Can I share the Steam game library between Windows and SteamOS?

[Scientist Dog]

Hi everyone, I'm planning on installing SteamOS in dual boot. I have a main disk (320GB) where I have Windows installed, and also Steam with a few games. On a second disk (750GB) I have the rest of my games installed. I'm going to install both OS on the smaller disk, and all the games on the second one.

So, my question is if I can run all the games (with Linux support) from the Windows partition and from the other disk (both NTFS), or I need to install the games again on the SteamOS games partition.

Thanks in advance!

[gregkh]

You'll need to install them again, binaries will be different, sorry.

[OnioWoess]

Maybe simply try to copy games to SteamLibrary/SteamApps/Common folder (allotted for Linux), add manifest-files, and check cache integrity after to download missing files? I didn't try to do that way, only supposition =)

[directhex]

There's no safe way to do this. For many games, the Linux version installs files in a totally different way to the Windows version - Steam would delete a bunch of files & redownload them on every dual-boot.

[OnioWoess]

Yes, you're right, there must be separate SteamLibraries. I have both on external USB drive (NTFS). Btw, the copy method won't work, manifest files for windows differs from their linux versions.

[istvan_v]

Copying existing files and then installing over them may still reduce the download size. At least it worked for me with Valve games, the installer shows a "discovering existing files" window, and any usable files found (such as all the .vpk's) are not downloaded.

[Scientist Dog]

Oh, well, that's dissapointing, so I need to have them twice (or only for SteamOS or Windows). I'm going to try the copy method, so at least I can save some time and bandwith.

But at least I can install both libraries on a NTFS partition, right? Is there any perfonmance penalty against installing games on a EXT4 partition?

Thanks for the answers!

[gregkh]

Don't use NTFS for Linux if at all possible, it's really not very fast and NTFS write support isn't the best on Linux (for a variety of reasons.) As you can't share anything, just use a native Linux filesystem (like ext4).