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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17 comments
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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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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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
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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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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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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xpander, sorry but it does not, i have it running without root and without anything in /bin etc
yes u do because u just extract the package and resolve ur dependency hell by hand. but thats not the way it will work in the future.
this thread was about that steam is now focusing to make the packages available for other distros as well.
currently all non ubuntu based distros had to do a lot of work to get it working.
specially on 64bit systems.
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They're doing it the hard and wrong way. Someone should tell them to stop messing with the package system and do their things in their own directory, don't mess with anyone's system or you'll get in trouble. Desura is an example in the good direction, although it can improve. Moreover, any game does it better than Steam.
It seems they didn't hire any GNU/Linux experts, or they aren't hearing what they might have to say. The package system is for the distribution maintainers, it isn't nor shouldn't be a place for anyone to dump their garbage. I'm using GNU/Linux for several years and I've jumped from wanting distribution native packages to avoid them like the plague, and there're good reasons.
They want to control the games, now it seems they want to control your computer too. They'll install, upgrade and remove packages for you. Is that a disease? Ugh...
It seems they didn't hire any GNU/Linux experts, or they aren't hearing what they might have to say. The package system is for the distribution maintainers, it isn't nor shouldn't be a place for anyone to dump their garbage. I'm using GNU/Linux for several years and I've jumped from wanting distribution native packages to avoid them like the plague, and there're good reasons.
They want to control the games, now it seems they want to control your computer too. They'll install, upgrade and remove packages for you. Is that a disease? Ugh...
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It seems they didn't hire any GNU/Linux experts, or they aren't hearing what they might have to say.
I agree with much of what you are saying, but they actually have quite qualified hands on their team such as Sam Lantinga and Forest Hale.
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I agree with much of what you are saying, but they actually have quite qualified hands on their team such as Sam Lantinga and Forest Hale.
I'm sure they have them working on other things more related to programming, or I would think they aren't so qualified when it comes to software distribution.
For now, Desura and HB are my preferred game distribution channels, even with their mistakes. I can buy DRM-free games and they don't mess with my system in unpredictable ways.
I'm pretty worried this ends like some much other half-cooked tries to get gaming to GNU/Linux, saying the platform isn't ready when it's them doing things plainly wrong.
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as of today update (8-jan) I am now getting:
couldnt start bootstrap and couldn't reinstall from /usr/lib/steam/boostraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz, steam still starts but this one worries me a bit, why oh why so hardcoded. Since can't use .deb I simply installed Steam in a home directory as normal user, worked flawless still this.
couldnt start bootstrap and couldn't reinstall from /usr/lib/steam/boostraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz, steam still starts but this one worries me a bit, why oh why so hardcoded. Since can't use .deb I simply installed Steam in a home directory as normal user, worked flawless still this.
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I tried to share my thoughts in the Valve thread but I can't create an account because I can't install Steam. Please someone, tell me I'm wrong.
The recipe is simple, make a tar.gz with the Steam client and all needed libraries for both the Steam client and the games, including libraries needed by other libraries, everything down the software stack until you reach the kernel (excluded) or SDL (included). Anything under SDL is conveniently abstracted so it shouldn't matter what it is, and the kernel is completely binary compatible backwards. The Valve software would interface with the outer system thru SDL and the kernel. That's what SDL what's meant for, abstracting system details. Games developers wouldn't ever need to worry about distribution and version their game will run on, just worry about the library set Valve is providing. And our system and packages would be kept safe and under our control.
It'll be funny seeing how hard they can fail by messing with package managers and dependencies on multiple always changing distributions. Hehehe... :rolleyes:
The recipe is simple, make a tar.gz with the Steam client and all needed libraries for both the Steam client and the games, including libraries needed by other libraries, everything down the software stack until you reach the kernel (excluded) or SDL (included). Anything under SDL is conveniently abstracted so it shouldn't matter what it is, and the kernel is completely binary compatible backwards. The Valve software would interface with the outer system thru SDL and the kernel. That's what SDL what's meant for, abstracting system details. Games developers wouldn't ever need to worry about distribution and version their game will run on, just worry about the library set Valve is providing. And our system and packages would be kept safe and under our control.
It'll be funny seeing how hard they can fail by messing with package managers and dependencies on multiple always changing distributions. Hehehe... :rolleyes:
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https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/631
seems next update will sort of fix it a bit, as it will copy the bootstrap into the steam directory so no longer hardcoded with a path.
but yes, like you I wonder why they going down this road, lets hope they slowly notice it was not smart.
and software in general should not need root to be installed, there is no reason for it, and if you want to start package kit to add dependencies you can do a gui sudo box and explain why/what you want to do
seems next update will sort of fix it a bit, as it will copy the bootstrap into the steam directory so no longer hardcoded with a path.
but yes, like you I wonder why they going down this road, lets hope they slowly notice it was not smart.
and software in general should not need root to be installed, there is no reason for it, and if you want to start package kit to add dependencies you can do a gui sudo box and explain why/what you want to do
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