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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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?
Have you tried our saviour nixos? Its pretty hot, was very very easy to install and configure.
I use the Steam flatpak. The nice thing about that is that 32bit libraries aren’t installed on the host system.
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?
Can report that ALVR with a Quest 2 works great.
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).
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.
Weird, it had crazy lag for me. I will have to try again.
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
That’s what I’ve resorted to but it’s not working as well as the apt package. Freezes often, cloud sync breaks repeatedly.
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?
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.
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
Wine can run 32 bit games with WOW64 without the 32 bit libraries
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.
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?
