First of all, this isn’t my guide, so I may not be able to help if you have issues. The source for the guide was a reddit comment here.

Here’s the guide:

Its been a while since I first went through getting LAN to work on the steam deck and i think i left a comment somewhere but if you want a more in depth tutorial let me know. Its a decent amount of work to get it running but afterwards you can start a local network / play with a friend in a game that supports LAN. It works in gaming mode too! Its as if it were stock. Heres a quick rundown

1. In desktop mode make sure to Install arch linux distro box with root access

2. Install yay and its dependencies to the distrobox as well as the git command

3. Install the create_ap dependencies from the create_ap github using the install git command (theres a newer fork but the older one worked for me)

Create a .sh file and put the following text inside (the export paths should be where distrobox was installed to- if the distrobox is somewhere else then the path would be different)

`!/bin/sh

export LD_PRELOAD= export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/podman/bin export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/podman/lib/podman`

konsole —noclose -e /home/deck/.local/bin/distrobox enter —root Arch (or name of your distrobox) — sudo create_ap —daemon -g 10.10.10.1 (or desired ip address) —ieee80211n —ht_capab ‘[HT40+]’ -n wlan0 DeckHotspot (or name of your local hotspot) 11111111 (or password of your choosing)`

After you have the .sh file create another sh file called something like StopHotspot and put the following code inside

!/bin/sh

export LD_PRELOAD= export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/podman/bin export

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/podman/lib/podman

konsole -e /home/deck/.local/bin/distrobox stop —yes —root Arch (or name of your distrobox)

1. I cant remember exactly right now but i can look later if you need me to but after steamOS 3.5 the hotspot stopped working and i think it was fixed by adding something with dhcpv6 to the firewall settings (found the fix from a github comment)

2. Install Bash Shortcuts from the decky plugin store and direct your newly created shortcuts to your two sh files (one that starts hotspot and one that stops the hotspot)

All finished! You can now play LAN games offline with your own personal hotspot that can be controlled from gaming mode:) Keep in mind that doing this will cause the other persons deck to wig out when they try going into desktop mode if still connected to the hotspot, so i just remember to stop the hotspot whenever finished playing. The wifi will also not show until the hotspot is disconnected or if you power down the device and back on again. Also since the distrobox is created as a root it will ask you for a sudo password every time you launch the hotspot (unless youve managed to disable the sudo password which isnt recommended)

Sorry i know this isnt super in depth but like i said if its requested to do a more in depth tutorial i can. Its fun being able to play LAN hotspot straight from the deck though! Hope you enjoy!!

EDIT: I found the other comment i made. I added the fix for steamOS 3.5 in this comment as well. Also the konsole window displayed error messages when launching the hotspot but by adding the first line in the code above ^ fixed that issue for me. Let me know if you have any questions!