The team behind the very popular and fantastic open source video capture software OBS Studio have done a Steam release. For Linux users though, you should just stick to Flatpak from Flathub.
With the Steam release it's only supported for Windows and macOS, and their official Steam FAQ post mentions they have "no concrete plans for providing a Linux build on Steam". Why though? They said they can just re-use existing builds for other platforms but for Linux it would need another additional build done. However, they also said they will "look into the feasibility of providing such a version" but they're quite busy.
A shame perhaps but the good news is that the version available on Flathub is officially supported by the OBS team and works across pretty much any Linux distribution. In fact, it's the exact package I use for all video recording and livestreams so I can definitely recommend it anyway.
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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: Liam DaweI list the Flatpak as it's the only official cross-distro solution used by the developer. Simple as that. I shall continue to link to Flathub / Flatpak whenever it's available because it works across any distribution AND Steam Deck too. You can argue about preferred packaging all you want, stick to whatever you like, this is the easiest for users so we don't have to list a million ways of installing things across many different distributions.I am not objecting the listing of flatpak per se, but the assertion that every linux user should stick with it without motivation provided right in the article.
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I shouldn't need to explain the same thing over and over and over again to give in to pedantic attitudes over packaging.
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Quoting: Liam DaweI shouldn't need to explain the same thing over and over and over again to give in to pedantic attitudes over packaging....Crystal clear.
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Quoting: kokoko3kAlso, and absolutely not rhetoric, but really, REALLY out of curiosity:Presumably the people likely to do this would be people who are opening Steam anyway to play games?
Why someone on earth could have an interest in opening the whole steam to start obs!?
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyIf it were true, then i'd expect fro those people to add every program they use as a non steam application to their steam library.Quoting: kokoko3kAlso, and absolutely not rhetoric, but really, REALLY out of curiosity:Presumably the people likely to do this would be people who are opening Steam anyway to play games?
Why someone on earth could have an interest in opening the whole steam to start obs!?
And while using steam like a start menu may even be a viable solution, I really don't expect them to do so, that's the problem.
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Quoting: kokoko3kSo you mean, like, they'd add things they do while not playing games to their game-library software because that's exactly the same as adding things they do while playing games to their game-library software?Quoting: Purple Library GuyIf it were true, then i'd expect fro those people to add every program they use as a non steam application to their steam library.Quoting: kokoko3kAlso, and absolutely not rhetoric, but really, REALLY out of curiosity:Presumably the people likely to do this would be people who are opening Steam anyway to play games?
Why someone on earth could have an interest in opening the whole steam to start obs!?
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyAh, understood.Quoting: kokoko3kSo you mean, like, they'd add things they do while not playing games to their game-library software because that's exactly the same as adding things they do while playing games to their game-library software?Quoting: Purple Library GuyIf it were true, then i'd expect fro those people to add every program they use as a non steam application to their steam library.Quoting: kokoko3kAlso, and absolutely not rhetoric, but really, REALLY out of curiosity:Presumably the people likely to do this would be people who are opening Steam anyway to play games?
Why someone on earth could have an interest in opening the whole steam to start obs!?
So the use case is that since obs may be used even while they are playing steam games, then it makes sense to take the burden to package and release it as a steam application, because people will prefer to start it from their library.
This honestly I haven't thought to.
Well then, but this still does not help my progress in understanding the motivations, because i don't think they are installing a browser as a steam specific app or any other app one may think of one can use while they are playing.
Ofc I may be wrong, but I really don't believe the number of users starting obs from steam justifies the release in their store.
Probably is just a matter of having more visibility or I just don't know.
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OpenSUSE also has OBS Studio in its community repos, so from my point of view it's not a major issue that there isn't a native Linux binary on Steam.
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Quoting: RodneyQuoting: Pendragonweird that there's no Linux version under Steam o.O ...seems like an obvious inclusion
also re: downloading:
you can also, ya know.. just get it from the Ubuntu repository for those that run it
Shipping Linux versions of an app on Steam isn't super easy since it has to be "portable", meaning that it has to include (most of) its dependencies and be compiled against an older glibc to run on a wide variety of systems.
In OBS' case this is just a lot of work since it has a fuckton of dependencies that need to be compiled essentially from scratch to work in the Steam Linux Runtime or at least on an older LTS distro.
All in all we just didn't have the time yet. There were many other things in the works that should make this easier though.
Additionally, you have to build against Ubuntu 12.04 for SteamOS. Meanwhile OBS 27.2 supports 18.04 LTS at minimum (mainly so that the modern browser component works), which'll likely change to 20.04 LTS minimum in the next major version.
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Quoting: kokoko3kQuoting: Purple Library GuyAh, understood.Quoting: kokoko3kSo you mean, like, they'd add things they do while not playing games to their game-library software because that's exactly the same as adding things they do while playing games to their game-library software?Quoting: Purple Library GuyIf it were true, then i'd expect fro those people to add every program they use as a non steam application to their steam library.Quoting: kokoko3kAlso, and absolutely not rhetoric, but really, REALLY out of curiosity:Presumably the people likely to do this would be people who are opening Steam anyway to play games?
Why someone on earth could have an interest in opening the whole steam to start obs!?
So the use case is that since obs may be used even while they are playing steam games, then it makes sense to take the burden to package and release it as a steam application, because people will prefer to start it from their library.
This honestly I haven't thought to.
Well then, but this still does not help my progress in understanding the motivations, because i don't think they are installing a browser as a steam specific app or any other app one may think of one can use while they are playing.
Ofc I may be wrong, but I really don't believe the number of users starting obs from steam justifies the release in their store.
Probably is just a matter of having more visibility or I just don't know.
Take Display Fusion for windows as example. It's a standalone app that can run without steam turned on after it's installed through steam. Steam does not enforce drm. If I could I would rather have all the apps (or even free) I bought under one umbrella to install/remove instead of remembering going to 10 places to install apps. While steam is primarily for gaming, seeing it as an appstore works perfectly fine.
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