©S
TE
AM
1
STEAM POWERED
Steam itself is installed through a custom program called the
Steam Installer. This makes sense because Steam updates
itself and the games you install with it without relying on Linux’s
own update systems. These days, the installer is in the official
repositories of many Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and
Fedora and their derivatives. As Steam is proprietary software
you may have to enable a specific repository, such as ‘Multiverse’
for Ubuntu or ‘Nonfree’ on Fedora. Having done this, you can, for
example, install Steam on Ubuntu as simply as typing sudoapt
install steam-installer.
>> If you’re running a DEB-based distribution, but you can’t find
the Steam installer in the official repositories, you can obtain the
installer directly from the Steam website (steampowered.com)
and install it with the usual dpkg - i[name of archive] as the
superuser.
>> There is also another non-official way of installing
Steam that all Linux users might find interesting, and
that is installation via the Flatpak system. This offers
a few advantages of its own in terms of privacy and sandboxing,
as Steam is a system unto itself once it’s on your system. A
standard Steam installation is probably safe to use in the vast
majority of cases, but if you are concerned about safety or if the
other installation methods don’t work, give the Flatpak variant a
try (search for ‘Steam’ on https://flathub.org).
2
GAMES IN STEAM
Let’s get started with an example that we can use to
explore some of the features of Steam. Use the search
feature at the top of the Store page to search for OpenTTD, a free
management game, and click it to go to the product page for that
game. Underneath the preview images and movies, we find a bar
with some pertinent information. The first point of interest is
the price, which in this case is ‘Free’ (yay!). There are also three
icons that indicate that the game is compatible with Microsoft
Windows, macOS, and Linux.
>> That final icon, a piston arm over a wheel, indicates that the
game has native support for typical desktop Linux distributions
in addition to SteamOS, Valve’s custom, game-orientated Linux
distribution. Valve sells specialized devices that run SteamOS,
including the recently announced (and rather tasty-looking)
Steam Deck hybrid console. Developments like these are good
news for gaming on desktop Linux because it incentivizes Valve
to keep up the support.
IF YOU’REAT ALL INTERESTED in gaming on PCs, you have probably already come across
Steam, Valve’s platform for distributing, updating and running games. Steam makes it possible
to purchase a game, install it over the internet and then run it from the Steam interface.
That brings us back to the age-old gaming conundrum of support if you happen to be a Linux
user, as not every PC game is designed to run on anything other than Microsoft Windows. That
said, there are plenty of Steam games that will run on Linux, and quite often, a Windows Steam
game can be convinced to run on Linux, even though some ‘fettling’ by the user may be required.
This approach is officially supported by Steam using a system called Proton.
Getting all of these things running, and then possibly optimizing the results, is what we’ll be
looking at in this tutorial. – MICHAEL REED
YOU’LL NEED THIS
STEAM
Linux
Proton
Internet connection
>> It’s worth scrolling further down the product page
to determine what the recommended specifications are
and make sure that your machine meets them. In the
case of OpenTTD, they are fairly light.
3
INSTALLATION OPTIONS
As the game is free, we could begin the installation
procedure, but there are a few points to make
about installation options in advance. It’s quite common
to end up with a system that has more than one hard
drive installed and, for this reason, you might prefer to
install games to a drive other than the system drive.
>> To begin to configure this, the option that you’re
looking for is called Steam Library Folders, and it’s
located in Steam > Library > Steam Library Folders.
From here, you can add an alternative installation
folder located anywhere in the Linux filesystem that
you have permission to access. The great thing about
doing this is that the default game installation location
is still available as an option in the installation dialogue.
So, you can make decisions about installation location
based on available hard drive space and performance
>> Enabling Steam Play within the Steam settings dialog so that
we can run supported and unsupported Windows games on Linux.
62 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2022
R&D
