Installing the drop-app client on SteamOS (Steam Deck)

To install the client app, you will need to use distrobox which allows us to install packages from other distributions inside a container.

The first thing you'll need to do is open a terminal application. In the terminal, you need to create a distrobox container. This container will be created using the archlinux image.

# Create the distrobox container called drop-app
distrobox create --image archlinux drop-app
distrobox enter drop-app

It will take a few seconds to prepare the container. Once ready, you need to install the yay package manager to be able to install packages from the AUR.

# This enables the multilib repository which is needed to install umu-launcher and drop-app
sudo sh -c 'printf "\n\n[multilib]\nInclude = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist\n" >> /etc/pacman.conf'
# Updates repositories and system
sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm
sudo pacman -S --needed --noconfirm base-devel git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git
cd yay
# This will build and install yay
makepkg -si --noconfirm
# We can now delete the yay folder
cd .. && rm -rf ./yay

Next, you can install drop and its dependencies:

yay -S --noconfirm gnu-free-fonts
yay -S --noconfirm drop-oss-app-bin

Once the installation is complete, you will need to export drop-app to SteamOS.

distrobox-export --app drop-app
# Go back to SteamOS
exit

The drop-app application should be appear in your application menu.

Run games

You can start games while in Desktop Mode, but the controller will not be fully working. It is recommended to add Drop app as a "Non Steam Game" in Steam in Desktop Mode. Once added, you can go to Gaming Mode and start Drop App from the "Non Steam Games" tab in the library. It might take a few seconds to startup. Once loaded, you can use the touch screen to find the game you want to play and then tap "Run".

Update drop-app

In the terminal, you need to enter the drop-app container and update system packages within in.

distrobox enter drop-app
yay
exit

Uninstall the drop-app client

The following command will delete the distrobox container and delete the drop-app application from your system.

distrobox rm drop-app --force