Steam is now available as a Flatpak app via Flathub

Flathub [Official Site], a 'central hub' for Flatpak [Official Site] applications have now made a Flatpak of Steam available for Linux users.

Note: I've not used Flatpak at all myself, nor have I tried out this Steam Flatpak as I don't want any issues with my existing install.

Found on the github for Flathub is com.valvesoftware.Steam, where you can find out more about what it's doing. While it is unofficial, Valve could request access if they wished to take control of it, according to this comment on github.

The actual Steam download itself is little more than another downloader anyway, which then downloads the full Steam application. The Flatpak for Steam doesn't actually contain the Steam downloader, looking at the JSON file, it actually links to the official downloadable tar.gz from Valve. Steam also updates itself, so it's possibly one of the less important applications for Flatpak. While Flatpak is claimed to be more secure than .deb and .rpm, there's a lot of conflicting information and opinions on that.

Having a proper cross-distribution package management tool will benefit Linux quite a lot in the long run, at least that's what I think anyway. Being able to download and update any application I want and be up to date no matter the distribution is very appealing.

If you want to read more about Flatpak itself, check the official FAQ.

Thanks to AsciiWolf for the email tip! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.