I have to mention that my computer is also running Linux, more precisely MX Linux. And yes, I know that Steam Cloud does exist. My concern is with games that do not support it (or not for certain things, maybe). Would manually moving games from my PC to the deck work? Maybe through mounting the Steam folder on the deck as a network drive or some sort?
Update 14/11: I now have a Steam Deck myself. After lots of trial and error, I zipped everything I found in my home folder (except the games) on my computer, then moved the archive into my Mega account. Then installed Mega on the Deck and unzipped everything there. For the games themselves, Valve seems to be thinking the same way as me - you can connect your Deck to the same network as your PC and the files to your desired game will be copied over LAN instead of being downloaded over the internet. Nifty feature.
I would set up Syncthing, that way you don’t have to manually move files around. But yes, if you move the prefix files to Steam Deck, it should work.
Games often don’t put the save files in the game data dir but use some random place in documents or the home directory. The library itself will move and be picked up fine but the saves will have to be sync thinged or rcloned or something manually if they’re not on steam cloud.
Once you figure out where the save file for the game is on your PC, you can simply switch to desktop mode on the deck and copy them over. I’ve got an smb share that I used to copy things between devices, but you can also use a flash drive.
For games that doesn’t support Steam Cloud for saves etc., or in general moving files over to the Steam Deck from your PC, I highly recommend setting up Syncthing.
It’s available on the Discover store in desktop mode and can be set up to run as a service to ensure that it’s always running on Steam Deck, if you’re so inclined. There’s a myriad of guides out there if you search around, should you need help setting it up.
@Zebrazilla I see. But won’t Syncthing sync stuff to it’s folder first, then sync it over? At least this was it’s behavior when I tried it.
That looks like a nice, useful tool, thanks for sharing! Could it be used in practice to transfer large amounts of data remotely between people, if they just setup a shared folder, or is it just meant for small files or LAN? Big file transfer is always an issue when you need it…
