This week, Valve announced the release of the stable version of Steam OS 3.6. Although it has previously released several updates to get things up and running and it is supposed to be working well, there is always the possibility that something is going a little worse, or that we are experiencing a bug that is making our life miserable. SteamOS is an immutable system with atomic updates, and it allows us to revert to previous versions in these cases.
While it is a possibility, at least not currently, it is not permanent, and it is not the same as on a PC. To use myself as an example, my main laptop uses Manjaro, and if I decide to use an older kernel for whatever reason, when I reboot it reverts to that version. Similarly, if I boot from a USB with the menu, which in my case is on F12, when I reboot it reverts to the same system. This also happens on the Steam Deck, but not when what we want is to use an older version; will always reboot to the version that appears first in the list, as we will explain later. I was going to say the latest version, but that would be a half-truth.
How to use older versions of SteamOS
When SteamOS updates, it keeps the previous version of the operating system just in case. It is an atomic image of the operating system.
To select it, press the three-dot button, then the power button. When you hear the sound, release the power button and hold the three-dot button until you enter recovery mode. You will see something like this:
There we are looking at five options: the current version, the one immediately before the update (or in other words, a recovery point was made just before updating), two options like the previous ones, but also adding the boot menu, and a fifth option to restore to factory settings. If what we want is to go back because we experienced a bug that we can't live with, we have to choose the fourth option, which in this case would be SteamOS 3.5.19 with its boot menu.
If you are wondering about the “1 failure” message, it is quite normal. It can detect a failure due to anything, such as trying to enter the restore menu without success the first time you tried.
Continuing with the process
As we mentioned before, when you restart it will return to the first one on the list, but this can be solved by typing a command in the terminal. To do this you have to:
- If we are in game mode, we press the Steam button->Start/Shutdown->Switch to desktop.
- If you haven't set a system password, you need to do so. You can do this from the start menu, by clicking on the user that is "Steam Deck User" by default, which will take you to the users page where you can create your password.
- Next, we open Konsole, available in the start menu, and type this command, as follows: How is it explained? on the Steam forum:
sudo rauc status mark-active booted
Since it is a sudo command, it will ask us for the password, which is why we had to enter it. A message “rauc-Message” will appear and, in theory and if everything has gone well, we can now restart in the version we were looking for since we encountered the problem that forced us to go back.
Things to note about the recovery function
It's important to note how this recovery feature works. SteamOS offers the current and previous options, whatever they are. In the image, 3.6.19 and 3.5.19 appear because they are the current and previous, but if I put 3.5.19 and make the changes permanent, the order would be reversed. Be careful with this, as it is not a kind of free bar as it is with the Linux kernel if we install a new one and do not delete the old one.
And this is how we can go back in time if something goes wrong with our Steam Deck. We hope you never need what is described here.