Almost every distro I’ve used so far ends up having problems installing Steam due to mismatching i386 packages. I’ve heard that they’re being removed upstream. Anyone happen to know a timeline?
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i could be wrong but my understanding it’s still 32 bit because of game compatability with older steam games and since the app itself is only a limited web browser and library. It doesn’t need that much memory. So the compatibility wins out for as long as it can.
Steam itself doesn’t run the games, right? Couldn’t they easily build a small 32 bit launcher for the older games that need it?
You can start steam just fine without the packages. In fact, if you install without them, it’ll ask you to install them every time, but you can skip that and it’ll work, just 32bit games won’t launch
Edit: Looks like I’m partially wrong, as pointed out by a commenter below, steam currently only launches the 32-bit version of the client, despite support for a 5l64-bit client
Steam runtime includes a lot of common static libraries that most games expect to be there. This means that older games will still work even though the wider OS might not have 32bit libs present.
I’m not talking windows games I’m talking about Linux games
I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
Steam itself is only available as a 32-bit binary, if I remember correctly.
checks
Yeah, on my system, looks like a 32-bit binary.
If Steam runs a game, which can be either 32-bit or 64-bit, I believe you need to have libraries for the corresponding architecture for stuff that isn’t in the Steam Ubuntu-based collection of libraries, the stuff in
~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12*. If you’re running a 64-bit binary, you need 64-bit libraries, and for a 32-bit binary, you need 32-bit libraries.I have GPU libraries for both architectures installed on my Debian system, like libdrm-amdgpu1:amd64 and libdrm-amdgpu1:i386, with multiarch.
I use the Steam flatpak. The nice thing about that is that 32bit libraries aren’t installed on the host system.
That’s what I’ve resorted to but it’s not working as well as the apt package. Freezes often, cloud sync breaks repeatedly.
Not trying to denigrate your experience, just wanting to share my own: I moved from apt to flatpak and it has been world-changing for me. Absolutely everything “just works”.
Only reason I haven’t done that is because of VR. Not sure if VR works through flatpak.
SteamVR works on Linux? What headset, if I may ask?
Works perfectly fine, actually. I have a Valve Index. The only headsets with Linux support are the one I have, the HTC Vive and standalone headsets that work with ALVR (e.g. the Quest ones).
Weird, it had crazy lag for me. I will have to try again.
There’s a weird issue with VR on Linux where it doesn’t use the right GPU profile for some reason. A pretty easy workaround for that is to use CoreCTRL to manually set the GPU profile to high.
Awesome, I will give that a try. Thank you very much.
Anything special you needed to do? I have the HTC Vive, and I’ve tried a few times over the years, without any success. Last time was about 2-3 years ago.
It should just work. You install SteamVR through Steam, start it and it should detect the headset.
Here are a few ideas on what could have gone wrong:
- Steam is installed as a flatpak
- Doesn’t work out of the box but I think it’s also in this thread where I asked how to make that work
- You use GNOME
- Currently, VR works on KDE in X11 and Wayland but in GNOME only in X11. GNOME 47 (The next update, some people might already have it depending on the distro) adds support for VR in Wayland tho
These are the 2 things I could think of off the the top of my head. If you know what exactly didn’t work I might be able to help you.
Edit: Forgot to add, you also need to install CoreCTRL and use it to set the GPU to high, otherwise performance is gonna be shit.
- Steam is installed as a flatpak
Can report that ALVR with a Quest 2 works great.
Not out of the box, but you can make it work.
I’d be down to set that up. I thought VR just flat out doesn’t work with flatpak. Do you know where I can find out how to set it up?
This GitHub comment has the command to give Steam the permission it needs for VR.
https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/issues/898#issue-1222145279
Part of the problem is, sure, that installing an entire arch for a package touches up a lot of stuff… What I did was I set up a debootstrap schroot and added i386 arch to that so that neither they nor Steam touch my main system. Not only did I never have problems with Steam again, but I actually resumed pretty much from what I was when I got a new machine, simply by copying the schroot files over. Didn’t even have to install anything (but the schroot serve on my new system itself).
This sounds like a good solution. Can you share how you did it?
I basically took the general idea from this Ubuntu doc and made som changes. After installing debootstrap, I followed these general steps:
- set up an user for Steam, with
adduser steam. - created a directory to host the “virtual machine” at
/var/lib/chroot/steam64. - used the page linked above to create a schroot profile directory with the chroot data I want.
- used the page linked above to create a schroot profile entry for the chroot, adding
steamas one of its allowed users. - set up an Ubuntu 18.04 schroot with the following command:
debootstrap --variant=buildd bionic /var/lib/chroot/steam64 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ - on the host, allowed cross-“host” applications to lauch windows with
xhost +local:. - once completed, entered the schroot as root and added the needed i386 arch and packages for Steam and for bubblewrap / Chrome containerization.
- still in the schroot as root, installed enough packages for a basic graphical environment (basically: a text editor,
xnestandxterm; between their dependencies, they’ll take care of most of everything). - exited the schroot.
- entered the schroot as
steamand fired up the Steam launcher manually.
It’s not perfect, there are a few issues (in particular with audio) but once I had the installed schroot ready, I never had to worry about its 32-bit packages ever again. And that was back in… like, 2019 or something. Six months ago I copied to old schroot to my new machine and resumed playing, with no more cost than having to set up the schroot packages and the
steamuser (with the same old UID) on the new machine.Here’s a sample of the schroot profile file I’m using. The “steam64.local” is the profile directory, which is basically a copy of schroot/buildd (or of schroot/minbase) with some configurations in
fstabandcopyfilesto account for eg.: isolating /var/run and dbus, and giving the schroot access to the home directory for thesteamuser.- set up an user for Steam, with
Have you tried our saviour nixos? Its pretty hot, was very very easy to install and configure.
Tried Nix once, I liked it but overall found it too complicated to setup and manage for the [counts fingers] three programs I was using it for. Might be worth the while if I need a larger library of programs from Outside, but so far Debian and AppImages have not failed me.
overall found it too complicated
If your used to shell it’s really set and forget and a simple install would be very easy to configure. Best part being if you need to reinstall (highly unlikely for nixos being how easy it is to change OS config back) but it saves you an enormous amount of time on your subsequent installs/reinstalls. Anyway, getting preachy.
Its not just a much larger repo but also much more fresh, additionally can be used on any distro really
Oh no by all means do preach. I was just about doing the same about schroot. :p
And, like I said, it’s not that I don’t like it. It was just too much for the rather small usecase I had back at the time. I’m pretty sure if at some point I move to a distro less featured than Debian Sid I’m gonna have to pay more attention to Flatpak and Nix again.
Debian branch will always have a special place for me as well.
Vimjoyer on youtube has some great resources for getting started in nix if you feel like dipping your toe.
About the same time we get Steam with Wayland support:
“When the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.”
Isn’t it a regression? I cannot upgrade Debian unstable, either, at the moment. Last time when LLVM had a major upgrade, it took weeks until it was fixed.
Aren’t they needed to run all the 32-bit games that are on Steam?
