Installing Tailscale on the Steam Deck

This article has been replaced by an installer script. Install Tailscale on your Steam Deck. Tailscale enables you to link up your computers securely so they can work together. As technology advances, we carry more devices with us, which we can consider "computers." One such device is the Steam Deck by Valve. The Steam Deck is a handheld Linux computer for playing desktop-grade PC games, offering portability to take your Steam library on the go, similar to a Nintendo Switch.

The Deck runs a variant of Arch Linux called SteamOS, which is open and hackable for modifications. Since the Steam Deck is essentially a PC, you can install Tailscale on it to use it with internal services like an NAS and remotely access your home network when away. Tailscale is a low-level networking tool that can be challenging to figure out how to use, but it can be used for many things like a normal network.

To install Tailscale on the Steam Deck, avoid replacing SteamOS with another operating system, as it won't give you access to SteamOS features and is less interesting than running Tailscale on SteamOS itself. The Steam Deck uses an A/B partition setup, where updates are installed in partition B, and then the system reboots to partition A. Editing the SteamOS readonly seal directly will not apply changes to partition B when an update is installed, creating a time bomb where the Deck will randomly stop working after updates.

Instead, use the mount command to find writable areas on the disk, and then install Tailscale using pacman as normal.