Issue Report: FAILURE - Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library

[j2flerkin]

Steam for Linux is having issues running some programs when you "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" - for example I can start xclock, Pluma, and mate-calc but cannot run XTerm, xcalc, Caja, wine, or mate-terminal.

Also editing "Properties" may require closing then re-opening Steam for changes to take effect.

Can the Steam team or anyone else provide insight to the method used to run the app specified for the "Play" button? It might also save some time if I knew where Steam stored its log files.

[j2flerkin]

Some other individuals were having issues with adding non-steam games (http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/1/846939071259760675/?tscn=1355033223) but I currently think the issue is unrelated.

[j2flerkin]

A friend suggested I check what user the steam application is running as to verify it had permissions to execute the applications.
"ps -Ao pid,user,comm" showed both "steam.sh" and "MainThrd" were both operating under my username.

presence of a .desktop file doesn't seem to make a difference.

[Joey The Saint]

I had a different problem, though it may be related. I added a PlayOnLinux link to AtomZombieSmasher. The link it created is completely non-functional for me, it starts up PlayOnLinux but with some options that doesn't seem to allow AZS to run.

Then I tried adding SPAZ, a Steam game but not currently in the beta, installed via the Humble Indie Bundle mojo installer, and I couldn't do that at all, I browsed to the directory where I installed SPAZ but the file browser wouldn't recognize the SPAZ binary as a target. The "Applications" mask seems to have some odd ideas about what might be a program in Linux. :-)

[j2flerkin]

Try adding a program that does show up and then change the target to the program you want to open by right-clicking and changing the properties. It seems to work in some instances, but fails for many (most?).

It would help if we knew the programming language and library methods behind the play button. I don't know why they wouldn't just use a simple system command for this.