Installing CKAN on Steam Deck

NOTE: These instructions might not work in the future. The Lutris-Method was last revised in 10.2024.

These instructions were contributed by CKAN users who have Steam Decks (no one on the CKAN team has one).

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Lutris Method

Installing Lutris

Open the Desktop Mode. Install Lutris via Discover.

Installing CKAN

Download the latest ckan.exe from GitHub Releases.

In Lutris, add a new game by clicking the "+" in the top left corner.

Choose the "Add locally installed game" option. On the Game info tab,

Enter a Name (ie. "CKAN") and select "Wine (Runs Windows games)" as the Runner.

On the Game options tab, select ckan.exe wherever you saved it.

For Arguments, enter --asroot.

For Wine prefix, create a new folder somewhere and select it (ie. ~/Games/CKAN).

Set the Prefix architecture to "32-bit".

Click "Save" in the top right corner.

Prepare KSP

Open the file manager, in the left panel click on "Home".

Then click on the burger menu on the top right (the three horizontal bars) and select "show hidden files".

Navigate to .local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program. You will see KSP.x86_64.

Click and drag the icon to a free place in the folder and let go. Select "Link Here".

You will be prompted to enter a new link name. Enter KSP.exe, so CKAN recognises the executable.

Running CKAN for the first time

Start CKAN in Lutris by clicking Play.

When creating a New game instance, click the "/" entry on the left hand side, then navigate to /home/deck, you'll need to type .local in the file name box and then hit enter to continue (since it is a hidden folder and you won't see it in the file browser)

Continue navigating on to /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program or wherever you have KSP installed.

Select KSP.exe.

(OPTIONAL) Adding CKAN to Steam

If you want to be able to launch CKAN in Gaming mode, you can add it to Steam, but this isn't necessary and it is better usability-wise to just use CKAN in desktop mode for mod management, then return to Gaming mode to launch KSP and play.

In Lutris, right click CKAN and select "Create steam shortcut" I highly recommend you start CKAN in Desktop Mode for the first setup and initial configurations, as the UI-scaling in Gaming mode does not work properly and navigating different settings menus is quite clunky: press the STEAM button and select the menu you want to access in the game tab.

For regular mod management the Gaming mode works well enough. Set the controller layout for CKAN to "Mouse Only", as CKAN does not support controller input.