New Steam Beta can run the Linux client inside a container with 64bit

Valve have been cooking! A new Steam Client Beta is available with something quite special for Linux gamers, as Valve work to continue improving Linux gaming.

This is some pretty impressive sounding stuff that Valve have done here, and should eventually (when stable) ensure we get a great Steam experience across many different Linux distributions - and finally with 64bit too that people have been asking for a long time. It's called the "Linux SteamRT3 Beta" and Valve explained it in the patch notes as:

• The Steam for Linux client can now be run inside a Steam Runtime container. This will help the Steam client provide a more consistent experience across multiple distributions. This is the same technology we use for Steam games.

• The SteamRT3 beta client is distributed alongside the regular beta client. You can opt-in to the beta client via the 'Use experimental SteamRT3 Steam Client' toggle in Settings->Interface.

• The SteamRT3 beta client has been updated to 64 bits.

• Please report issues specific to the SteamRT3 beta in the Beta Forums or the steam-for-linux issue tracker.

Plus some other useful changes came along for the ride:

Big Picture Mode

• Moved Steam chat into the quick access menu, making it easier to access while in-game.

• Introduced new quick chat feature for Steam Deck and Big Picture Mode

  • When in a chat, press and hold the view button to bring up quick chat options.

  • Move thumbstick and release view button to send a quick chat.

  • Quick chats can be edited in Settings > Keyboard

Remote Play

• Enabled streaming while Remote Desktop is active on Windows

• Added more flexible options to the Advanced Host Options for selecting primary display, resolution, refresh rate, etc. while streaming from a Windows computer. This will also allow setting whether HDR is enabled while streaming.

• Added support for the SudoVDA virtual display driver on Windows. If you have the SudoVDA driver installed and select this as your primary display in the Advanced Host Options, Steam will automatically create a virtual display to match the client display settings.

Source: Valve