Canonical announced some time ago their Steam Snap which was promoted as stable with Ubuntu 23.04, as they continue to push their own packaging format with Snap but it seems this has been causing problems for Valve.
Writing on Mastodon, developer Timothee "TTimo" Besset, who works on various things for Valve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package or at least consider using the Flatpak:
Valve is seeing an increasing number of bug reports for issues caused by Canonical's repackaging of the Steam client through snap.
The best way to install Steam on Debian and derivative operating systems is to follow the instructions at http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ and use the official .deb
We are not involved with the snap repackaging. It has a lot of issues.
If you don't want the .deb, please at least consider the flatpak version.
Timothee "TTimo" Besset
So if you've been having various problems with Steam on Ubuntu (or a derivative like Kubuntu), it may be because you've installed it as a Snap. Worth trying out the official .deb or Flatpak to see if it runs better for you. You can also give Canonical feedback in your issues on their Discourse Forum and report issues to Valve on GitHub (if you're using their official packages).
Hopefully Canonical can look into any issues.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: BrokattWhat's almost never brought up is that if a user is using Ubuntu LTS, and the official Steam package then they can get support directly from Valve. They don't need to go forum hunting, pasting commands lines into their terminal that they have no idea what its doing etc. They can just contact the Steam support and get help from a real company.
[The same day on the forums, by an Ubuntu user...]
I hate how there's basically no support for Steam on Linux. I filed a ticket asking for help and they told me to check log files in C:\ - absolutely useless.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/4038106081469257961/?ctp=3#c4130430927306703734
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: BrokattWhat's almost never brought up is that if a user is using Ubuntu LTS, and the official Steam package then they can get support directly from Valve.
I haven't had contact with valves support yet, but in general, i can't recall a SINGLE instance, where the (free) software support of ANY company was worth a dime. So i wouldn't take that as a big plus tbh...
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: KimyrielleI love open source software as much as anyone, but let's be real here. There are plenty of super serious bugs in OSS applications, too. Saying that anything proprietary is untrustworthy by design is a bit over the top. With your logic, you'd need to containerize EVERYTHING, and the result of this would be a a fairly unproductive and ineffective system. I get containerization for high-risk applications (yes, like the internet browser), but locking software from trustworthy vendors inside a container is a bit much on the paranoid side.
I agree that there are super serious bugs in OSS applications as well. And I don't think it's particularly over the top to say proprietary applications are inherently untrustworthy; but I don't think the word "untrustworthy" needs to be interpreted in a particularly severe manner. You don't know what it's doing, so if you can limit its scope without much trouble, you might as well do that. And containerizing it is really not much trouble at all; indeed, I do containerize pretty much everything. Every app running on my system aside from Konsole and Dolphin is a Flatpak. And the system feels great. I think there is this perception that when you containerize an app, you cripple its ability to do anything and impose a great deal of overhead, and that is simply not true at all.
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 18
Quoting: EikeI just use the Debian version of the Steam package. Never have any issues with it at all.QuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm reading nearly every thread in the Steam for Linux forum, and we hear problems from people having used the downloadable deb for over a decade now! People should use what their distribution made of it, adding their dependencies and such. I cannot believe Valve proposes to actually use that!
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: EikeI just use the Debian version of the Steam package. Never have any issues with it at all.QuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm reading nearly every thread in the Steam for Linux forum, and we hear problems from people having used the downloadable deb for over a decade now! People should use what their distribution made of it, adding their dependencies and such. I cannot believe Valve proposes to actually use that!
The Debian repository package or Valve's deb? The former one is the one I'm recommending. Of course, the latter one works too, it just might need more manual "help".
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 18
Quoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.Source? Their initial run of SteamOS was debian based, and not Ubuntu based. They include some ubuntu name libraries, and that's about it.
I've literally been installing steam on all my debian systems since it was first added to the repos... about 14 years ago. Never had any issues with it at all. Ubuntu LTS itself only supports their modified gnome install, so there is that.
By the way, Debian's package is now called 'steam-installer' and you can install it with three commands.
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt install steam-installer steam-devicesAnd guess what? The /usr/games/steam file is a script that downloads the very official debian Steam package and installs it.
Funny enough, the Arch version likely does the exact same thing. Which basically means it doesn't really matter what Valve officially supports, people will get it installed, and currently the correct way to get the right dependencies, etc is to NOT use the .deb from their website, but to use your package manager on whichever distribution you choose.
3 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 18
Quoting: fenglengshunI want to address Linus' issues directly. 1) he should have read the warning. 2) PopOS is now on my shit list of distributions. I had it installed on some friend's laptops and it ate itself in the worse way. One of them was looking like it was having a hardware issue (both identical laptops). I installed Debian Bookworm over it... worked perfectly fine afterward. On the other one, it ran into a massive dependency hell, and all I was doing was running updates that hadn't been done in a few years, since the laptop basically was sitting idle as a backup. Never seen such a mess on a debian based system, and I've been running it for 25-ish years?Quoting: BrokattWhat problems? I have been using the official .deb for over a year and it has worked fine. It's not flawless but there are issues with the Flatpak version as well.Probably dependency issues, which is at the heart of the infamous "Yes, do as I say," in the LTT Linux Challenge.
Steam Flatpak has its issues, but it gets people arriving to the "I can install the game, I can play the game," faster with less risk (assuming you're not having to deal with your secondary drives/partitions at least).
I've lost confidence in PopOS, unfortunately. It looked like a great alternative to Ubuntu until they decided to make their own DE.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Jan 18
Quoting: EikeI think I added details further up, but the Debian repository 'steam-installer' these days is just an installer script that does all the work of downloading Valve's deb for you :)Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: EikeI just use the Debian version of the Steam package. Never have any issues with it at all.QuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm reading nearly every thread in the Steam for Linux forum, and we hear problems from people having used the downloadable deb for over a decade now! People should use what their distribution made of it, adding their dependencies and such. I cannot believe Valve proposes to actually use that!
The Debian repository package or Valve's deb? The former one is the one I'm recommending. Of course, the latter one works too, it just might need more manual "help".
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...
newer driver, that why they packaged with snaps
newer lybraries too
also, it could be more secure, because the game is in a sandbox
but everything here is covered by flatpak, and it work better too, and it's ubuntu choice to have out-of-date drivers
1 Likes, Who?
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