I have been in the process of writing some help guides, and one of my friends graciously lent me his Steam Deck so that I could verify that Fluxer would work on it as well. And I'm happy to say it does. Although I did not plan on just posting a Fluxer Help-Article on Lemmy, I figured while waiting on the Fluxer team to start accepting pull requests and me getting done with my guides, someone might be looking for step-by-step instructions for their Steam Deck. So here it is. Feedback and discussion is of course welcome.

In this Help Article we will guide you step-by-step through the process of installing and integrating Fluxer into your application menu on the Steam Deck. Although not required, access to an external physical keyboard is recommended.

The Steam Deck is running a custom version on Linux that is based on Arch, and the CPU architecture is x86-64. This means we could either use the AppImage(x64) option or the tar.gz(x64) option from the download drop-down on https://fluxer.app/downloads

Since integrating the AppImage into the application menu requires additional steps such as manually retrieving the icon .png file this guide will focus on the installation process for the tar.gz.

Before we explain how to install Fluxer from the tar.gz file, let's take a moment and go through what a tar.gz file is. tar.gz are actually two abbreviations put together. "tar" from Tape Archive (sometimes referred to as a tarball) which is an archive file format and the "gz" at the end is short for Gzip(which in of itself is short for Gnu Zip) and it is a compression format. When combined you get an archive that is neatly packed in one file that is now also take up less space.

- Okay, why was that important to start off with?

Well, since it is a compressed archive, that means we can't just double click it and hope it will do much more than perhaps open the preinstalled unarchiver on our system. The fact is, a tar.gz file does not necessarily even have to contain any executable, even if it is an application. In this case with the Fluxer - tar.gz it does contain a executable.

Note:
The steps outlined in this help article will primarily be performed using the terminal. The keyboard shortcut to open the terminal is "Ctrl + Alt + T" or you can open it from the application menu under the "system" category and it is referred to as "console".

Installing Fluxer

Let's begin by entering desktop mode on the Steam Deck. Long press the power button on the top of the Steam Deck, this should make a menu appear, from that menu choose "switch to desktop".

Then open the web browser and download the tar.gz(x64) from https://fluxer.app/download.

Once downloaded navigate to your download folder through the terminal by typing the following command:

cd ~/Downloads

Where Downloads is either the default download location, or the folder you chose to save the tar.gz file.

Tip:
You can press "tab" on your keyboard to complete the file/directory name. If there are multiple files/directories with the same beginning of the filename it won't auto complete. But if you press tab again, it will show you all possibilities with the same beginning. This is referred to as "Tab Complete".

Now it is time to extract our tar.gz we can do this by using the tar command. Type the following command into the terminal:

tar -xzf fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64.tar.gz

Tip:
The options x, z, f stand for extract, decompress gzip, and specify the file. "Specify the file" might seem a bit cryptic, but remember tar is as old as tape drives. In essence the "f" option just says, what comes next is the filename.

You could run Fluxer here and now, cd into the directory we just extracted and then type the following command in the terminal:

./fluxer

But lets install it properly. Because right now, Fluxer only works if you navigate to its folder and run it manually from the terminal. If we move it to a standard system location and create a desktop entry, we will integrate it with your system. This means Fluxer will appear in your application menu, and you can launch it like any other installed program.

Note:
make sure you are located inside the fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64 folder for the next step. Use the cd command followed by the folder name if needed.

Next we need to create two directories, copy the Fluxer files and make a symbolic link to the executable that can later be used by the application menu to launch Fluxer.

Type the following commands into the terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fluxer
cp -r * ~/.local/share/fluxer/
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s ~/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer ~/.local/bin/fluxer

Each line followed by return or enter.

Now that the Fluxer has been installed we want to have it appear in our application menu, to achieve this we need to let the system know where to find it. Lets begin by creating a .desktop file with the Nano editor in the terminal.

Type the following command into the terminal:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

Write the following into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxer
Exec=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/resources/512x512.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network;Chat;

Note:
Change "USERNAME" to your username

Once done; press Ctrl + O to write out (functionally the same as Save), then Ctrl + X to exit Nano.

And now lets validate the .desktop file, by typing the following command into the terminal:

desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

If this returns no errors we can continue and make our .desktop file executable

Type the following command into the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

And lastly lets update the desktop database.
Type the following command into the terminal:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

You will now be able to access Fluxer through your application menu and it will sit in the correct category.

Note:
Fluxer will not run properly if added to your steam library as a non steam game on the Steam Deck and launched from within game mode. - This is no longer true

Edit:
After some troubleshooting I realized that there seemed to be an issue with the sandboxing and steam wanting to run the app in 32-bit environment.

Solution:
All that should be required to solve the situation is to add env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% to the launch option in properties for Fluxer in steam. I did how ever first try and fix the sandboxing issue so if for you the issue persists after adding the launch options. cd into ~/.local/share/fluxer and run the following two commands in the terminal:

sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox

yeah this is awesome, I'm pinning that.

Man, not being able to run in game mode is a deal breaker. But damn, excellent guide, thank you!

Fixed it for ya! Took some troubleshooting , but running steam through the terminal gave some helpful outputs. So to get it to work all you should need to to is to open up preferences for Fluxer in your steam library, and ad env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% as the launch option.
Now it works in game mode. Happy chatting!

Nice. I've updated my comment too

Installing the appimage is going to be wayyyyy way simpler. Just make sure you have Gear Lever installed. Then just download and open the file with Gear Lever. Boom, done.

Actually haven't used gear level. Always just made the app images executable moved them to ~/.local/bin and created a .desktop file. Thou this requires fixing the icon manually.

That's what Gear Lever* is for

quick update. I really liked this initiative, I added your guide to the community's sidebar

Well thats cool!