Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

SteamOS Plugin Manager should enable lots of fun on the Steam Deck

By - | Views: 32,183

From the same developer who created the support library for Tesla overlays, the SteamOS Plugin Manager is born and ready for the Steam Deck.

This is going to be an absolute delight for people who want to hack away at the Steam Deck, and it can enable all kinds of things from music player integration to simple things like more quick-access buttons. I don't think it's possible to overstate just how awesome a project like this is. You don't even need to turn off the read-only filesystem to do it, and so changes made will be persistent too through OS upgrades.

Looks like the installation is reasonably easy too, but no doubt people will eventually find a way to make it super simple:

Installation

  • Go into the Steam Deck Settings
  • Under System -> System Settings toggle Enable Developer Mode
  • Scroll the sidebar all the way down and click on Developer
  • Under Miscellaneous, enable CEF Remote Debugging
  • Place the executable under ~/homebrew/services/plugin_manager. Do not change the name of the file.
  • Place the plugin_manager.service file under /etc/systemd/system
  • Open a Terminal and type sudo systemctl --now enable plugin_manager

Install Plugins

  • Simply copy the plugin's .js file into ~/homebrew/services/plugin_manager/plugins

It will take a little while for Plugins to be created for it but now it's out in the wild, I cannot wait to see what people come up with, oh the possibilities!

There's seemingly no license on it right now, so I've asked the developer to add one so contributors will know what to expect from it. Update: the developer replied, and it's now under the GPL license, so it's properly open source.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
29 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
16 comments
Page: «2/2
  Go to:

TrainDoc Apr 1, 2022
Cheat Engine is just an example lads. WerWolv (the dev) stated as such on the reddit thread announcing it's release.
Nasra Apr 1, 2022
Quoting: elmapulcheat engine...

It's for anti-cheat softwares... :D

Nevertheless, an official cheat engine is a better way to block in online games, they known what runtime should be blocked.
STiAT Apr 2, 2022
Basically hooking into the debug engine adding a plugin option?

That's smart.

For the ones having fears: if I judge the code right it can not do too much. Plugins seem to be limited to the sidebar, and they show information there provided by the javascript plugin. I doubt cheating can or ever would be implemented that way. Not really feasable. You could add config options for external cheat tools though, but that would be an easy layer for detection, and they would not want that.


Last edited by STiAT on 2 April 2022 at 1:00 am UTC
Marlock Apr 2, 2022
a Collabora dev clarified that Developer Mode does change the system from read-only to a read-write state

https://9to5linux.com/collabora-details-how-steamos-3-0-works-on-the-steam-deck
"But Collabora also tells us that SteamOS 3.0 features a Developer Mode that lets experienced Linux users access Arch Linux’s pacman package manager to install various packages and the full power of the KDE Plasma desktop environment. The Developer Mode works by putting the system partition into read/write mode instead of the read-only mode that’s enabled by default for regular users."

I'm guessing that the Plugins developer meant that you don't loose any of the plugins and configs because they are in the userspace, but you'll have to reinstall the Plugins app to get them back to work after SteamOS3 upgrades


Last edited by Marlock on 2 April 2022 at 6:18 pm UTC
tobinami Apr 4, 2022
Looks like the project is largely written in Rust too. Pretty sweet!
bonaparte Apr 5, 2022
Quoting: Marlocka Collabora dev clarified that Developer Mode does change the system from read-only to a read-write state
That’s not correct, disabling read only mode requires a terminal command. See here:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/04/steam-deck-developer-mode-does-not-turn-off-the-read-only-filesystem/
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.