Steam Frame owners on Linux whose Wi-Fi regulatory domain has no 6 GHz band should use USB tethering, according to Valve's dongle troubleshooting script. MIXED reports that the script warns against changing the region to US to make the wireless adapter work.
The regulatory domain determines which Wi-Fi frequencies the device can use for its region. The script treats a domain without 6 GHz as a fatal problem for the dongle. Its workaround is to enable developer mode on Frame under Settings, System, Enable developer mode, then connect the headset to the PC over USB.
Check which failure the script found
The script, frame-dongle-troubleshoot.sh, entered Valve's public SteamVR-for-Linux repository through commits between September 25 and 28. MIXED describes version 0.3 as a diagnostic script still under revision. Valve has not published this guidance as a support article.
Other checks concern the PC rather than its region. The script looks for the rtw89 driver before checking the kernel version. It says Linux kernel 7.2 or later provides the driver by default, but a distribution may omit it. SteamOS can have the driver installed on older kernels, so the version number alone does not decide whether the dongle works.
Disabling Wi-Fi also disables the dongle. For PCs with a firewall, the script lists TCP ports 27036 and 27037 and UDP ports 27031 and 27036 for discovery. VR streaming also needs UDP ports 10400 and 10401. The script cannot inspect the firewall's rules itself.
MIXED also found that Valve briefly added instructions to correct a headset that had selected the US region, then removed them on September 28 without explaining why. That removed advice should not become a step in an owner's current troubleshooting checklist.
