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.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
I have had nothing but issues with Snaps. I tried them again recently, with a fresh Ubuntu install, and various applications were just outright broken, as always seems to be the case. Flatpaks worked perfectly and they're my go to choice if a binary isn't available.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: SupayI have had nothing but issues with Snaps. I tried them again recently, with a fresh Ubuntu install, and various applications were just outright broken, as always seems to be the case. Flatpaks worked perfectly and they're my go to choice if a binary isn't available.Interesting, I have the opposite experience: I'm actually very glad that snaps are there, because I can install 3rd party software like Spotify, Rider, Pycharm or WPS Office, which either would not be there this easily available (e.g. JetBrains apps would have to be downloaded from their website or their separate repo) or would be calling home, if not sandboxed (looking at you, chinese WPS Office...)
For the past years (approx. from Ubuntu 20.04) I've had exactly 0 issues with snaps, and I'm using them daily...
2 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 19
Quoting: mattaraxiaHmm, I haven't tested my Index since I swapped to an AMD GPU. I'll have to test it soonish.Quoting: CatKillerQuoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.They don't support Gnome any more - well, specifically Wayland Gnome; X11 Gnome is OK - because it breaks SteamVR. I can't remember which widget it is that Gnome doesn't provide (I don't use VR and I don't use Gnome) but ISTR that the Gnome devs specifically refuse to support that widget. Someone with more familiarity with the details can fill in the gaps.
I would be really interested to know that too. I was kind of surprised the deck doesn't at least support GNOME. I get KDE is more accommodating to Windows users and being friendly to them is obviously a high priority for the deck, but GNOME is so good on a hybrid/tablet style device like that. VR being a priority makes a lot of sense.
Edit: it appears to be this: DRM leasing. They don't refuse, it's just never been complete enough to be merged:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/2759
0 Likes
mattaraxia Jan 20
Quoting: slaapliedjeI'll have to test it soonish.
Quoting: BrokattQuoting: CatKillerQuoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.They don't support Gnome any more - well, specifically Wayland Gnome; X11 Gnome is OK - because it breaks SteamVR. I can't remember which widget it is that Gnome doesn't provide (I don't use VR and I don't use Gnome) but ISTR that the Gnome devs specifically refuse to support that widget. Someone with more familiarity with the details can fill in the gaps.
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: 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-devices
And 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.
Neither SteamOS 2.0 nor 3.0 was/is meant as a desktop replacement. If you look at the recommended specs on the Steam page for any Valve game they only ever recommend an Ubuntu LTS release.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1114-3F74-0B8A-B784
Quoting: mattaraxiaQuoting: CatKillerQuoting: BrokattValve officially only supports one distro and that is the latest Ubuntu LTS - with either Gnome or KDE desktop.They don't support Gnome any more - well, specifically Wayland Gnome; X11 Gnome is OK - because it breaks SteamVR. I can't remember which widget it is that Gnome doesn't provide (I don't use VR and I don't use Gnome) but ISTR that the Gnome devs specifically refuse to support that widget. Someone with more familiarity with the details can fill in the gaps.
I would be really interested to know that too. I was kind of surprised the deck doesn't at least support GNOME. I get KDE is more accommodating to Windows users and being friendly to them is obviously a high priority for the deck, but GNOME is so good on a hybrid/tablet style device like that. VR being a priority makes a lot of sense.
Edit: it appears to be this: DRM leasing. They don't refuse, it's just never been complete enough to be merged:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/2759
As far as I can see Gnome is supported on Steam for Linux. Why would they put resources into supporting Gnome on Steam Deck? I would guess a majority of the Steam Deck users don't ever use Desktop Mode. Other features like HDR support have higher priority than adding another DE to Desktop Mode.
The reason is literally right there in the comment you're quoting? You're welcome to disagree with it, you may be right about the usage, but uh, the reason is right there. I literally think it cannot be clearer.
I didn't say it should be a higher priority than other things, just that I've been "kind of surprised" that it wasn't there. The VR support makes sense.
Also isn't HDR there now with the OLED deck? And much of the development was done by not-Valve. I really doubt that they would have to sarcrifice resources for one over the other.
0 Likes
Valve are absolutely not going to put a second DE on the Deck. They're space-constrained already with two copies of the OS before you even get to games and shader caches that you have to fit into 64 GB. They aren't going to bloat that out for something (choice of desktop environment) that's an anti-feature for the machine's use case. It's getting one, and Valve have already picked it: KDE. While there are several plausible reasons to choose that one - it behaving like a normal desktop rather than Gnome's One True Workflow, the devs being much nicer to work with, and so on - the reason Valve gave for their choice was that it was the DE that Valve staff use and like.
There is (finally) a Wayland HDR spec that people haven't rejected. But it isn't finished. So Valve took the parts of that which work for single-window fullscreen games and implemented it in their own compositor; KDE are using just that bit for single-window fullscreen games in Plasma 6, too. At some point all the finer details of how to handle mixed HDR and non-HDR content in multiple windows will have been worked out and there'll be a full Wayland HDR and colour management spec that the compositors can implement; gamescope, not yet being a Wayland compositor and only being interested in single-window games, doesn't need to bother with any of that.
There is (finally) a Wayland HDR spec that people haven't rejected. But it isn't finished. So Valve took the parts of that which work for single-window fullscreen games and implemented it in their own compositor; KDE are using just that bit for single-window fullscreen games in Plasma 6, too. At some point all the finer details of how to handle mixed HDR and non-HDR content in multiple windows will have been worked out and there'll be a full Wayland HDR and colour management spec that the compositors can implement; gamescope, not yet being a Wayland compositor and only being interested in single-window games, doesn't need to bother with any of that.
5 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jan 20
Quoting: CatKillerValve are absolutely not going to put a second DE on the Deck. They're space-constrained already with two copies of the OS before you even get to games and shader caches that you have to fit into 64 GB. They aren't going to bloat that out for something (choice of desktop environment) that's an anti-feature for the machine's use case. It's getting one, and Valve have already picked it: KDE. While there are several plausible reasons to choose that one - it behaving like a normal desktop rather than Gnome's One True Workflow, the devs being much nicer to work with, and so on - the reason Valve gave for their choice was that it was the DE that Valve staff use and like.Why would they need two copies of the OS (unless you're referring to the fail over?) I know AtariOS does this with their immutable set up for rollbacks.
There is (finally) a Wayland HDR spec that people haven't rejected. But it isn't finished. So Valve took the parts of that which work for single-window fullscreen games and implemented it in their own compositor; KDE are using just that bit for single-window fullscreen games in Plasma 6, too. At some point all the finer details of how to handle mixed HDR and non-HDR content in multiple windows will have been worked out and there'll be a full Wayland HDR and colour management spec that the compositors can implement; gamescope, not yet being a Wayland compositor and only being interested in single-window games, doesn't need to bother with any of that.
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeWhy would they need two copies of the OS (unless you're referring to the fail over?) I know AtariOS does this with their immutable set up for rollbacks.If you already know the answer, why ask the question?
The Deck has one /home partition and two completely independent copies of the OS - the current one and the previous one. Updates overwrite the "previous" version, which then becomes the "current" version, and the former "current" version becomes the "previous" version. The device always has at least one complete OS it can boot into because neither version can affect the other - updates are atomic.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: CatKillerupdates are atomic.I worry about fallout.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyDebbie Harry's got you covered.Quoting: CatKillerupdates are atomic.I worry about fallout.
1 Likes, Who?
Fester_Mudd Jan 22
Valve could start collaborating with Canonical for the snap package. Also with who creates the flatpak mutually. These packaging formats are the present and future of Linux app packaging.
AppImage is just not it: they don't integrate with the system, don't have an automatic update by default and they need to be made executable manually (this is already too much for normal users).
This is not that much of a Canonical or a Ubuntu issue though as this same could happen easily with flatpak.
Flatpak cannot handle CLI and server side stuff for the record but snaps can. That said we have managed to narrow the packaging methods kinda to only 2. Snap and flatpak it is. Kind of like MSI and EXE in Windows world, i suppose.
AppImage is just not it: they don't integrate with the system, don't have an automatic update by default and they need to be made executable manually (this is already too much for normal users).
This is not that much of a Canonical or a Ubuntu issue though as this same could happen easily with flatpak.
Flatpak cannot handle CLI and server side stuff for the record but snaps can. That said we have managed to narrow the packaging methods kinda to only 2. Snap and flatpak it is. Kind of like MSI and EXE in Windows world, i suppose.
0 Likes
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me