Steam cannot connect to the servers (Zorin OS Lite)

[Cyrus]

Over the last year or so I've been dabbling with various Linux distros via live USBs. Recently I dug out an old toshiba satellite laptop (from 2008 I think O___o) and decided to install Zorin OS on it. So far almost everything has been running smoothly enough.

While I dont expect it to be of much use for gaming (beyond dosbox games perhaps), I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my Steam library and see whats natively available within it for Linux. After installing the client, signing in and updating, the client pops out a message of being unable to connect to the servers. The net connection seems to be fine (I've downloaded some games from both GOG and Humble, and streamed a few videos on YouTube).I figured this could either be a compatability issue with the OS or that the laptop is too old or low spec.

As I mentioned, I dont really expect to use steam much with this old bucket of bolts, but as I am intending to learn my way about linux (and in this case Zorin OS) I think troubleshooting this could be a good step to understanding the system a little better, so if anybody has any ideas I'd appreciate the help. I'll try and dig up the system specs a bit later today in case thats of any help.

[[GNU/LINUX] Norbert]

Interesting, maybe try to run steam with:
steam -tcp

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by LINUX facePlanted:

Interesting, maybe try to run steam with:
steam -tcp

I take it you mean as a terminal command? (consider me unversed in the ways of the penguin).

[Zyro]

Originally posted by Cyrus:

I take it you mean as a terminal command? (consider me unversed in the ways of the penguin).

Yes.

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Zyro:

Yes.

Ta! Wanted to be sure. :)

[Cyrus]

Well, sadly the same happened with that. The terminal didn't shed any light as to what went wrong either. Though at least I now know how to run steam from the terminal, so I learned something today!

[Danrobi]

Type steam in terminal and press enter. When the connection issue occur, copy/paste here what you see in terminal

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Danrobi:

Type steam in terminal and press enter. When the connection issue occur, copy/paste here what you see in terminal

Same as with the command from earlier in the thread:

steam
Running Steam on zorin 12 32-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Pins up-to-date!
[2019-08-11 21:31:16] Startup - updater built Aug 6 2019 01:02:51
[2019-08-11 21:31:19] Verifying installation...
[2019-08-11 21:31:20] Verification complete
[2019-08-11 21:32:03] Shutdown

[Marlock]

Running Steam on zorin 12 32-bit

steam is no longer supported on 32-bit OS... if that is what bit here is informing, can you use zorin 64-bit on that laptop? or is it *that* old?!

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Marlock:

Running Steam on zorin 12 32-bit

steam is no longer supported on 32-bit OS... if that is what bit here is informing, can you use zorin 64-bit on that laptop? or is it *that* old?!

Ah yes, i did wonder if that was an issue.
Theres no really easy way to test 64bit with a live USB on that laptop (its old enough to have no USB boot option - and im currently out of blank discs), though ive another spare drive I can sort through another laptop later this week, then just swap them.

Well, either way, you've answered my issue in the short term at least.

Thanks! :)

Edit: and thanks to the others that popped in trying to help too!

[Aoi Blue]

There are currently universal boot CDs that can boostrap to a USB device.

Are you certain the laptop won't boot to a USB drive. I had old machines before 64bit processors were even a thing that supported booting to USB drives. Are you sure it's not just turned off in the BIOS, or requires a special key combination.

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Aoi Blue:

Are you certain the laptop won't boot to a USB drive.

Sadly, yes. I checked the BIOS settings as well.

[Marlock]

in my main pc, the original (now deceased) mobo only listed usb pendrives in the harddrives boot order, which was a subset of the device boot order stored in a separate setting...

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Marlock:

in my main pc, the original (now deceased) mobo only listed usb pendrives in the harddrives boot order, which was a subset of the device boot order stored in a separate setting...

just checked again, theres absolutely nothing in the settings for it. aside from the boot load order the only related setting that can be changed is in regards to network booting.

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Rogue:

What's the make/model of this laptop?

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/discontinued-products/satellite-l30-134/
(ive actually just found that link too).

[Cyrus]

Originally posted by Rogue:

Originally posted by Cyrus:

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/discontinued-products/satellite-l30-134/
(ive actually just found that link too).

According to that link your laptop has an Intel® Celeron® M Processor 410...

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/27148/intel-celeron-m-processor-410-1m-cache-1-46-ghz-533-mhz-fsb.html

Instruction Set: 32-bit

32-bit operating systems are not supported, and you cannot install a 64-bit OS on 32-bit hardware. Sorry, buddy.

thanks for confirming what we had guessed. its not an issue though (with those specs I didnt really expect to be running much - just more curious about how much of my library is available as native linux).

as you've given a concrete answer, I shall mark your words as such. :)
cheers!