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.

Do you game on Ubuntu or one of their flavours like Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Canonical want your help in further testing of the Steam snap. For anyone confused: there's many different types of packages on Linux. There's deb, rpm, flatpak, snap, appimage and more. Snap is what Canonical (who make Ubuntu) are rolling with.

Writing on their official Discourse forum, developer Ken VanDine mentioned they're hoping to have the snap of Steam out of Early Access soon and available to everyone.

In the post VanDine mentioned they've been "working feverishly to resolve issues and ensure it works well" and testing has been done across "the most popular Steam titles which should ‘just work’ based on reports on ProtonDB". But now they want more people to get involved to give their reports on how games work.

Details on how to get involved can be seen in the forum post.

The overall feeling you get from looking online is that snaps aren't particularly popular. However, is it just a case of a few people shouting above the rest? VanDine answered a few of my questions on that and more in an interview with GOL last year.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Steam, Ubuntu
21 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 checked 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.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
54 comments
Page: 1/6»
  Go to:

mr-victory Mar 17, 2023
Ah shit, here we go again...
Linuxer Mar 17, 2023
Nicee! Steam in a sandboxed snap sounds great. I hear this works lot better than the flatpak one. I generally use both snaps and flatpaks whatever is available
BlackBloodRum Mar 17, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: LinuxerNicee! Steam in a sandboxed snap sounds great. I hear this works lot better than the flatpak one. I generally use both snaps and flatpaks whatever is available
What issues does the flatpak one have? I've been using it for several months now without issues?
Linuxer Mar 17, 2023
Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: LinuxerNicee! Steam in a sandboxed snap sounds great. I hear this works lot better than the flatpak one. I generally use both snaps and flatpaks whatever is available
What issues does the flatpak one have? I've been using it for several months now without issues?

i don't know. sometimes in packages snap works better and sometimes flatpak and sometimes theres no differrence
dziadulewicz Mar 17, 2023
I have started to like Snaps more and more. They work really well now! They also fixed this bug now: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1980271
Ananace Mar 17, 2023
Amusingly enough, Steam has been using a fork of Flatpak for their own runtime for a while at this point, so I guess this means people will soon be running Flatpak inside of Snap.
Linas Mar 17, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
I don't have anything against snaps as such, but the way Canonical are pushing them onto users feels disrespectful. Like if you apt install firefox, it will pull in snapd, and install the snap package of Firefox. Not quite what I expected the system to do.
Klaas Mar 17, 2023
Quoting: LinasNot quite what I expected the system to do.
Who would expect that? It's deliberately doing something else instead what it was told to do…
BlackBloodRum Mar 17, 2023
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Klaas
Quoting: LinasNot quite what I expected the system to do.
Who would expect that? It's deliberately doing something else instead what it was told to do…
Which ironically, goes against what the CLI always had the advantage over a GUI of:

Type what you want, it does it immediately and only does what you asked it to do.

Unlike a GUI where you have to go hunting for the option for 15 minutes first. Yes Windows, I'm looking at you.
sarmad Mar 17, 2023
Quoting: LinasI don't have anything against snaps as such, but the way Canonical are pushing them onto users feels disrespectful. Like if you apt install firefox, it will pull in snapd, and install the snap package of Firefox. Not quite what I expected the system to do.

I personally like Snaps, but what you mention is definitely wrong behaviour. If you don't want to maintain the deb package then just remove it from the repo and let people know that they need to install it from snap or just install it on their own from somewhere else.
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.