Feature request: Install Steam without root

[p0s]

Currently, Steam requires being installed with a deb package.
This causes the deb package installer to execute the installation scripts as root.
While I very much appreciate your efforts to give Steam to Linux users, I do NOT want to execute closed-source installers with root privileges.

Given that there seems no reason why games would need root anyway, I would like to request the addtional possibility to install Steam with a restricted user account to the user's home directory without entering the root password at all.
The primary method of installing as .deb should stay as it is but in addition it should be optionally possible to install without root.

Of course this leaves the problem of installing the dependancies of Steam, i.e. the open source packages from the system's package management which it needs. This obviously requires root privileges to the system.
This could be solved by just showing the user the list of packages which he has to install manually using his favority package manager, without handing out the root password in the Steam installation process.

[oneinfiniteloop]

Unpack deb archive, place its contents wherever you like and launch bin/steam.sh Bootstrapper script will do the rest (of course, if you have proper ubuntu i386 libraries)

[BlackestDawn]

Outside of the package itself there are only two things I would change. Personally I do not see why the /usr/bin/steam file needs to be updated instead of just launching the updated file already in your home-directory (or the default "bootstrapper" if that file doesn't exist). Add to that an option to tell Steam that you will manually install any dependencies that the games may ask for and then Steam will run completely "root-less" after initial install.

Since we don't know what distributions Valve will build packages for we won't know how "easy" it will be later on to do "root-less" installs, or build our own install procedures (like Gentoo).

[Jo]

I think if you unpack the deb you don't even have to use their bootstrapper

cd A/TMP/DIR
ar x steam.deb
tar xf data.tar.gz
mkdir A/STEAM/PATH
cd A/STEAM/PATH
tar xf A/TMP/DIR/usr/lib/steam/bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz
./steam.sh

-> Steam is started and downloads the rest of the necessary files.

bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz contains a minimal steam installation.