The following was posted on Reddit (r/Oolite) a week ago:
Oolite on Steam Deck?
HI there. In theory being a Linux also game it should work on the Steam Deck correct? Has anyone done this? If so, is it a complicated setup procedure?
The main issue will probably be supporting the steamdeck controller.
The simplest method for that is likely to to upgrade from sdl1 to sdl2 as sdl2 support for controllers is much better then that in sdl1.
If none of the devs have access to steam deck, improving support for xbox and/or or playstation controller would be a good starting point.
Steam Deck runs SteamOS which is valve's linux distro specifically targetting steam .
SteamOS is based on archlinux and some users have had succes runing archlinux packages (including ones from AUR) on it, others reported huge problems.
Flatpak should work fine as a non-steam application .
The desktop environment is KDE plasma 6.x on Qt 6.x and it runs wayland on amd opensource drivers by mesa .
TL:DR : improve linux support in oolite and oolite on Steam Deck will benefit.
The main issue will probably be supporting the steamdeck controller.
The simplest method for that is likely to to upgrade from sdl1 to sdl2 as sdl2 support for controllers is much better then that in sdl1.
If none of the devs have access to steam deck, improving support for xbox and/or or playstation controller would be a good starting point.
I would like to go straight to SDL3 as I understand from another_commander SDL2 was problematic when the upgrade was attempted previously (although it may have improved since then). SDL3 brings HDR support for Linux and is a path that would in future allow using Metal as a backend so bringing Mac back into the picture.
If you/devs are willing to keep up with sdl3 fast pace of development (approx a new release every month) that's a good choice .
Keep in mind though that sdl3 had its first stable release just a year ago.
Going from SDL1 to SDL3 directly may be much harder then SDL1 > SDL2 > SDL3
"The Flatpak version works great. Just installed it via Discovery in desktop mode and then added it as a Non-Steam game. Was directly selectable in the list as an installed Discovery app. No further adjustments needed to get it running. OXPs work as well. I was able to download and apply BGS via the ingame expansion browser.
Still hard to control such a keyboard centric game with a Steam Deck but at least Steam remembered and automatically applied my old custom Steam Input layout I made for the Lutris Oolite version 3 years ago. "
