Running steam on linux

Some Mac and Linux ported games already use the commercial version of Wine called CrossOver [www.codeweavers.com] to run Windows versions of the games, System Shock 2 is an example of one such game. CrossOver is maintained by CodeWeavers [www.codeweavers.com] , a team that funds the Open Source Wine [www.winehq.org] project.

Wine is a free way of getting most of Windows versions of games running natively on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD. This guide will show you how to install the Windows version of Steam and where to look if you are having trouble running it or running games on it.

908	уникальных посетителей
4	добавили в избранное

Wine (originally an acronym for «Wine Is Not an Emulator») is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop.

winetricks [wiki.winehq.org] is a helper script to download and install various redistributable runtime libraries needed to run some programs in Wine. These may include replacements for components of Wine using closed source libraries.

There is a winetricks script that downloads, installs and works around bugs that you may face in Steam.

If you chose to install the latest version of Wine, then it has the winetricks script already included in the base installation. If it is not or you would also like to use the latest version of winetricks, check the Wiki on WineHQ on how to get the latest version [wiki.winehq.org] .

Open a terminal window. Wine related commands should be accessible from the terminal window. Winetricks also has a GUI, so executing:

Should open a winetricks window.

Choose «Install an App» option and click ok.

The next window shows available scripts within winetricks. check the checkbox of «steam» only and click ok and the execution of the script will commence.

Unless the script has changed, the install directory(wineprefix*) will be under

/.local/share/winetricks/steam in case of Ubuntu OS. The «wine prefix» shown in the titlebar of the window is ignored by the «steam» script.

The script may even create a shortcut on your Desktop.

A few notes:
* There is a term for Wine called «wineprefix», it is a directory containing the registry and the mimicked Windows directories and files. Every wineprefix is independent and it can be moved and renamed. The win. For more information about wineprefix see the WineHQ FAQ:
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ

The winetricks script should have created a shortcut on your Desktop. Launch Steam by clicking on the shortcut. Then Steam should be updating. If updates seem to freeze, close Steam and relaunch it. Steam will see this installation as being on another machine, you may choose to name it «wine».

Here is a screenshot of native Linux version of Steam(on the left) and the Windows version of Steam launched with Wine(on the right) on Ubuntu OS.

Installing should go without a hitch.

But if playing results in bugs or crashes, it is best to check out if your specific game has a page on AppDB [appdb.winehq.org] .

If the pages mention installing components. You may be able to install them using winetricks, but you have to have the directory path of wineprefix to be the correct one. In a terminal:

Источник

Steam

Steam is a popular game distribution platform by Valve.

Installation

Enable the multilib repository and install the steam package.

The following requirements must be fulfilled in order to run Steam on Arch Linux:

Installed 32-bit version OpenGL graphics driver.
Generated en_US.UTF-8 locale, preventing invalid pointer error.
The GUI heavily uses the Arial font. See Microsoft fonts. An alternative is to use ttf-liberation or fonts provided by Steam instead.
Install wqy-zenhei to add support for Asian languages.
If using systemd-networkd for network management, install lib32-systemd in order for Steam to be able to connect to its servers.

SteamCMD

Alternative Flatpak installation

Steam can also be installed with Flatpak as com.valvesoftware.Steam from Flathub. The easiest way to install it for the current user is by using the Flathub repo and flatpak command:

The Flatpak application currently does not support themes. Also you currently cannot run games via optirun / primusrun , see Issue#869 for more details.

Steam installed via Flatpak is not able to access your home directory and overriding this will cause Steam to not run because it is not safe. However, you can freely add directories outside the home directory. If you want to add an external library, run the following command to add it:

Asian Font Problems with Flatpak

If you are having problem getting Asian fonts to show in game, it is because org.freedesktop.Platform does not include it. First try mounting your local font :

If that does not work, consider this hack: make the fonts available by directly copying the font files into org.freedesktop.Platform’s directories, e.g.

Directory structure

The default Steam install location is

/.local/share/Steam . If Steam cannot find it, it will prompt you to reinstall it or select the new location. This article uses the

/.steam/root symlink to refer to the install location.

Library folders

Every Steam application has a unique AppID, which you can find out by looking at its Steam Store page path.

Steam installs games into a directory under LIBRARY/steamapps/common/ . LIBRARY normally is

/.steam/root but you can also have multiple library folders (Steam > Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders).

In order for Steam to recognize a game it needs to have an appmanifest_AppId.acf file in LIBRARY/steamapps/ . The appmanifest file uses the KeyValues format and its installdir property determines the game directory name.

Usage

Steam also accepts an optional Steam URL, see the Steam browser procotol.

Launch options

When you launch a Steam game, Steam executes its launch command in a Bash shell. To let you alter the launch command Steam provides launch options, which can be set for a game by right-clicking on it in your library, selecting Properties and clicking on Set Launch Options.

Читайте также: Windows 10 процесс vpn

By default Steam simply appends your option string to the launch command. To set environment variables or pass the launch command as an argument to another command you can use the %command% substitute.

Examples

only arguments: -foo
environment variables: FOO=bar BAZ=bar %command% -baz
completely different command: othercommand # %command%

Tips and tricks

Start Minimized

It is possible to have Steam start minimized to the system tray, rather than taking focus. Simply add -silent to the list of arguments in the autostart file.

Fsync patch

Valve has released a special kernel patch that should help increase FPS in massively-threaded applications. There are few methods to get and use this patch:

Use binary kernel provided directly from Valve. See Unofficial user repositories#valveaur and once you add this repository, kernel packages linux-fsync and linux-fsync-headers become available. You will likely need to replace some regular packages (e.g. nvidia ) with DKMS packages (e.g. nvidia-dkms ) as well.
Install linux-zen kernel that includes the fsync patches since the 5.2 release[2]
Install linux-pfAUR or linux-pf-gitAUR kernel.

Proton Steam-Play

Valve developed a compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components named Proton. It allows you to launch many Windows games (see compatibility list).

It is open-source and available on GitHub. Steam will install its own versions of Proton when Steam Play is enabled.

Proton needs to be enabled on Steam client: Steam > Settings > Steam Play. You can enable Steam Play for games that have and have not been whitelisted by Valve in that dialog.

If needed, to force enable Proton or a specific version of Proton for a game, right click on the game, click Properties > General > Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool, and select the desired version. Doing so can also be used to force games that have a Linux port to use the Windows version.

You can also install Proton from AUR with proton AUR or proton-git AUR , but extra setup is required for them to work with Steam. See the Proton GitHub for details on how Steam recognizes Proton installs.

Big Picture Mode without a window manager

To start Steam in Big Picture Mode from a Display manager, you can either:

Install steamos-compositorAUR
Alternatively, install steamos-compositor-plusAUR , which hides the annoying color flashing on startup of Proton games and adds a fix for games that start in the background
Manually add a Steam entry (but you lose the steam compositor advantages: mainly you cannot control Big Picture mode with keyboard or gamepad):

create a /usr/share/xsessions/steam-big-picture.desktop file with the following contents:

Steam skins

The Steam interface can be customized using skins. Skins can overwrite interface-specific files in

To install a skin:

/.steam/root/skins .

Open Steam > Settings > Interface and select it.

Restart Steam.

An extensive list of skins can be found in this Steam forums post.

Creating skins

Nearly all Steam styles are defined in

/.steam/root/resource/styles/steam.styles (the file is over 3,500 lines long). For a skin to be recognized it needs its own resource/styles/steam.styles . When a Steam update changes the official steam.styles your skin may become outdated, potentially resulting in visual errors.

/.steam/root/skins/skins_readme.txt for a primer on how to create skins.

Changing the Steam notification position

The default Steam notification position is bottom right.

You can change the Steam notification position by altering Notifications.PanelPosition in

resource/styles/steam.styles for desktop notifications, and
resource/styles/gameoverlay.styles for in-game notifications

Both files are overwritten by Steam on startup and steam.styles is only read on startup.

Use a skin

You can create a skin to change the notification position to your liking. For example to change the position to top right:

Live patching

gameoverlay.styles can be overwritten while Steam is running, allowing you to have game-specific notification positions.

And the #Launch options should be something like:

Steam Remote Play

Steam has built-in support for remote play.

See this Steam Community guide on how to setup a headless streaming server on Linux.

Steam Controller

Normally a Steam controller requires the use of the Steam-overlay. In non-Steam native Linux games however the overlay may not be practical. For that, while the Steam client is running it will maintain a «desktop configuration». With your Steam controller, configure the desktop configuration for it as a generic XBOX controller. As long as the Steam client is running you can then use your Steam controller in other games, such as GOG games, as an XBOX controller. Make sure to select your type of controller to map to in «general controller settings».

With the addition of Proton compatibility for games has increased thanks to Valve, you can use custom forks such as Proton GE or others, to increase the amount of games that will work with it, you can extend this further to create a steam library on an NTFS volume containing your games, the only thing you ideally will have to force the uid and gid of the user you are currently logged in as so Steam may write files as needed, you will also need to make sure not to have the noexec option in your fstab or Steam will not be able to detect your games.

Источник

How to Install Steam on Linux

This article was written by Travis Boylls. Travis Boylls is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Travis has experience writing technology-related articles, providing software customer service, and in graphic design. He specializes in Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux platforms. He studied graphic design at Pikes Peak Community College.

This article has been viewed 65,974 times.

This wikiHow teaches you how to install the Steam app on various Linux distributions. If you’re running Ubuntu or Debian, you can install Steam from the Ubuntu Software app or use the Ubuntu repositories. For the latest updates not available in the Ubuntu repositories, you can install Steam from its official DEB package. If you are using Fedora or an RPM-based Linux distribution, you can install Steam using RPM Fusion. For all other Linux distributions, you can use Flatpack to install Steam.

\u00a9 2021 wikiHow, Inc. All rights reserved. wikiHow, Inc. is the copyright holder of this image under U.S. and international copyright laws. This image is not licensed under the Creative Commons license applied to text content and some other images posted to the wikiHow website. This image may not be used by other entities without the express written consent of wikiHow, Inc.
\n

I edited this screenshot of an Android icon.\n

Источник

Running steam on linux