Part of what makes SteamOS feel polished is its controller-first Game Mode UI, first popularized on the Steam Deck. It’s basically the Steam Deck experience scaled for a larger screen, but it’s commonly associated with Valve’s OS.
If you want the same interface on a regular Arch-based desktop, the arch-deckify script can add a SteamOS‑like gaming session (Gamescope + Steam) on top of your existing install, though there are a few caveats and tips to get a seamless, console-like experience.
Adding the SteamOS UI to an existing Arch Linux installation
The arch-deckify script does all the heavy lifting
Thanks to the open-source community, adding SteamOS gaming mode to an existing Linux install is super easy. There was a time when this step involved going through a bunch of additional packages, followed by some configuration — but that’s not the case anymore.
There have been a few installers, but the arch-deckify script from GitHub user unlbslk seems to be the most reliable and, more importantly, easy to use. Once you’re logged in to your desktop environment, simply open a terminal window and run the following command.
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unlbslk/arch-deckify/refs/heads/main/install.sh)" --This executes a script to automate the entire process for you. You’ll have to enter your root password once, and you need to have an AUR helper like yay or paru installed before proceeding.
You’ll also need the SDDM login manager, which is a fairly common package across all major Linux distros. Either way, once you’re done executing the script, make sure to enable SDDM as the default login manager (otherwise, session switching won’t work!) and hit reboot.
sudo pacman -S sddm
sudo systemctl enable sddmThe system should automatically boot into the game mode interface, which is fully functional and scales beautifully across display sizes and resolutions. It also happens to be compatible with Decky Loader and all of its related plugins.
A few things to keep in mind
This mainly applies to Nvidia cards
There are a few gotchas to keep in mind, the first of which would be that you’ll need an Arch-based Linux installation for this script to work. Vanilla Arch Linux, CachyOS, and EndeavourOS all work fine.
Additionally, the script works best with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment. GNOME should also work fine (in theory), but tiling window managers seem to break the seamless game mode-to-desktop transition.
On my RX 9070, I had zero issues getting everything up and running, although Nvidia users might run into a few problems. Nvidia on Linux is mostly good, but can be frustrating at times. One odd problem I kept running into was a completely garbled screen if I set the resolution to native ultrawide (3440×1440).
This only happened with the Nvidia card and not on AMD. Your mileage will most certainly vary.
You still don’t get the cohesiveness of SteamOS, though
Updates can be a sore point
There’s a lot to be said for what SteamOS gets right, and a large part of it has to do with how it handles updates. Unlike your usual Linux distribution, SteamOS has the ability to push updates through Steam in the background (including firmware and BIOS updates).
On something like Arch, you’ll have to manually open up a terminal and run the update commands to do the same. It’s this seamless transition that cannot be replicated on a regular PC, at least not as easily.
It might not sound like a lot, but for a living room mini gaming PC that spends most of its time only playing games, this can be a problem.
HDMI CEC and Bluetooth wake-from-suspend still remain a problem
There are also a few other things I haven’t talked about. Let’s start with the elephant in the room — HDMI CEC. Getting this working on an x86 Linux PC can be nothing short of a nightmare, and is one of the key selling points of the Steam Machine.
Being able to sleep and wake using the TV just makes things a bit more convenient and brings it closer to the console PC experience.
Using a Bluetooth/wireless controller for wake-from-suspend is another problem I’ve encountered, and it just doesn’t work. There does seem to be a promising solution listed in the Gentoo wiki, though, which should make things a bit more bearable.
Still, it’s a great way to breathe life into a gaming desktop for your living room TV, and I’d argue that SteamOS is more suited towards a console-like experience when compared to even Windows 11’s own Xbox Full Screen Experience.
