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LocalSend is a very convenient cross-platform file-sharing app. It's in the steam deck's discovery store. Would recommend it over any usb drives or ssh.

I like the simplicity of ssh personally and i like to go old school on things, but yes these and Syncthing are fine alternatives, and since theyre on the discover store u dont need to unlock your steamdeck :) any means necessary to get them files from point a to point b.

Yeah preferring ssh is very understandable. I mostly prefer LocalSend because it has an iOS app that comes in very handy from time to time (though that's not relevant here)

Syncthing is also a nice alternative.

Most of these steps can be skipped by installing the Lutris flatpak on the deck itself and using desktop mode (... Plus an external mouse and keyboard) to set up your pirated games directly from the deck.

Additionally, if you're smart about it you can use syncthing as a ghetto "cloud" solution to synch your progress between PC and deck.

Hmm what steps can be skipped ? How would lutris help with the install process? I make steam run the game directly

Lutris is just for organization, and managing the Wineprefixes. I don't even use it as an installer per se. I install manually with wine and then point Lutris to the right prefix and game executable.

Anyway, the steps outright skipped are:

  • Having to unlock the FS for writing and set up SSH and (...) -- This is a security liability if you CARE. I don't, I just think it's more effort than necessary.
  • Transferring the game folder from a PC to the Deck, since you just. Do it all inside the deck itself.

It's no big deal doing either of those, but I find it less of a hassle.

My procedure for pirated games, on both PC and deck is:

  • On terminal, create a prefix by using export WINEPREFIX=. Like /home/myuser/Games/NameOfTheGame/pfx
  • Run winetricks -q corefonts -- The fonts ensure the installer won't have any rendering errors, plus running winetricks at least once forces wine to create the prefix's folder structure.
  • Run the installer from the same terminal session, just doing wine Setup.exe
  • Usually install to /home/myuser/Games/NameOfTheGame/game for organisation's sake, but this is unnecessary and requires dealing with Wine's handling of your unix folders which is always slightly annoying.

From here, you could launch the game directly through Steam, but then Steam would create its own prefix, and some games require fiddling around with the things installed on the wineprefix (or with envvars or...), which is why I use Lutris as a middleman, as it ensures the game will run on the prefix I created, and if anything is missing, I can winetricks it. Lutris even offers a 'create Steam shortcut' option to make it all look neat on the Deck's console mode screen.

ohhh. that sounds neat. I'll try that next time

I've done a few full download and installs on the deck alone, but the separate pc and rsync over ssh is way faster at every step, assuming the second pc actually has the specs to do it faster. The install of a repack takes forever and a day directly on deck.

short ver: you can do it with just the deck but it's so damn slow to install.

Note there are some security implications when opening up your deck to ssh. Make sure when u “passwd” that you actually choose a strong password. Or you can just stop sshd.service after you’re done with the file transfer.

Also you probably shouldn’t do a pacman -Syu. Let the deck handle the updates.

It's better to disable ssh password login and use keys instead.

^^ yes was gonna mention this too. The most secure option if you want to leave your ssh port on in your steam deck.

https://averagelinuxuser.com/how-to-use-public-key-authentication/

I have been doing this for awhile with deck friendly titles. Playing through Cassette Beasts, atm.

Ohh thanks for the game recommend! it looks dope

I didn’t mean to recommend so much as to feel involved.

I would really recommend Balatro and Schim. I also do most of my Switch emulation on the deck too.

What do you use for switch games?

I have used yuzu, ryujinx, and suyu.

Oh and also, dont forget to “Force use compatibility tool” in steam to either proton 9 or proton experimental, check protondb on which to use :)

Thanks for the ding dong shot

😉

I find using Lutris and Boilr a better way to add images and stuff to your non-steam game shortcut.

As an addendum, and I'm kinda new to steam deck as well, but the official parlance seems to be "quacked games" for hum... games you didn't exactly pay for. It might help someone do a search or understand some tutorial.

oh.. um the “duck” pond where the “quacks” aren’t here officer…

Sorry, just trying to help.

Anyway, for the SD I prefer to download "portable games" whenever I find them. Just download the torrent directly to the steam deck, add to steam as a non-steam game, change compatibility setting, maybe run proton-tricks to add some requirement like DirectX.