What is the purpose, what are you trying to update?
What is in the image file? Can it be mounted?
Also please do not confuse SteamOS with ArchLinux, for your own sake.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Since I'm novice, I'll just share This
I'm assuming it can be mounted, and I'm expecting newer versions to have some additional menus/firmware, or some such. My primary focus is a fan controller.
And yeah, I know it's a different distro, but Arch based from what I understand.
SteamOS is immutable, and has its own updater because of it. While SteamOS is related to Arch Linux, it is far from the same distro.
Regular Arch Linux can install local packages, the process is described on the Arch wiki. SteamOS has no built in mechanism to update without an internet connection, and installing packages manually is not recommended (due to the immutable nature of the system).
In order to update SteamOS from a local file, you would need to figure out how SteamOS updates work, and somehow trick the Steam Deck into accepting your local images. This is far outside the scope of anything related to Arch Linux, and not very well documented. The better option is to update your Steam Deck by connecting it to the internet.
Also of note, the latest version of SteamOS (as far as I'm aware) does not have any significant changes when it comes to controlling the fan speed.
Thanks for all of that info
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but why not update via stamdeck UI? You can change the "stable" branch in your steamos update settings page to "beta" or "preview".
- stable - recommended
- beta - test for new steam updates
- preview - test for steam updates + OS updates
What exactly do you want to achieve? Why do you not just use SteamOS's own update mechanism?
The built in updater currently attempts to update to an older version. I already did that once, and had to fix it off a boot drive afterwards.
I don't know how steamos works, but if it's arch-based, can you just do pacman -Syu to update?
SteamOS is immutable. While you can unlock the root filesystem pacman needs a little bit more setup to work. And updating with pacman might break stuff. And everything you do with it will be lost on a proper SteamOS update.