How-to: Minecraft with the Steam Controller on Linux desktop and SteamOS

Note: Run any of this at your own risk, don't hold me up at gunpoint if you screw it up. Works perfectly fine for me. I can/will probably keep updating this based on feedback to make it as easy as possible for people.

I wanted to see how easy it was to not only get Minecraft working with the Steam Controller on Ubuntu, but to also see if I could get it all on my Steam Machine, and as it turns out most of it is easy enough.

Linux desktop (Ubuntu, Fedora etc)
For desktop Linux like Ubuntu it’s as easy as having the Minecraft.jar downloaded from here, making a tiny bash script with this in it:

Quote#!/bin/bash
java -jar ~/Downloads/Minecraft.jar

You can simply copy/paste that into a blank text file in gedit or whatever text editor you use

Save that text file as something like “minecraft.sh” and set it to executable by right clicking -> select properties up the top and checking the “Allow executing file as program” box.

Then you can add it to Steam using the “Games -> Add a non-Steam Game to My Library” option like so:

Click Browse and find your way to where you saved the file created above and you will see this:


And then it will just work, you can launch it from Steam Big Picture mode and it will pick up the Steam Controller perfectly.

This will also allow you to stream it to your Steam Machine, or another Linux box running Steam. I’ve tested it myself, and it works well while streaming!

SteamOS
You will need to enable desktop mode in SteamOS by going to Settings -> Interface and enabling Linux desktop mode. Then quit to the desktop using the top right button (like you would turn off your machine, there will be a new option available to go to the desktop).

The SteamOS desktop user account doesn’t come with a password set (see their support page here), so you will need to open the terminal (push the mouse to the top-left corner, type terminal and open it). Then type “passwd” and enter a password twice to create it.

You can then download this script (or copy it out from the spoiler tags below) (poached and edited from here, cheers!).

Save it to the standard Downloads folder and then run the below command in terminal:

Quotesudo ~/home/Downloads/installminecraft.sh

You can easily get to the terminal on SteamOS desktop mode, by going to the top left corner which brings up the overlay, then type terminal and the icon will appear! This is perfectly safe, I’ve tested it multiple times myself.

It will automatically download Java for you, and automatically move the Minecraft.jar file into /home/.minecraft for you to clean up the cruft. Once finished, it will create a Minecraft file on the desktop you can double click to run.

You are able to adjust the keys to the gamepad using Minecraft’s options menu, which surprised me I didn’t think it would be picked up properly. I was able to walk around with the stick, and interact with the environment. It's not as good as having it in Big Picture mode to configure it properly though. I haven’t been able to figure out how to get it to work from the SteamOS Big Picture mode yet, feel free to share tips in the comments. I will update the article if anyone manages to give me a pointer on that.