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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fenglengshun Jan 18
Ah, snaps. Such a good idea. And yet, such perfect failure in being unable to prove yourself to be a comparable/better alternative to Flatpak in terms of GUI apps.
Despite happily using snaps in my Ubuntu Server, this is why I swear by Flatpak for most GUI apps and Nix for everything else, with Conty and Distrobox use here and there.
Despite happily using snaps in my Ubuntu Server, this is why I swear by Flatpak for most GUI apps and Nix for everything else, with Conty and Distrobox use here and there.
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fenglengshun Jan 18
Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...I for one would rather not deal with 32-bit dependencies. WoW64 making it to Wine 9.0 as experiment made me so happy because NOW I can see Steam dropping 32-bit dependencies in 2025.
Other than that, there's the case of immutable distro, and overall just making it work well as apps installed on user's home, as well as working around whatever weirdness any distro would have going on in their packaging policies.
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Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: kerossinI've been running Steam Flatpak on openSUSE Tumbleweed for over a year (maybe 2 years, can't remember) and had no problems.Don't they already support flatpak version of Steam? Isn't that what the Steamdeck uses? (Maybe not, I'd have to look).
Would be great if Valve would officially support Steam Flatpak, it would cover a lot more distros than just the Debian family but I believe it wouldn't be that much more work since it uses specific versions of Flatpak runtimes.
Edit: Also, funny how they hired more devs to work on Snap support in other distros while their own doesn't work properly yet.
Valve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop. They also only officially support one way one installing the client and that is the official .deb. SteamOS is using Arch so the client is packaged by Valve themselves but no other devices that Steam Decks are officially supported - yet.
Even though Valve is doing a lot of cool things they are still a small company (by headcount). I think the chances of Valve dedicating resources to support more than one distro, or more than one way of installing Steam, are slim. Maybe Flatpak could replace deb and SteamOS replace Ubuntu LTS in the future.
Quoting: EikeQuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm raeding 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!
What 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.
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fenglengshun Jan 18
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).
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Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...
Nothing gives me more security nightmares than when a Windows freelancer shares their screen and they have the Steam icon next to sensitive client data. Hundreds of binaries from random countries and companies, none written with security in mind, all running with full user privileges.
That said, snap's sandbox seems almost useless as well, with most apps getting access to "home" by default. I have more trust in flatpak's sandboxing, but then you trade the mostly verified apps of snapcraft against mostly unverified apps on flathub. I don't understand why Valve has verified the Steam Link on flathub, but not Steam itself.
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hardpenguin Jan 18
Lmaoooooooo get rekt Snap users
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Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...
It's been said before, but do you really feel comfortable with every random game having full access to your whole file system?!
TBF, i really can't think of any reason to NOT containerize things like Game(s/-launchers) or Browsers whereever possible on anything but a pure gaming system. Besides ignorance and/or stupidity of course.
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Quoting: BrokattQuoting: EikeQuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm raeding 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!
What 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.
As said: dependencies. And I'm not promoting Flatpak either, I prefer the "native" package (deb or whatever your system uses) of your distribution. The distribution makers download the same deb you can download (so they'll hardly make it worse), and they can add to it what the distribution needs to run it. I'm not saying the Steam deb does not work at all, it just might miss dependencies. Of course, if you know what to do, you can install them manually.
People keep coming in the forum with "Steam does not work on Linux", and when you make them show the terminal output, it's missing (32 bit) libraries. And people post "Steam for Linux cannot use games on my hard drive", and when you dig into it, they're using Snap or Flatpak, didn't even know they do, and thus wouldn't know why Steam cannot access other drives.
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Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...In addition to the points above, I really like the idea of being able to have a different Mesa stack than my regular workloads. I run Ubuntu 22.04 and value the stability for most things, but would like my games to have the benefit of all the recent work on the Mesa stack (and I mind less if they crash as a result). That is the default with the Steam snap, as I understand it:
https://snapcraft.io/blog/what-the-steam-snap-is-evolving
QuoteSince the Steam snap is isolated from the rest of the host OS, we now include the Oibaf PPA by default. This means your games will be able to take advantage of bleeding edge Mesa libraries without impacting the stability of your system or the overhead of adding the PPA and re-enabling after upgrading.That is less of an issue for me now that I have a Steam Deck, though.
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Quoting: EikeQuoting: BrokattQuoting: EikeQuoteValve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm raeding 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!
What 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.
As said: dependencies. And I'm not promoting Flatpak either, I prefer the "native" package (deb or whatever your system uses) of your distribution. The distribution makers download the same deb you can download (so they'll hardly make it worse), and they can add to it what the distribution needs to run it. I'm not saying the Steam deb does not work at all, it just might miss dependencies. Of course, if you know what to do, you can install them manually.
People keep coming in the forum with "Steam does not work on Linux", and when you make them show the terminal output, it's missing (32 bit) libraries. And people post "Steam for Linux cannot use games on my hard drive", and when you dig into it, they're using Snap or Flatpak, didn't even know they do, and thus wouldn't know why Steam cannot access other drives.
What'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. This alone should make Ubuntu the recommendation for all beginners who, judging by the numbers, are growing. But many active Linux forum users are so proud in their specific choice of distro, package format, display server etc. that they don't take this simple fact into account. I am not surprised Valve is getting bug reports for Steam Snap. I'm sure they get bug reports for Steam Flatpak and all the other packages as well. Heck I'm sure they get support cases for Hannah Montana Linux.
When I time and time again see posts like "Hi I am a Linux noob. What distro should I use" and the top response is Manjaro, I sigh and shake my head. It's no wonder Linux have a reputation for being complex. We don't ease new user in.
Last edited by Brokatt on 18 January 2024 at 10:58 am UTC
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