Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Steam Client Beta updated with PipeWire desktop capture for Remote Play

By - | Views: 23,326

Valve continue upgrading and tweaking the Steam client with a fresh Beta version being released today with a couple of tweaks that are interesting for Linux users.

Some of the issues fixed are for everyone including slow startup after suspend, Cloud Sync will now happen as soon as possible to avoid delays launching games and for Remote Play they fixed using multiple PS5 controllers from the Steam Link app.

Just for Linux though these caught my eye today:

  • Enabled pipewire desktop capture by default on Linux, pass -nopipewire on the command line to disable it
  • Fixed Linux games seeing multiple controllers when Steam controller configuration support is enabled
  • Fixed Linux clients not getting any controller input once streaming starts

Some real nice fixes, the controller issues are something I came up against a couple of times. The first one is the bigger and more interesting change as PipeWire is basically the next-generation of audio and video on Linux. As the official website states:

It provides a low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both pulseaudio and JACK. PipeWire was designed with a powerful security model that makes interacting with audio and video devices from containerized applications easy, with supporting Flatpak applications being the primary goal. Alongside Wayland and Flatpak we expect PipeWire to provide a core building block for the future of Linux application development.

So now that Valve are using it for Remote Play, perhaps this will work even better (especially on Wayland). This is quite likely another improvement to ready up for the Steam Deck, since we already know games will be played on it inside a Wayland session along with it using Gamescope.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Beta, Misc, Steam
39 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
21 comments
Page: «3/3
  Go to:

BlooAlien Dec 22, 2021
It took me a bit of work to get PipeWire workin' proper-like on Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, but now it's installed and working, I'm really impressed. It's pretty much (mostly) everything PulseAudio promised it was gonna be and then some… In addition to bein' a viable replacement/improvement of Pulse, it's also Jack compatible as well. Feels to me like a "Win/Win" scenario all the way around… Now it just needs to become the default standard on as many distros as possible and include some proper PipeWire-native GUI tools for various desktop environments and we're golden. :)
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.