I am having a bit of a brain freeze here but I would like to install pandoc but I don’t want to disable the default steam deck settings to do so even though using pacman on the command line would be way simpler I don’t want to fiddle if I don’t have to fiddle.
Can I not just download a binary and point Linux towards it? I know this is a silly question but frustratingly I am more familiar with how you are supposed to do this on windows with the $home variable nonsense.
SteamOS on Steam Deck supports Nix packaging system, besides pacman. pandoc is in the Nix repositories: https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=25.11&query=pandoc The Nix packaging does not require you to disable read only, as Valve did an exception for this. It should also persist between updates, if I understand this right.
Having said this, i did not ever use the Nix packaging system on Steam Deck (yet). So I cannot assist with advice and have no idea how easy is it to pull off. Here is a random article to set it up once: https://chrastecky.dev/gaming/persistent-packages-on-steam-deck-using-nix The good thing is, once Nix is setup, one can use it for other stuff too.
It works about the same as any other non-NixOS system running a user install of Nix.
nix-env -i neovimYou could also choose to enable and use more advanced features like flakes, but I would suggest not doing that unless you want to dive into the Nix ecosystem.
Is the nix-env packing system preinstalled on Steam Deck?
This. Nix on SteamOS works great and gets you access to a lot of packages, easily. Set up Nix, then Pandoc is just right there.