Are we able to install apps via terminal?

[Toreador]

Recently I wanted to bring over my Payday 2 library of mods over to the Steam deck.
I knew going in I would need to installed the Linux specific version of the hook but that specifically mentions that you CAN NOT use the Flatpak version of Steam which I thought "Ok cool I'll just install it from either the AUR or from Steam's website then" so I proceeded to install it via the .deb file on Steam's website to which after researching how to open .deb files on Arch I found out I needed something from the AUR anyway so I proceeded to try that and it just gave me errors, now I tried to do the same thing again but with Neofetch instead to which I got the same exact errors as listed below:

 (deck@Gimme-sudo-Valve ~)$ sudo pacman -S neofetch
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) neofetch-7.1.0-2

Total Download Size:   0.08 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0.33 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
:: Retrieving packages...
 neofetch-7.1.0-2-any                   83.1 KiB   341 KiB/s 00:00 [####################################] 100%
(1/1) checking keys in keyring                                     [####################################] 100%
(1/1) checking package integrity                                   [####################################] 100%
error: neofetch: signature from "Morten Linderud <[e-mail]>" is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/neofetch-7.1.0-2-any.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n] n
error: failed to commit transaction (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

[@R+5]

have you tried installing lutris, and then using it to try other settings for steam?

i ignore if this approach works in the deck, but in my linux pc when i wanted to try running a game differently, i use the windows version of steam client with lutris to install the windows version of a game; maybe that could be useful with some mods.

[Toreador]

Originally posted by @R+5:

have you tried installing lutris, and then using it to try other settings for steam?

i ignore if this approach works in the deck, but in my linux pc when i wanted to try running a game differently, i use the windows version of steam client with lutris to install the windows version of a game; maybe that could be useful with some mods.

As for steam I could give this a try but it isn't the only thing I want to do with the Desktop mode that requires the terminal. Example being I wanted to install something like Cairo dock or Latte dock and remove KDE Plasma's bottom panel

[WarnerCK]

Originally posted by Toreador:

I knew going in I would need to installed the Linux specific version of the hook but that specifically mentions that you CAN NOT use the Flatpak version of Steam which I thought "Ok cool I'll just install it from either the AUR or from Steam's website then"

Steam is already installed on the Steam Deck. You don't need to install it. It isn't a flatpak.

[KeithZG]

By default the root filesystem isn't supposed to be written to by the user, which is perhaps why your `pacman` commands don't work. See "What if I want to do more than what’s available by flatpak?" at https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/671A-4453-E8D2-323C which says the way to enable writing to the OS partition is to run `sudo steamos-readonly disable`. But bear in mind this may cause issues with future SteamOS updates if you're not careful (and the Arch Linux packaging system in question that SteamOS now uses is fairly fragile and error-prone).

[maxRunner]

There are howtos on how to disable readonly mode and get arch / aur packages working, but I actaully would not suggest that solution. IMO leave the base OS alone, and try to layer on top of it. I would instead try homebrew. I see that it has a formulae for neofetch https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/neofetch . I'm sure it won't be straight forward though, you might have to know the command line really well to depackage the deb and get everything working.

[Jake Sully]

Originally posted by KeithZG:

By default the root filesystem isn't supposed to be written to by the user, which is perhaps why your `pacman` commands don't work. See "What if I want to do more than what’s available by flatpak?" at https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/671A-4453-E8D2-323C which says the way to enable writing to the OS partition is to run `sudo steamos-readonly disable`. But bear in mind this may cause issues with future SteamOS updates if you're not careful (and the Arch Linux packaging system in question that SteamOS now uses is fairly fragile and error-prone).

First of all he wrote sudo infront which means it uses root privileges to be able to write into systems files.

[d[-_-]b]

i dont recommend this unless you are okay with possibility of breaking things
but you can install stuff to the system using these steps

passwd
sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -Syu

Then install stuff like normal.

If the program doesnt require needing to be in the system for some reason,, i recommend looking at installing packages to a different 'root', this way all programs are installed into your home folder and wont be removed after updates.

The other option is, if its a user program, (as there is some issues with root use) distrobox or a chroot, install everything into this and not have to deal with the steamos system

[KeithZG]

Originally posted by Jake Sully:

First of all he wrote sudo infront which means it uses root privileges to be able to write into systems files.

Two different meanings of the term "root". I'm talking about the root filesystem (ex. as discussed at https://tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/root-fs.html), doesn't matter how high of privileges a command is run with if the filesystem being acted upon is mounted read-only.

Originally posted by maxRunner:

There are howtos on how to disable readonly mode and get arch / aur packages working, but I actaully would not suggest that solution. IMO leave the base OS alone, and try to layer on top of it. I would instead try homebrew. I see that it has a formulae for neofetch https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/neofetch . I'm sure it won't be straight forward though, you might have to know the command line really well to depackage the deb and get everything working.

Agreed in general that it's best to avoid disabling the readonly mode.

Homebrew is an interesting idea here, just tested it out myself on my Deck using the non-sudo method as per https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux#install, certainly put my Deck to use for a bit since it had to compile some dependencies like glibc but it all finished just fine, and now `~/.linuxbrew/bin/neofetch` runs.

Might be faster just to grab the Arch Linux package and untar it, I gave this a shot too and it seems to work just fine, https://archlinux.org/packages/community/any/neofetch/ doesn't really list any notable dependencies that SteamOS doesn't come with pre-installed, so if you're in desktop mode you can probably just download from https://archlinux.org/packages/community/any/neofetch/download/, open up the archive with Ark (the KDE equivalent of WinZip or such) and yank out the executable from `/usr/bin` inside there. I'm stubbornly trying to use Deck mode so I did this in the terminal like:

cd ~/Downloads
curl -L https://archlinux.org/packages/community/any/neofetch/download/ --output Neofetch.tar.zst
unzstd Neofetch.tar.zst
tar -xvf Neofetch.tar
./Neofetch/usr/bin/neofetch

et voila, I get a nice printout telling me I'm running SteamOS Holo x86_64 on host Jupiter 1 etc etc just as above when using Homebrew to compile it.

Originally posted by WarnerCK:

Steam is already installed on the Steam Deck. You don't need to install it. It isn't a flatpak.

^^^^ This is probably the most important comment here for the original Payday 2 side of the question.