Canonical's STEAM SNAP Is Too BROKEN For Valve

[@BrodieRobertson]

Unimportant side note, that link on the Github isn't broken, Brave just decided to die a little bit and for some reason not start the download unlike it normally does. Honestly not at all sure why

[@neobree]

*Insert Firefox shilling here*

[@deadoon]

@@neobree Cliqz and laserlike incidents in firefox. They killed my trust with them due to those.

[@ukyoize]

lol chrome crypto browser

[@GuyWhoChad]

happened with me too when i was trying to download debian

[@LabiaLicker]

imagine using spyware browser

[@GSBarlev]

This is why I'm _actually strongly in favor_ of the *Hot Potato License:* you may do whatever you wish with this software, so long as *you update the contact information* if you make any changes.

[@trajectoryunown]

That'd fix many problems on every level. XD

[@Braiam]

They did. It's on the snap store page. Users simply don't use it. No matter how carefully crafted your signage may be, the river just goes.

[@needsLITHIUM]

@@Braiam more like people just don't read

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@Braiam : "On the Snap store page" is not synonymous with "carefully crafted", it's synonymous with "out of sight, out of mind".

[@ZeroUm_]

I'd go with *Hotter Potato License*: If you fork it, please also change the name and logo to a completely different one.

[@rainmannoodles]

Valve should make Steam detect if it's running inside a snap, then remove the default help/contact options and display a message with a link explaining how to direct their bug reports to Canonical.

[@cshairydude]

Either that or point blank refuse to work.

[@reezlaw]

@@cshairydude refusing to work would be a really, really bad move. Linux already doesn't have the greatest reputation, this would be free ammo for the haters

[@LabiaLicker]

No. They just need to setup github issue templates

[@xavierrodriguez2463]

​@@reezlawI don't see how this would be an issue? Isn't steam installable as a normal .deb from the steam website? Most people who install steam on windows download the installer .exe from the website so it seems like it would be the most natural option

[@Mallchad]

​@@reezlawI disagree. Silently erroring is an even worse move. If steam never, or consistently doesn't work on snap, making it clear it doesn't work to the user is a *very good thing*. Annoying? yes. but a broken app is also annoying

[@Gabr64]

Top Linux in Steam Survey: 1. "SteamOS Holo" 64 bit 2. "Arch Linux" 64 bit 3. Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit 4. Freedesktop SDK 23.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit

[@wilfridtaylor]

We should just start calling them Canonical Store Apps instead of snap.

[@DonaldWyman]

Snaps seems to be the hill that canonical is dead set on dying on, no matter how much the majority of the Linux community hates them.

[@tems4807]

And here comes that one random guy, who's thinks that this youtube's comment section is the whole linux community. BTW, I have never heard of an app in flathub with 1Million+ active installs(not downloads) over a week!

[@FotisValasiadis]

As a dev, snaps are actually quite nice for quickly setting up dev tools. Regarding desktop apps though.....

[@reezlaw]

I have a feeling that this Snap fixation alone has been the cause for a significant drop in Ubuntu's market share

[@michaeldugger8436]

@@FotisValasiadis Yeah! Just grant them root and it's so simple!

[@DonaldWyman]

@@reezlaw I agree. There are many people that have left Ubuntu for that fact alone.

[@kxuydhj]

as someone who doesn't like canonical and hates snaps, i absolutely love this. "use the unofficial flatpak instead" reminds me of "gnome's broken, install plasma instead". say what you want but valve does have the guts to say where it's at. also, i hope valve will just build some sort of warning into the client that says: "this is known broken because it's a snap, please do not use it." also: distro rpm user here, works like a charm. and unlike discord, the auto-updater properly works in the distro package.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

That has to be the only time anyone honestly evaluated GNOME. It breaks all the standards and then tries to make its breakage the new standard, and usually succeeds. Like Wayland! And systemd!

[@kxuydhj]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 the difference is that wayland and systemd tend to fix more issues than they cause, in my personal experience at least. also, systemd entered a fairly chaotic landscape without significant standardisation and became the standard, while gnome takes the standard, wipes its ass with it and says: "what else would it be good for?" and on wayland: x11 is just FUBAR. it may be pretty stable and usable but it's also pretty unmaintainable and an absolute disaster specification-wise. wayland will probably befall the same fate eventually, but for now it's at the very least something more futureproof than x11. also: wayland does have the massive advantage of being a set of specifications rather than an actual piece of software which means that while individual compositors might eventually die of spaghetti disease the chance of the wayland specifications dying like that is much less likely, or at least less likely for the time being. look at it like how lots of unixes died but posix and the single unix spec live on.

[@mathman0569]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 Wayland is better than X11 hands down, it's generally smoother, and a lot of "wayland" problems are often GNOME problems. Plus Wayland is starting to not just on par with X11, it's starting to pull ahead with support for things X11 never supported, like HDR. And Xorg is dying and it very likely going to be a dead project before too long :P

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

@@kxuydhj you... do know that X11 isn't a piece of software either, right?

[@needsLITHIUM]

As a fellow who can't stand GNOME and far prefers either Cinnamon or KDE, this is a comment after my own heart, lol.

[@arcticrevrus9883]

This is a natural headache of packaged proprietary software. Source isnt available to build and repackage for every platform, and everything that *isnt* the .deb *is* the .deb, just ham fisted into some other packaging that can do nothing other than make it worse. It would be within their rights and possibly even *advisable* to threaten legal action at canonical for implying that Steam is a "verified" package by "Canonical". The negative user experience this causes can and very likely does affect end users' view on the quality of Valve's software. A warning pop-up from valve is probably the *most* freedom respecting option they have, and the idea of being able to run whatever packaging of the software the user wants gets thrown out the window once they accept that they are installing non-free software. This is entirely on canonical, not valve.

[@Eagledelta3]

Even then, Steam is also using sandboxing/container technology for game sandboxing/compatibility. In fact, they use the same tech as Flatpak. The problem is if Steam is running in a Flatpak, then it breaks The Steam Linux Runtime - Soldier/Sniper as the Runtime no longer had access to create a new sandbox

[@obake6290]

@@Eagledelta3 Is this accurate? Genuine question. I do remember a couple years ago that when Steam started sandboxing it conflicted with the Flatpak sandboxing, but I also know a lot of effort went in to getting that working. I don't really know for sure as I dropped the Steam flatpak pretty quick when I couldn't get a controller working. Never bothered to try again.

[@bluesillybeard]

@@obake6290 Flatpak steam works perfectly for me with zero issues - although I imagine it took a lot of work on the packagers side to get it working as nicely as it does.

[@Eagledelta3]

​​@@obake6290I'm not entirely sure, but there are big reports as recent as a few months ago where Flatpak and Steam Linux Runtime were conflicting

[@RickYorgason]

This is a natural headache of repackaging *any* software. We saw the same thing happen recently with Bottles and ages ago with Debian's modifications to Firefox. Packagers just don't have as much skin in the game as upstream.

[@olnnn]

The issue tracker should really have a BIG warning about it in the template when you create an issue, not sure why they haven't added this to it given how common it is.

[@voidmain7902]

At least Flathub release was labeled as unofficial and the maintainer made it pretty clear to not spam Valve's issue tracker, while Canonical is known to sometimes alias apt=snap and intentionally blur the line between snap and apt. I don't know if this is what happened here but still another L for Canonical.

[@that_leaflet]

The version of Steam in Ubuntu's repos is not supported by Valve either. Only the deb from Valve's website is supported.

[@parjolillo1659]

They don't alias it for everything. Just for Firefox and Chromium to serve as transitional packages for upgrade paths

[@that_leaflet]

@@parjolillo1659 Some other packages too, I believe LXD is also a transitional package.

[@felix.henson]

​@@that_leafletI thought the version in the repos was steam-installer, which as far as I know just downloads the package from the steam site and installs it, is that not the case?

[@that_leaflet]

​@@felix.henson They do have their differences. Valve's deb adds a separate repo, Ubuntu's deb does not. The Valve deb lists xterm/konsole/gnome-terminal as a dependency, the Ubuntu deb does not. But yes they do both download their files from Valve's servers.

[@eksquirrel1879]

My system has changed quite a bit. I've used Debian, Mint, Arch, Nobara, PoPOS, and Fedora. I tend to use the flatpack simply because it's what I've had work most consistently when compared to the distros package.

[@kuhluhOG]

14:39 Although in this specific case it was something Mozilla asked Canonical to do. And Canonical basically went "sure, why not".

[@ThatLinuxDude]

This, literally this.

[@that_leaflet]

Still, trying to install firefox with apt shouldn't automatically install the snap. It should at least warn the user that the deb was replaced with the snap and prompt them if they still want to install it.

[@ThatLinuxDude]

@@that_leaflet That would heavily complicate update paths, unless they want to use the thing they used to use for "Incomplete language packs", as the only other sane ways would be either a prompt mid-install, which would break if APT is ran in 'no prompts' mode, or just fail the installation, thus failing the entire upgrade, if picking no (as the transitioning package shouldn't install in that case). Irregardless, in their defense, without immediate transitioning, users would be left without a browser, if not just briefly, which would likely confuse normies.

[@BrodieRobertson]

The Firefox snap is official but it's never ok to redirect users from the package they think they're installing to another, if Mozilla was involved in that they're just as much at fault

[@szaszm_]

@@BrodieRobertson Especially since it's broken. When I tried using corporate intranet with a VPN connection, the firefox snap was just ignoring the VPN, going directly to the internet. But that's just one I noticed in minutes after upgrading Ubuntu. There's probably a lot more I didn't encounter. Since then, I'm just using the Mozilla binaries instead, which are extracted to a normal user directory and have a firefox executable inside. It auto-updates like on Windows.

[@cshairydude]

Forwarding Apt installs through snap despite promising they wouldn't do that is precisely why Mint - a derivative of Ubuntu - doesn't use snap. In fact, because some Ubuntu Debian packages (like Firefox) _silently install Snap as a dependency,_ Mint now _bans_ Snap from being installed. Mint's version of apt will detect that it's being installed and stop it.

[@fmo94jos8v3]

Debian should ban this as well if they don't already, for security reasons.

[@tad2021]

My general preference. Native > flatpak > an alternative app that supports the first two > the official snap package from the app dev > a will sorted bottle of the windows version > windows version in a vm > an unofficial snap package This reminds me, I really need to unsnap FF still...

[@that_leaflet]

I would attach a "> Appimage" at the very end there

[@szaszm_]

I'm using the binary tarball from Mozilla, extracted to my home directory. I'm starting it from the terminal tho, didn't bother to make a desktop file for it, but it works great, and auto-updates itself like on Windows.

[@tad2021]

@@szaszm_ Yeah, I'll likely do similar, though at least update the XFCE key combo (Windows not having that messes with me at the office...) The annoying forced unannounced background snap updates alone are enough to make me dislike and distrust snap.

[@tad2021]

@@that_leaflet Maybe somewhere before end, since Appimages at least tend to work. I rarely come across them, had forgotten they exist.

[@vlya1533]

flatpak is a very limited sandbox, even in comparison with snap

[@t8db]

Heads up, the 'couldnt write to /snap' doesn't mean it's running in a snap. I have the same exact thing in Silverblue where it attempts to write into all of my read-only partitions. It's simply a script where valve is testing which drives it has access to (and to show them in the external storage devices list).

[@fmo94jos8v3]

Can't Valve just check the permissions of each drive? Why do you need to write test them?

[@caseyjp1]

Arch Multilib package. ZERO issues with the client OTHER than actual steam reported issues over the last couple years. I haven't had to update it from pacman/yay since as Steam updates the client when launching.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Same here. The only issue I had was with upstream Steam Nvidia bugs on my desktop, and it's Nvidia problems, of course.

[@caseyjp1]

I haven't those issues cuz...drumroll....ALL amd hardware. @@cameronbosch1213

[@Wurstbrot03]

I use the Flatpak version of Steam and for the most part it works fine. The only problem I had, was that it didn't detect wireless controllers out of the box. I needed to install a different package from the repository for that. And you have to manually give the Flatpak additional read/write privileges if you want a different/extra game folder location.

[@omfgbunder2008]

Gentoo's unofficial ebuild for steam unpacks the tarball from the same website that hosts the deb file. Valve chose to release it as a tarball, the ebuild just unpacks it and puts the files on the system. That said, Gentoo has a mechanism to unpack deb files, they could have just as easily unpacked that instead. Whatever Canonical does is none of Gentoo's business.

[@arcane3327]

You can process .deb problemless? I didn't knew that. Thanks

[@zoltan1953]

I love how Brodie actively wishes for chaos to ensue for the sake of turning it into dank content. 🤣

[@johanphilip5975]

i mean the most entertaining videos are wayland drama

[@sleeper789]

So, I tried the Steam Snap a few months back because I didn't want to install all the 32bit dependencies of the deb package into my main system and wanted to contain them inside the snap. Steam itself worked fine, but I couldn't get the game I wanted to play to work. I did submit a bug report with the crash log to the steam-snap repo to let Canonical know, but it's never been acted on and I basically gave up and installed the deb eventually.

[@Gabr64]

I recently migrated to the Flatpak version for two reasons, the first is that it integrates with Gnome 45's "App running in the background", so I no longer need the tray extension. The second is that for some reason some games didn't work on Fedora's Steam but worked on the flatpak version.

[@nice_bnuuy]

Seems nothing has changed, I tried the Steam Snap when I was dicking around with Ubuntu 23.10 and it just outright wouldn't work with many games

[@123Daktary]

Steam trying to write to a Snap location was a problem with Steam itself, but they never bothered to check. I made a bug report on their forums a while ago and several others comnented on the topic. Before the GUI rewrite, Steam used to test EVERY SINGLE MOUNT POINT to see if it is a writable location (including snaps, loopback devices, boot, home, etc.). This is / was a part of library folder functionality. Steam expects your library folder location to be writable and hides the read-only locations from the folder browser. They never commented on the issue, but it was fixed with the GUI rewrite. You used to get that warning every time you would open Steam from the terminal, if you had any kind of read-only mount points.

[@fmo94jos8v3]

One can easily check permissions, I don't see why Steam tries a test write. I'd be concerned about writing over other data personally. Even if the chance is minimal, it's still a chance. If they just checked permissions they'd know whether they can write or not.

[@0LoneTech]

.deb files are packages installed using the dpkg package manager, so installing them is not bypassing the package manager. However, it may have distro specific or broken dependency metadata, which could make it impractical on Debian. Debian's (contrib) packages have steam-libs for dependencies and steam-installer which installs Steam in ~/.steam/debian-installation. Being a kind of package manager itself, complete with self updating, Steam requires a user writable location.

[@audrickyeu]

i run the flatpak version and it works flawlessly on Arch. the only potential problem is that you need to use the flatpak version of proton-GE.

[@martenkahr3365]

I tried the flatpak version on Mint, and it basically refused to install anything, even native Linux games, in a functional state. And it kept forgetting any of the (non-functional) games were installed at all every time I closed Steam.

[@Beryesa.]

Yeah, but that's just a click away on gnome software as extensions, better user experience imo

[@bleack8701]

I hope Valve switch to Flatpak so it's more universal, but I'm fine with the .deb. I do have an issue with Flatpak saying "by Valve Corporation" when it's...not. Sure, the fine print says it's community ran, but....that can be very misleading unless people read the description. Which they should, but that doesn't really solve the issue. There should be a way to differentiate between official and community without there being so much room for error The verified checkmark can mean a few different things so that's not really a solution in my opinion. It can mean that's manually verified to be safe, to be compatible, that it's passing all the guidlines etc etc. Sure, it CAN mean verified as in this is the official one....but it says "Canonical (verified)", which is less misleading than "by Valve Corporation". Neither is a good solution, but one is more clear, and in this case I think it's Canonical. And for context, I don''t even use ubuntu so I'm not using snaps. I use flatpaks and this is exactly why I have an issue with the way they present things

[@WMan37]

I love the Steam Flatpak too, but it has a major issue: SteamVR does not work with it. If valve switched to flatpak, they would have to find a way to solve this issue.

[@pandapip1]

​@@WMan37 As someone that's failing to get SteamVR to work on Linux (I'm using the official .deb and Pop OS), do you have any tips?

[@WMan37]

@@pandapip1 As much as I would like to help you, I can't help you cause I use the pacman -S steam-runtime on arch. I am unfamiliar with PopOS, it's actually one of the only distros I have not actually felt the need to try because I'm not a fan of Cosmic's layout because I hate GNOME and it's too similar to GNOME for me.

[@WMan37]

@@pandapip1 If you see a double reply it's because youtube seems to have eaten my last reply on my end. I would genuinely love to help you but I use steam through pacman on arch (I think the multilib repository) so I don't have experience with using the deb.

[@bltzcstrnx]

​@@pandapip1use Windows? Haha, I'm kidding. Although, using Windows does make it work.

[@mrkosmos9421]

At this point, Valve should just add code to detect whether Steam is running in a snap, and when started just show a warning redirecting to the official download

[@MechMK1]

The moment I first used snap I was like "What is this!? Why is nothing working!?" Glad to see this is still the case

[@NeptuneSega]

False, why would you be glad it doesn't work

[@rikuleinonen]

@@NeptuneSega they don't want them to be good for one reason or another. Like, say, disliking the whole idea of snaps.

[@sentinel2199]

6+ months ago I tried both the Flatpak & Snap versions of Steam, and many more games ran on the Flatpak version than the Snap version - but still not all the games I tried. Sadly I can't have the Flatpak version installed alongside the official Deb version (so that I can use Deb when Flatpak doesn't work), as launching VR games from the Deb version ends-up trying (and failing) to launch them using the Flatpak version for some strange reason (which really confused me for some time as I couldn't work-out why VR games had stopped working).

[@FengLengshun]

I run Steam through Flatpak on my Kinoite laptop. I could use Bazzite Arch container, but Flatpak works well enough there. On main Bazzite, Steam is provided out of the box as a host system package so I just use that now.

[@rocstar3000]

I run the Arch package from multilib, I use i3, I have a bug where no drop-down works on my steam, I suppose it's something i3wm related, I just use the steam client as a launcher and browse through my browser instead.

[@deultima]

I run the Flatpak myself. I like that it bundles in the Mesa drivers and everything you need to get gaming easily. It really simplifies the whole process. The only complicated thing I had to do was install Flatseal to give my other SSD file permissions so it showed up in the storage options. Along with Proton-Up-Qt for Proton-GE I'm playing all my favourite games without any issues. I haven't noticed any performance concerns, everything just runs flawlessly on my LMDE system.

[@nezunskyfire292]

I tried messing around with the newest Ubuntu release a few weeks ago, and my god, it was just a hairpulling experience trying to get Steam to detect my second SSD with the Snap version. I installed the deb and had no issues whatsoever afterwards. To which I promptly removed snapd before going back to Nobara.

[@inconnn]

valve should probably ask the packagers to add a popup saying to contact them before valve, or add such a popup themselves, if it's really that big of an issue.

[@DjBloodsaw]

I use the steam-native package from the arch repo I don't have any issues with the client except when terminiating the client, steamwebhelper will hang and it wont allow me to open again unless i kill the steamwebhelper processes. It's a little cumbersome during client updates but its not a huge issue for me.

[@Xmetalfanx]

for any package (note: i may use Mint on an install, but not Ubuntu spins that all default to snaps now) i always default for "native repo package" then flatpak (sometimes flatpak if say on an older Ubuntu based LTS, first) ....though there are other cases where i get the package from the dev (say if using Vivaldi or something)

[@somesalmon5694]

I do all my gaming with flatpaks and use my native package manager for basically everything else. Its mostly just so i dont have to have so many extra 32bit libraries installed.

[@inderix]

As someone who doesn't play games on my PC often, (but do on the off chance) I do have the Flatpak installed. Works well enough for me, had to make some small tweaks in Flatseal but it just works for me 👍

[@leevi6026]

02:13 Actually that is not a dead link, it is a link straight to .deb file which should start downloading straight away if your browser doesn't block them. In Edge it opens up the download list and tells "steam_latest.deb can't be downloaded securely" but there is "keep" option which you have to choose. I don't know how it goes in Brave, but I guess something similar is happening. Edit: I double checked and it's the same link in the video and in Github which I just tested, so it was not fixed between recording that video and now.

[@BrodieRobertson]

I know that's a normal way for a download to work but I don't normally have any issue with a file download like that, not entirely sure what happened then

[@leevi6026]

@@BrodieRobertson I didn't think you wouldn't that :) I only wanted to make sure it is clear what kind of link that is. But I guess it might simply be that also Brave blocks .deb files by default but doesn't do a great job bringing it up straight away, and because you don't normally download .deb files you haven't noticed how it handles that.

[@macro_concepts]

I run the steam flatpak (which has been issue-free for me). I really hope we get to a point where this is the default format on Linux. It's not hard to feel like ubuntu is single-handedly holding back the space with the snap situation

[@night_fiend6]

Being a Kubuntu user I default to use of Pacstall the Ubuntu AUR clone, with rhino-pkg used as a wrapper for that, snap, and Flatpak. I use that with deb-get, mostly to get around Canonical's stupid policy. I still have to use PPAs and package pinning sometimes. For steam I use rhino-pkg to pull the Pacstall build, it pulls the official Steam deb and installs it for me. The only reason that I have not switched to Arch is that my modified Kubuntu is just more convenient to use.

[@sevenredundent7256]

I got an issue with snap, I can't update the program while it's running. You've got to close the program before it allows you to upgrade it, it's so frustrating.

[@that_leaflet]

Are you running 22.04 LTS? I believe that's fixed in newer versions of Ubuntu but was never backported to the LTS.

[@sevenredundent7256]

@@that_leaflet ye, I LTS hop, I added mozilla's repo just so I could use the normal version of Firefox. Other than that, I don't care which package manager I'm running as long as I can update the program while I'm using it. Thank you.

[@xDShot9000]

Many don't realize that what referred as "Steam" distro package is just launcher that extracts Steam distribution into user home directory if not existing, launches and adds establishes envvars and other stuff. So sandboxing it is not proper way.

[@thepi]

I run both the flatpak and arch package. flatpak when I wanna just use it, and the native package is just there. Both of them point to the same game drive, so both work basically the same.

[@DominikZogg]

I switched from using the rpm in Fedora to the Flatpak. It's easier to reproduce on multiple systems and would probably run 1:1 on Arch

[@SlyPearTree]

I'm on Linux Mint and use the Steam from the Mint Software Manager (not the flathub one), I was under the impression that it installed the official steam client because it updates, now I am not so sure. I do have one tiny issue (empty page sometime when opening store, but going to my library and then back to store fixes it) and now wonder if using the deb from steam would fix it. This video did give me one more reason to never use Ubuntu, I think it's bad for it to sometime use snap when someone use the apt command.

[@dashcharger24]

Mint doesn't have snap, you'll need the command line to enable it.

[@darkthunder2776]

That happen with Steam Deck in desktop mode.

[@WyvernDotRed]

On Garuda Linux, I am running the Arch Linux package for Steam, as this package is convenient to install and works well in my experience. But before this video, I was already aware that this is an unofficial package and that I should not report issues with it to Valve. Before reporting such issues, I verify them on my Steam Deck, possibly in Desktop Mode, which as you mentioned is about as official of a package as possible. If it's related to my PC or laptop's hardware, I might have to unpack the .deb myself, but this hasn't been needed yet.

[@LowPolyPixel]

I use the flatpak for steam cause when I was trying to figure out which one to install what I read was generally along the lines of, "Flatpak good, because reduced risk of dependency hell." but I didn't do a search specifically for steam. It would be fairly trivial to switch to the deb and I could claw back a bit of disk space for the application itself.

[@te0nani]

I abandoned ship as soon as I heard they would pack Firefox and other desktop apps with snap. I have a SSD so the computer is fast, I don't support Ubuntu bringing back HDD speed for starting desktop applications. And so does Valve.

[@GregMan-wu2cp]

It's a shame, since Snaps have the potential to completely replace traditional package management if only they start working well. Flatpaks, because they can't be non-sandboxed, will never be able to do that.

[@incentive_music]

On Arch I've stuck with flatpak for a long time and rarely have problems. This is for both Steam and Lutris. I've found if I ran both "natively" by installing from pacman, I'd run into various issues that would require hours of work to fix. Keeping both in flatpaks feels way more stable for me.

[@thegreatboto]

Running Kubuntu at home and think I just installed Steam out of the Discover store, so, probably running the snap. Haven't had many issues on my laptop running that way. Primarily game on my Deck. However, been considering reloading my laptop up with Debian instead lately for other reasons.

[@joshua_lee732]

The issue for this is Distros doing a bad job of telling people HOW to report an issue

[@d-air1]

I scrolled way too far down to find this exact comment. People simply need to know to always report to the distro first.

[@Braiam]

If I have a problem with Firefox, what do you think most users would do? They will search "firefox ", they will not do "debian " or otherwise. That's not how humans work, and wishing them to do so is a waste of time. Work with what humans do naturally and you would be successful.

[@constancies]

Thanks for covering this. I’m hopeful more people speaking about this will push canonical to improve things, whether that’s by tightening up Snap on the desktop or by abandoning desktop Snaps in favor of Flatpaks.

[@TheSolidSnakeOil]

Remember when Canonical was dedicated to upstart. Pepperidge Farms remembers. I'm sure it'll be different this time.

[@weppwebb2885]

I am honestly wondering what I run right now, because I use Nobara, which comes with steam pre installed.

[@jrowen76]

Where do RPM (fedora), or derivatives like nobara, fit into this?

[@setaindustries]

The Fedora Steam rpm package has a checkmark next to it in Gnome Software and the project website leads to the Steam website so I guess it's official? If it's not official then the package maintainers are doing a great job, the Steam rpm works perfectly!

[@Romactu]

Canonical has fixed their Steam Snap by now (Since August 2024). The only problem is running any packages that are separated from Steam Snap like other snaps, debs and/or flatpaks. And they also fixed Super Tux (Linux Native) in order for it to work without have to do workarounds anymore. If you don't care about running debs, snaps or flatpaks as a non-steam, then there's no reason to use a deb version or flatpak version anymore for now on (If you're an Ubuntu user).

[@thingsiplay]

I run the normal package from Archlinux. Normally it does not matter which packaged version of Steam is run, because isn't it downloading and self updating in user space? That's why a repackaging in native format was never an issue with Steam. It only became an issue with formats such as Flatpak or Snap, as it runs the application in a context it was never meant to.

[@BrodieRobertson]

It can be an issue with the native package if your distro is shipping some wonky dependencies

[@pv2b]

I run the snap out of a general sense of going with defaults and expecting them to be reasonable, but I have a feeling I'm going to be switching to the Deb after hearing this

[@oappi4686]

using rpm which fedora provides. I am fairly sure I had issues with games when trying to play them via flatpack... it also requires bit more setting up to do as I have raid 0 (4 ssd:s) and that thing mounted to path that is not by default shown in flatpack version of steam. I did find command required for it to get it to show on flatpack, but I still had issue launching some games.... i think one was team fortress 2. I will probably revisit it in summer to see if issue exists. RPM is mostly running well for me, I think civilization V and beyond earth are only ones that I remember working on my linux mint install, but haven't worked at least awhile in my fedora install (at least not native linux versions of the games). Proton games work well though. Some work better in linux than on windows, but then there are those games that work horribly compared to windows counterpart... something like gta V seems to be capped to specific fps on my linux setup (regardless of resolution or how high i set my settings)... I think it is something like 50-60fps on 7900xtx.... and again regardless of resolution or detail level and gpu activity is clearly very low when checking it from corecontrol.

[@drstefankrank]

I don't use steam on my Linux computer, but I always have troubles with snap. For example file open dialogues look different, behave weird and not showing icons. Then due to sandboxing, it cannot access my data paths without some workaround like a mount --bind. Sometimes they don't open at all or need a very long time, but this could be a me-only problem. Using snaps, flatpacks or whatever always feels like installing software on windows. It throws everything over board I liked Linux package managers for. It is a bit like on servers with all these docker containers. I install a bare system and docker and some dev puts their docker app on it. I read of critical patches for like a web server and in the past you just had to update your system, but now you rely on your dev to patch and deploy their containers in time. The devs I came in contact with just ship years old stuff they included once they started developing and never bothered to update anything in there. Be it the web server, some SSL libraries or any other libraries they included and are full of bugs.

[@felderup]

the repackaging provided by distros inducing the vapours in the knowall types... well, the semi-official alienbob packages for steam always work, i think cause it just repackages, no actual changes.

[@RandomGeometryDashStuff]

15:36 why angry if it's just warning, not error

[@rigen97]

Valve should claim the snap package and replace it with an electron app that's just a guide to installing the .deb version

[@kelownatechkid]

Flatpak and docker/podman are the only universal app runtimes I would ever use since they're very open and inter-compatible in my experience, unlike snaps.

[@sylvershadow1247]

Honestly, I just hope that this gets better for both Snaps, Ubuntu & Valve. I'm personally rooting for them, and testing it out a test laptop

[@tiagotiagot]

A warning like "Canonical's Snap is known to break Steam in unexpected ways outside of Valve's control. Would you like to download the official Steam Installer instead?" that only comes up after Steam detects some snap-specific error would probably be the least likely to make users upset at valve I suspect.

[@Legion-495]

Asked the guy on Mastodon. I used the Flatpak on Fedora. Now I use the Fusion rpm instead as by his suggestion.

[@robertheinrich2994]

well, I recently started (again) with linux, but now I use mint as daily driver (and it workes great). I would have downloaded the flatpak-version, not knowing that it wasn't official. thanks for letting me know. by the way, what problem does snap try to solve that isn't solved with flatpak?

[@VektrumSimulacrum]

Nobara comes OOTB with Steam installed. I think it's the deb package. It's not listed as a flatpak on my system and I know for sure it's not a snap package.

[@VektrumSimulacrum]

@MichaelDustter they don't used exactly the same repos AFAIK. GE's website probably has that info somewhere on it.

[@Your_Degenerate]

I don't currently have Steam installed on Linux but if I did the .deb would make sense as I have an install of Debian. No Snaps on Windows... or are there if you use WSL?

[@blinking_dodo]

I just heard that APT might be redirecting to snaps, so i am not sure. Does Linux Mint have snaps? I think it would totally make sense to warn users it's an unofficial snap so bug reports go to canonical instead of Valve. Valve should not have to waste time on these reports!

[@that_leaflet]

Linux Mint has an apt policy to prevent the installation of snapd.

[@blinking_dodo]

@@that_leaflet Thanks for the reply! Glad to know i don't get snapped!

[@cameronbosch1213]

​@that_leaflet Yeah, they, Tuxedo OS, and PopOS (although afaik Mint did it first) all purge snapd and put an APT policy to prevent it from reinstalling itself. Also, all of those distros ship with flatpak preinstalled and flathub enabled. Unlike Ubuntu of course.

[@paulooliveiracastro]

Honestly, the minimum in those cases is to clearly mark packages as "Unofficial". Unofficial packages are those packaged by soneone other than the original developer. We could even have packages that are both Verified and Unofficial. This is true for snaps and flathub btw.

[@SGCSmith]

Interesting. I just switched my personal laptop from Windows 11 to Linux this week, and happened to install the Snap version of Steam. A lot seems to be working fine but, since you mentioned the Vulkan issue with Steam, I'm wondering if that's why some games in Proton aren't launching (besides Easy Anti-Cheat being a PITA, which I haven't gotten as far as troubleshooting yet). I'll keep that in mind. The other issue I'm working out is an issue with my laptop's GPU just randomly hanging. The "GPU" is an AMD Vega 8 and I suspect it's just a continuation of bugs that HP refuses to fix in the BIOS by updating AGESA from Raven Ridge's RPi v1-0-0-0 to something much more stable. The laptop already has known issues in Windows with Virtualization and IOMMU breaking the Vega 8 GPU so, yeah... lets see what Linux can do. I will say that Linux is working far better on the machine already!

[@MasterHigure]

To be honest, I don't remember what Steam version I run, but it's probably apt installed. I haven't had any issues. I don't know why people are complaining.

[@eadthem0]

I use the openSUSE provided RPM package. It works flawlessly. If i ever saw zipper redirect an install request from RPM to flatpack or anything else i would blow a gasket.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Ubuntu is the only distro I know of that does this redirect without asking the user

[@ped7g]

Wait, so you can run something called steam client, and download, install and play the games you own?? Wow, I was just collecting them, not aware of these options...

[@Braiam]

Whatever happened to the pride of Linux users of being able to submit bug reports better than average quality? Also, just by curiosity, canonical does have a link to report issues in the snap store for the steam client. It sits at 120 something reports. They even included this paragraph "This package is maintained by Canonical and not officially supported by Valve. Please report any issues through the contact or website links."

[@stefan_HEX]

Damn. I wil look into this. Anyway im on Debian 12 Stable so. I think im fine here. This was a great post and i love to get deep into this..

[@jamesphillips2285]

2:00 Interesting. I assumed "snaps" and "flatpacks" were mostly equivalent. I don't want to install the .deb because I don't want Steam to have access to my primary user account. Edit: I figured out that snaps mostly have the same problem (all users can run Steam). The main difference between the snap and the .deb would be that the .deb install script does not run sandboxed.

[@BrodieRobertson]

They achieved a similar goal but the tech they use is quite different

[@username7763]

Can you sudo run it as a different account? Or won't it work with the window manager? I'm used to being able to runas on Windows to launch programs under different users.

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@BrodieRobertson I have been reading up on it. Found the "What are the differences between snaps, appimage, flatpak and others?" Ask Ubuntu helpful. The most upvoted answer has a full feature table.

[@jamesphillips2285]

@@username7763 I have been using the "Switch user" feature to run my games on a separate user account.

[@cejannuzi]

Valve is worth 10 billion dollars. Canonical 500 million. Valve is the giant. They ought to be making their own snaps and flatpaks. Lazy gits. And as the number of users for the flatpak increase, I would bet the bugs will roll in.

[@DaraelDraconis]

I'm one of those weird Gentoo wonks. There's no ebuild that's part of Gentoo proper, but there's a well-known overlay (and I use it). I even enable the USE flag and corresponding arcane Steam client setting to use my system's libraries rather than Steam's (because really, if I'm using a source distribution why would I use un-tuned libraries where I have my own tuned ones) and I've never had a problem with it. Problems with my sound or graphics that were nothing to do with Steam or Portage, sure, but never with the Steam side or the packaging thereof.

[@DaBoomDude]

The only thing thats broken on the OBS flatpak is blackmagic decklink support. (Unless that has changed, unlikely though) as it requires the flatpak to access a blackmagic library the same version as your decklink driver So if you want to use blackmagic cards, (and i do, as those PCI cards are some of the best options for linux capture devices that arent USB) AUR and other packages are legit the best options.

[@starsetknight]

ngl, I've only had issues with the flatpak, but idk maybe I should try it again. also I haven't used it since I have learned more about managing flatpaks. As of right now I use the arch package and haven't had any issues.

[@uuu12343]

Question: why is steam maintaining primarily on debian when majority of their user/playerbase is...on Arch?

[@apo.7898]

I installed flatpak on a VM through the CLI. I get a message 'Steam input devices udev rules don't seem to be installed. If you experience issues with gamepads, consider installing "steam-devices" package using your distribution package manager. See the Steam Flatpak application wiki for more details.' Very user friendly. Is this message part of the official Steam package? The distribution of the VM doesn't have a 'steam-devices' package in the repositories, btw.

[@nekanu]

Hey, awesome video again. Unfortunately I have to disagree with you on the labeling in the Flatpak and Snap Stores: I think that users will act more on what they see then what they don't. So the labeling of "Canonical" as Publisher in the Snap Store is more clear than "Valve Corporation" in the Flatpak store. The missing Verified icon will not register with almost all users nor will most users read the description after seeing "Steam by Valve Corporation". But I do agree with the Verified making it worse on Canonical side of things.

[@BrodieRobertson]

I would agree with you 10 years ago but thanks to social media, people are conditioned to see verified badge = official. Look at the disaster when Twitter started selling badges

[@nekanu]

@@BrodieRobertson As stated, I agree on the presence part. But I still think that the absence of the the verified badge, on the Flatpak side, will not register with most users. (I mainly had issue with the one statement at 12:10 : "[..], but it is VERY clearly not marked as verified. [..]") But overall I agree with your assessments in the video

[@H3cJP]

i hope a lockdown of the snap version or a popup, that would be so funny

[@angeldude101]

In my defence, the deb literally wouldn't run on my distro. Instead, the distro basically packages the deb inside of a chroot so that Steam thinks it's running on a normal Linux distro instead of a bizarro one.

[@granatengeorg]

As a windows user who only occasionally dabbles around with Linux, and who always prefers to go to a website and clicking a nice and shiny „download“ button, it’s looking like I was doing it right all along lel.

[@rpm10k.]

I started using the flatpak after reading about the rm -rf /* bug a while back. Works great for me. Canonical can eat me though

[@rafaelmorales1926]

I actually had no idea the official way of installing steam on linux was the windows method of downloading a .deb through the internet, I always thought the .deb version of APT was the official one, huh.

[@rafaelmorales1926]

or maybe not the official, but the recommended / supported version by valve

[@cheako91155]

Users should know to always report issues to the package. though you ask for help in the apps chat, the package maintainers should lerk there and the topic should contain instructions on how to collect all necessary and some extra information.

[@JohnCrawford1979]

The repositories are not the main problem. Not updating the repository can be the problem, but it's also having unofficial packages in the repository. Yet, as noted in the video, it's more convoluted than that. I have to wonder how many people realize if they were working with any other company than Valve, who's actually invested in making Linux work, this whole Linux community project relations would be discontinued and distros maintaining their unofficial snap or other package would be getting a cease and dismiss order before going on to sue the distro maintaining the repository out of existence for not removing the unofficial package. This is why we have all these multiple streaming apps for games and other content to begin with. It's also what happens when we remove the physical content that we used to purchase and effectively own. At least I have not heard of a company trying to remove some one's VHS or DVD copy of a movie because Netflix no longer has the rights to stream it. Most people understand why that would be weird, since you own the physical copy and purchased it at a physical store.But ownership in a the virtual metaverse that is the internet, while the concept is there, it's as if it's completely foreign. Then, when the non-com world of the virtual world meets the commercial world of the 'real world, it's not often too pretty. It's not like there hasn't been attempts at making a commercial based virtual world work. Second Life is an example of trying to put free market capitalism to work, with user generated and user sold content. But even it locks horns with OpenSim, which would even exist if Linden Labs didn't make their source content free and open-source over a decade ago, back when they were obsessed with interoperability. Turns out, that didn't vork out to well, since the ability to move from one virtual world grid to another meant using a hypergate. When you do that, all the metadata that that was used by the home grid was reset and the metadata for the content would default to the current user. The same also would happen if you ported content by the various means of downloading and uploading content. So yeah, that didn't go over well with the user based content creators, and Linden Lab had to shut down the hypergrid. This led to the wars between open grids and closed commercial grids that were hoping to make their own virtual economy. Much of this is what I remember from being active between both worlds around 2009 - 2015. The two virtual world factions are there, even Second Life still exists, but it's kind of kept to being it's own niche thing, gaining a little interest when stuff like Meta or NFTs float into mainstream attention. Content is still being made by users, and even virtual land rented out. You just don't hear as much in the media about someone quiting their job because the revenue from their virtual store pays better, or that a land barron in SL made millions off of virtual land sales. That hype is long gone, but a dedicated community remains. The point? This argument over content and ownership has been going on for a long time. I doubt it will ever get resolved to anyone's liking. But we should appreciate Valve has been a lot more patent with the Linux community than, say, Nintendo or Sony would be.

[@JohnCrawford1979]

* cease and desist

[@musicalneptunian]

What a week. First, a piano taken hostage at a London train station. Now snaps are stuffed. What next? My street has been bought by Micro💩? I can hear the post man. There's a letter from Micro... Uh Oh...

[@Ormgryd]

Canonical should spend more time on this. I just wish there were one package that work on every distro and was official, But here we are with 2 more solutions instead,

[@littlek3000]

I installed steam from the regular arch repos and it works flawlessly, whats the difference between the official .deb and the package managers version?

[@dashcharger24]

The deb is basically the build version of Steam by Valve. You can compare this to Windows, giving you an exe, but you may need to install some additional libs as well, to get it fully working. The package version is built from source, or at least, it tries to use system libs, instead of the one provided by Valve. This helps, because the package manager actually tracks those files, and knows why they are there. I never used debs for this reason, and I really discourage people from using it. It's like sudo make install, it's just bad.

[@littlek3000]

@@dashcharger24 then why would valve prefer you use the deb file, so if a package manager doesn't have all the necessary deps available for some reason they're packaged with the deb file?

[@dashcharger24]

@@littlek3000 Because a Deb file can be more easily be converted to other formats. It also gives Valve more control, as they control the libs and such. I don't agree with Valve, rather they would see supporting universal packages (yes, this does include snap as well), instead of only one format, but I understand the business sides of things.

[@Rac3r4Life]

I use the steam rpm package in the Fedora repo.