A Steam developer johnv has written on the Steam Linux Group forum asking for feedback on package install changes.
It has already caused a heated debate as usual with some people rather unhappy at the way the current client works. Some people are frustrated with Steam forcing updates to itself and games.
It has also stirred up people yet again questioning why Steam itself is mostly installed into /home, a place I am actually happy with since I can distro hop and keep everything easily on my home partition.
So for anyone technical it may be an idea to jump in that thread and give your constructive thoughts to it.
Also Steam issues are now tracked on their official github page to make tracking it all easier. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteWe've gotten a lot of feedback around the hacky way that Steam manages dependencies. Some of this is because of lingering multiarch problems on Ubuntu 12.04 and hopefully this will go away as Canonical irons those out. But some is due to the way that package management doesn't work well with an auto-updating application like Steam. For example, if we add a new feature to Steam that requires a new OS package to be installed, we need to make sure that happens before the new auto-updated Steam runs. And with different distros having different approaches and interfaces to package management, it is impossible for us to cover all the different configurations.
One proposal we have to make things easier for other distros is to separate out the package management logic (basically the install_extra_packages() part of /usr/bin/steam.sh) into a separate script - steam-depends.sh. Then we would call that script to do any post-install package installs. Other distros could provide a different script that would do the equivalent.
I would love to get some feedback from people running (or trying to run) Steam on non-Ubuntu distros. Does this help some? Any better ideas?
It has already caused a heated debate as usual with some people rather unhappy at the way the current client works. Some people are frustrated with Steam forcing updates to itself and games.
It has also stirred up people yet again questioning why Steam itself is mostly installed into /home, a place I am actually happy with since I can distro hop and keep everything easily on my home partition.
So for anyone technical it may be an idea to jump in that thread and give your constructive thoughts to it.
Also Steam issues are now tracked on their official github page to make tracking it all easier. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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As Slackware user i have Steam running but not as i would like to. I'm very happy that Valve is working on Steam being more distro independent but i also hope that they will ditch pulse audio dependency. Looks like TF2 will not give any sound without pulseaudio where eg. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP does not care about it and works just fine.
Regarding /home placement i got no problems. I would like to have a package but ... all user custom files still should be stored in /home/user anyway which pretty much will gives same effect.
Desura does the same thing and again all works fine. If something is not working user can always tinker with it eg. missing static libs or wrong symlinks.
Moaning about such trivial things remind me windows users who expects press the button and don't care. Haters gonna hate anyway. I love the idea of Steam on Linux for a long time. Future is now.
Regarding /home placement i got no problems. I would like to have a package but ... all user custom files still should be stored in /home/user anyway which pretty much will gives same effect.
Desura does the same thing and again all works fine. If something is not working user can always tinker with it eg. missing static libs or wrong symlinks.
Moaning about such trivial things remind me windows users who expects press the button and don't care. Haters gonna hate anyway. I love the idea of Steam on Linux for a long time. Future is now.
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they should make it like desura is.
install where u want. and include the necessary libraries with the package.
install where u want. and include the necessary libraries with the package.
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Steam should work as closely as possible to the way it work under Windows, including auto updates of both Steam it self and the games.
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Quoting: "Kristian, post: 7363, member: 390"Steam should work as closely as possible to the way it work under Windows, including auto updates of both Steam it self and the games.
I disagree, it is the job of the package manager to update applications on my computer, I don't want steam to update itself when I have a perfectly good way of keep it up to date.
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I personally feel that package managers should only be left to system packages and free software programs. I find that commercial software tends to muddle things.
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Quoting: "Xpander, post: 7362, member: 92"they should make it like desura is.
install where u want. and include the necessary libraries with the package.
Xpander, that is how I have Steam running, since I can't use the .deb I just took what I needed and placed the files where I wanted them and run steam.sh from there. it updates itself there like Desura does.
from what I gather the only reason they want a package and root install is that steam then can add dependences itself ? if so I think they better of simply doing a sudo GUI when they want to add dependences instead of doing it in the background
Quoting: "Hamish, post: 7368, member: 6"I personally feel that package managers should only be left to system packages and free software programs. I find that commercial software tends to muddle things.
totally agree
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Quoting: "Bumadar, post: 7369, member: 93"Xpander, that is how I have Steam running, since I can't use the .deb I just took what I needed and placed the files where I wanted them and run steam.sh from there. it updates itself there like Desura does.
from what I gather the only reason they want a package and root install is that steam then can add dependences itself ? if so I think they better of simply doing a sudo GUI when they want to add dependences instead of doing it in the background
totally agree
no, steam doesnt work like desura currently. yes u can install it to anywhere u want, but it still installs stuff to /usr (/usr/bin , /usr/lib and /usr/share)folders and wanting root privileges, every time there are updates to those files there.
desura currently does ship with its own dependencies and symlinks to system ones. Steam should do the same imo.
i wouldnt want steam to be integrated to packagemanager as it currently does, at least with ubuntu based distros.
the best way would be if steam was just like on windows. with a installer (nixstaller or mojosetup) and will include all the needed libraries with it(symlinking if available on ur distro).
mojosetup can check for libraries installed by the system i think? and install them if needed (would require root tho, but one time only)
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xpander, sorry but it does not, i have it running without root and without anything in /bin etc
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Quoting: "mirv, post: 7371, member: 214"You can set an environment variable to have TF2 use something other than pulseaudio. I can't remember what exactly - on holidays and can't check right now - but you should be able to google it, check the steam forums, or something.
Do you mean something game specific or just an SDL command such as "export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa"?
Not using Steam or anything, but just though I might save some of you some time.
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