Tailscale on the Steam Deck

This process is derived from the official guide, but with some tweaks to make the process smoother and produce an installation that both (1) comes up automatically on boot and (2) survives system updates.

Installing Tailscale

1. Download the attached tailscale.sh and tailscaled.service files to your Deck.
2. Copy the tailscaled.service file to /etc/systemd/system/.
3. Run sudo bash tailscale.sh to install Tailscale (or update the existing installation).
4. Run sudo tailscale up --qr --operator=deck --ssh to have Tailscale generate a login QR code. Scan the code with your phone and authenticate with Tailscale to bring your Deck onto your network.

How it works

The Deck runs SteamOS 3, which is derived from Arch and thus uses a software suite called systemd to manage services. The tailscaled.service file is a systemd unit file, which tells systemd how to start and manage the tailscale daemon.