Steam Deck Icon (bottom left) -> System -> Konsole

Set up initial password

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode

To set up your initial password to run administrative commands and such, there are two ways to achieve this:

  1. UI
    • Steam Deck Icon (bottom left) -> Settings -> System Settings -> Users -> Change Password
  2. Terminal
    • Open Terminal -> type “passwd”

SSD Check

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set

To check if you received an X2 SSD or X4 SSD, go to Desktop mode and open Terminal.

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo lspci -s 01:00 -vv | grep "Width"
[sudo] password for deck:
                LnkCap: Port #1, Speed 8GT/s, Width x4, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 unlimited
                LnkSta: Speed 8GT/s (ok), Width x4 (ok)

Enable remote SSH

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set

To temporarily allow remote SSH access to your Deck, open Terminal

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl start sshd

To enable remote SSH access to your Deck and persistent on reboot, open Terminal

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl enable sshd

Disable ‘root’ from SSH access

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set, SSH enabled

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for “PermitRootLogin” row, uncomment by removing the “#” in the beginning of the line and editing the right side to “no”. Should look like this

PermitRootLogin no

Package Manager

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set, Pacman initialized and updated

Open Terminal

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo pacman -Syu

Initialize and update pacman keyring

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo pacman-key --init
(deck@steamdeck ~)# sudo pacman-key --populate
(deck@steamdeck ~)# sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys

Disable SteamOS Read Only Restrictions

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set

Danger Danger! Only do this if you know what you’re doing!

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo steamos-readonly disable

Install Yuzu emulator

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode

Steam Deck Icon (bottom left) -> All Applications -> Discover (Software Center) -> Search for “Yuzu”

Install ‘ufw’ firewall

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode, Initial Password Set, Pacman initialized and updated, SteamOS readonly disabled

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo pacman -Syu ufw

Install Discord for both Desktop mode and Deck/Gaming mode

Prerequisites: Desktop Mode

Steam Deck Icon (bottom left) -> All Applications -> Discover (Software Center) -> Search for “Discord”.

Open Discord and log in from the desktop mode. Open Steam from desktop mode, Click “Games” on the top bar, select “Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library”, and add Discord. Switch back to Gaming mode and open up Discord under Steam -> Library -> Non-Steam

Steam Deck Recovery Image and Instructions

Did you mess up? Steam Deck Recovery Instructions

Some Bugs

Bad magic number in super-block

When escalating to root in Terminal, you may encounter an error that looks like:

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo -i
tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/nvme0n1p4

This is particularly harmless. See Steamcommunity Link

Missing keyring when running package manager

error: keyring is not writable
error: required key missing from keyring
error: failed to commit transaction (could not find or read file)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

You need to generate a key

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo pacman-key --init

Signature from package is unknown trust

error: {PACKAGE_NAME}: signature from "{SIGNED INDIVIDUAL}" is unknown trust

You need to populate and refresh the keys. Ensure you have initialized the keys first.

(deck@steamdeck ~)# sudo pacman-key --populate
(deck@steamdeck ~)# sudo pacman-key --refresh-keys