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Resolve (common) network issues on Steamdeck and install openVPN

I have a few friends that ran into issues with their SteamDecks, but this also solves potential issues with other machines.

Steamdeck? A handheld gaming console based on a modified version of Arch-linux. It's made by valve and is besides it's gaming capabilities in my opinion an amazing device that could; for the price, be relevant as a desktop for people who already own a monitor.

This post is addressing:

Slow network & failure to connect to the steam servers

Possible issues you may experience:

There are 2 possible reasons, some people found it's also related to the power-saving feature - I can not reproduce that; so I'm not mentioning this further. ROUTER CAN'T DEAL WITH IPV6

Number one is that your router is very bad at handling IPv6. The unfortunate truth is that many even new released home routers are very bad managing IPv6. Although IPv6 is great and should be the standard since years, for many; if not most users the quickest and easiest solution is to disable IPv6 on the deck.

This has no drawback, since it's limited to "your wifi", or better said the specific SSID you disable this for.

Go to desktop mode. Open your System Settings -> Network -> Connections Find the network SSID that you tried to connect to or are connected to and go to IPv6 tab. Change the Method to Disabled. Done. In theory you don't deed to re-connect to the wifi, I would do it just to be sure.

These settings also apply in Game Mode, you don't have to do anything extra or special

Slow downloads due to a DNS issue

The other possible reason is a DNS issue. More often than not it's also caused by cheap routers that are handed out by the ISP's. I have not enough information if the "slow downloads" are related to some stupid try to throttle traffic and limit users, or simply a crappy DNS in general. However; in some cases this resolved the issue.

My personal recommendation is to never ever use your ISP's DNS server anyway. Some routers provide their own network internal DNS service and forward the DNS requests to "whatever is configured" - most likely the ISP.

Some routers can't even do that and just tell all individual clients to use the ISP DNS directly. It is very likely that you can not change the DNS settings on the router itself, so we change it on the client - in this case the steam deck - but it can be done on all other devices of course.

Again in Desktop mode > Settings > Network > connections > select your wifis-SSID-name and go to the ipv4 tab. In "other dns servers" add something like 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9. you can of course use a DNS server of your choice. The two above are reasonably fast and easy to enter on the on-screen keyboard. There are some DNS providers that claim to be privacy respecting. One of them is "DNS.watch " (84.200.69.80, 84.200.70.40, https://dns.watch/)

These settings also apply in Game Mode, you don't have to do anything extra or special

Can't download files in the Webbrowser

Firefox or Chrome - any other software from the discovery store - are installed via flatpak. Flatpak is a "good and bad" tradeoff. It's good, because it comes with everything that particular software needs. No need to mess with extra libraries, dependencies etc.

It's also good because it can be quite secure. Each flatpak essentially runs it's own little "container" and nothing can spill out - or in - without you allowing it.

The bad, it's quite large; most likely way larger than it needs to be and depending on the OS the restriction that "nothing can spill out of the container" can be annoying. But the latter can be configured. SteamOS might address this "container handling" with a few default options in the future, but either way its easy to fix with a discovery store installation.

With "flatseal" (check the discovery store) you can "fix" (they are not broken, it's working as intended) the permissions, and allow for example Firefox to write to your Desktop, Documents, or whatever.

OpenVPN

Some providers have a flatpak client installer on the discovery store, but almost all also allow you to use OpenVPN. In my opinion always the better choice, but you be your own judge. OpenVPN is currently not on the discovery store, but relatively easy to install. Since you own a linux based device, it's time to learn some terminal (or Konsole) Kung-fu.

To explain; SteamOS has a partially read-only file system - mostly to prevent "breaking" the OS. This also means, most (if not all) stuff you install outside of the discovery store might be gone after a SteamOS upgrade or even update.

So, take a note what you think you need if you need to re-install it later! What we do is, first disable the read-only system, use pacman (it's like a kind of app-store) to update the keys so we know we can trust the source, install what we need, and enable the read-only system again.

I'm also installing the gnome-keyring since it's possible to set up an openVPN profile with a local-key. It's not striclty necessary, but will not hurt to have.

Open your Konsole (terminal) and we first need to assign yourself - your "deck" user.

passwd

assign a password of your choice. DO NOT FORGET IT.

from now on you are able to use elevated user prompts using "sudo" (super user do) lets go install now:

sudo steamos-readonly disable
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
sudo pacman -S networkmanager-openvpn 
sudo pacman -S gnome-keyring 
sudo steamos-readonly enable

Now you can import, or configure OpenVPN profiles.

Note, this will only connect to OpenVPN in desktop mode for now, but you can tell the network manager to always use a VPN connection with the "Automatically connect to VPN" dropdown selector.

#steamdeck #vpn