Do all SteamOS games work on non-Debian distros?

[tomacoin]

Does anyone have any experience running recent SteamOS games on other popular (Ubuntu, Mint) Linux distros?

[ProfessorKaos64]

In summary most, if not all should play on a Linux distribution that has a release of Steam for it by maintainers of that distro (I have it on Arch, Ubuntu, and Fedora). The necessary libraries and wrappers ship with the Steam or the game itself. I can't say this is 100% true, but if Steam installs and runs, chances are you should be just fine. Some distros have communities with a Steam package as well, or a way to compile it. Most Steam games ship in a binary, making it easier to ship around.

[tomacoin]

Originally posted by ProfessorKaos64:

In summary most, if not all should play on a Linux distribution that has a release of Steam for it by maintainers of that distro (I have it on Arch, Ubuntu, and Fedora). The necessary libraries and wrappers ship with the Steam or the game itself. I can't say this is 100% true, but if Steam installs and runs, chances are you should be just fine.

Thanks a lot!

[The-Game-Warden]

Due to the Steam runtime, out of the box you will only have some issues with a very very small handful of games on other distros. This would mostly include those games that were made when Steam for Linux first came out. I haven't had nearly as many issues as of late.

I have almost 300 Linux games and maybe 3 or 4 of them I've run into major issues with that I need to install packages on my system or make symlinks to get them to run.

Another issue I have on an equally small amount of games is when I'm running on dual monitors and it stretches the game across both screens. I haven't really experienced that too much in the last year with the newer games either. Meaning, I can't even think of the names of any of the games that do that. The ones that did may have had the issue fixed by now anyway.

The only issue I can remember within a game I've bought within about the last 6 months or so is with "Oniken" which only runs in a small window via a WINE wrapper. It would have been fullscreen on SteamOS, but it doesn't adjust on a desktop distro, so it's mostly unplayable.

[Shark]

I haven't run into games that can't work on Arch yet.

[-> T-Rex91 <-]

I got some Problems with Garry's Mod or better all Source games on Manjaro. If I want to host Server In Game the Game crashes.

[Deus Maximus]

Steam for Linux (and Steam OS itself) maintains its own "distro" of Linux called the Steam Runtime. Regardless of what version of Linux runs on the outside of Steam, if it can run the Steam client, it can run your game without dependancy issues. I believe it's based off of one of the Ubuntu LTS releases.

There's documentation from Valve on what goes into the Steam runtime.

[UnkendTech]

i found games work well on Linux Mint and on Arch Linux or Debian you may need to use a few hacks

[Player]

I feel like 3D games worked better on Ubuntu (Mint) than on SteamOS. Anyway I like SteamOS.

[-> T-Rex91 <-]

Doc Holliday. I think you are right. Before I used Manjaro I had Linux Mint Cinamon 64bit. Everything worked well. But I just ask why does manjaro have a steam client at the begining if some games like the source engine doesn't work well.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Archlinux has a wiki page dedicated to Steam and games. Since Arch isn't an officially supported distro for Steam and it's games, some games may need special tweaks to work:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam/Game-specific_troubleshooting