We are not involved with the snap repackaging.
I would argue this is the most important sentence in this article.
Not really, usually Steam packages on distributions aren’t maintained by Valve. The only exception are .debs from their website. Even the Steam flatpak is community maintained.
I’ve had no issues with steam on nixos/nixpkgs. Flatpak also had it’s fair share of bugs and games not working because of flatpak and proton using bubblewrap for sandboxing. Snaps sandboxing might cause those issues too, so hopefully they’ll be fixed at some point (or even better, Ubuntu switches to flatpak for desktop apps).
I know it’s because it’s horribly insecure, but it’s kinda funny that fucking winget of all things is one of the only package managers that install Steam without issue.
P.S. I’m a hybrid Windows/Linux user, pls don’t kill me
Edit: insecure and barely a package manager, but works roughly like one for an end user
How would I check which version I have installed? I just used Fedora software to install. I’ll have to check when I get home. Haven’t had issues, though, so probably not worth the trouble.
On Fedora you could do
flatpak list --appto look whether Steam is installed as a flatpak. If not it’s installed through dnf, but that can be tested by runningdnf list installed | grep -i steam. You could also open Fedora Software and I believe in the top right is a button to select where a package should come from. There’d be the option to choose between flatpak or rpm. Another way to test is to open a terminal and type insteam. If Steam opens, it’s a rpm, if the command is not available, it’s a flatpak (you’d need to useflatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam, iirc).Packaging software is usually not that difficult, especially if it’s already packaged in another packaging format. E.g. .deb and .rpm put the same files in similar places, the difference is mainly how It’s specified where a file goes. Because Snap and flatpak are providing a sandbox, complex software like Steam can behaves unexpectedly (fixed a few years ago for flatpak).
tl;dr
You’re right, it’s not worth the effort. Both rpm and flatpak should work flawlessly. If multiple games actually have issues running trying out a different package might help, but I didn’t have issues for many years, so you probably won’t either.
Awesome, thanks for the info!
This time they said if you don’t want the deb to use flatpak.
Actually it’s Valves responsibility to tell the snap packager to kindly fuck off and don’t fuck this up for us.
Ive only had issues with the snap or Flatpack versions. At least the Flatpack one is open source.
Fwiw, the steam snap is open source
The article also is too favorable for Valve and doesn’t mention alternative methods. The billion dollar company should allow people to install games on their browsers. The client is nothing but an analytics and tracker. There’s no benefit, just like there’s no benefit in XBox or PS4/5 achievements or their features.
The billion dollar company should allow people to install games on their browsers
How should that work?
I’m guessing OP is referring to GOG, where you can download an installer from the web page.
Humble Bundle does the same thing with their trove. Basically, you can just download the installer for any game you have access to.
Of course. Because snaps fucking SUCK.
All my homies hate snaps.
most functional snap package
With the flatpak it barely even matters which distro you use. Flatpak steam & mesa and go play some games. I game on Debian stable now.
I been moving my systems to Debian stable, thanks to flatpak and backports.
Why they don’t take over the work and make it official with support is beyond me though.
The flatpak version hammers my DNS-server when downloading it isn’t funny anymore, 100s requests a minute for the same domains, it ignores the TTL too.
I think they also use the flatpak version on Steamdeck? Really weird.
I’ve never read so many words I know and been so confused by how they were used before in my life
Edit: oh this is a Linux gaming thing, didn’t see where I was. I thought I had all the Linux communities filtered. Oh well ignore this
In case you are curious:
- flatpak - a way to package applications so they have everything they need regardless of the Linux OS you choose (like how Electron packages a web app, e.g. Slack or Discord)
- mesa - the graphics layer on Linux; this connects the OS to your drivers
- Debian stable - a really stable version of Linux with old software; think Debian Stable = Windows 10/7, and most other distros are like Windows 11; some apps don’t work on Debian because it’s so old, hence flatpak
Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic day. :)
I tried to install steam on Ubuntu 22.04 and I just see the snap version. Is it true that we cannot run sudo apt install steam anymore?
The day they started pushing snaps into APT and making it a pain to choose the non-snap version… I left Ubuntu. If I wanted to install the snap I would’ve used
snap installnotapt installYeah before I use Ubuntu. my first exposure on Linux is Linux Mint and it seems Linux Mint support secure boot atm. if this gets worst. I will go back to linux Mint again
Linux Mint is just Ubuntu but with no snaps and better optimized for desktop (as opposed to server) use
Or you can use Linux Mint Debian edition, which is basically the same, but with older (and better maintained IMO) packages from Debian instead of newer packages from Ubuntu.
For sure, LMDE is fantastic at this point. Best reason to take regular Mint over it is the built-in alternate desktop options.
I left when they moved my window buttons (close, minimize, etc) to the left side for no good reason (back on 10.4 I think), and I felt validated when they introduced, screwed up, and later removed upstart and mir (mir still exists, but it’s a Wayland compositor, not a Wayland competitor).
Ubuntu has a long track record for trying new things, making them default, and then backpedaling when it doesn’t work out. There really aren’t many things they’ve produced that anyone else actually uses. Snap is just another one of those projects.
Use the flatpak
Sorry I found it this is the best sudo add-apt-repository multiverse sudo apt install steam
valve always recommends native deb and my experience with deb is flawless so far
I use another distro that packages Steam based on the deb, and it works well too. I haven’t found any reason to prefer the flatpak, so I expect to only have issues with it. Why change what works?
