As the title says, I am looking to install both the package version (on OpenSuse Tumbleweed) and Flatpak version. I’ve been running the package version for awhile and it’s been fine but I want to play with the Flatpak version to see how that compares - partially because I may eventually go for an immutable distro.
I know how to do this, I am just curious if I shouldn’t do it or if there anything I should be aware of. Will my game library just work between the two?
Separate libraries as in game libraries? Meaning you have to install games twice?
If that is the case did you experiment with point them to the same library?
Library sharing between two instances of Steam works great. My shared ~/Games/SteamLibrary works well in Steam flatpak and Steam native, and I’ve done that for years.
Since I installed native first I wonder if I can point the flatpak version to that. I actually have no idea where it is but I assume it’s outside of the home directory.
Might make more sense to move it into home like you are saying for more seamless flatpak compatibility.
I also had to add ~/Games to the flatpak sandbox with flatseal to allow Steam flatpak to access my library.
Steam settings should show the path to where your library is located.
Follow up, have both the Flatpak version and package steam up and running. Moved my game library to
~/Games/Steam. I added~/Games/Steam:rw(and later~/Games/Steam:create) to my Flatpak permissions and tried to install a game that already existed to make Flatpak Steam realize it was there, Steam instead gives me a “Disk Write Error”. Did you hit this at all, any idea what it may be?EDIT: Fix it, or it magically fixed itself. I removed the Steam library and re-added it and that seemed to make it happy.
Great to hear it works! I’ve also had issues with the SteamLibrary not being detected a few times over the years, but that also happened on SteamOS so I guess it’s a bug.
I didn’t, libraries are stored in different places in flatpak vs native install. You could probably add the normal install location in the flatpak using flat seal, but having the install directory in /home (the default for flatpak) was fine for me .
For what it’s worth, I’m using steam in flatpak in microos now, and it’s been mostly seamless
Thanks for the further explanation.
A move to microos is what I am evaluating.
Good luck! I’ve been very happy with my microos installs. I’ve got kalpa on my desktop and aeon on my laptop. I’m following a project that uses a microos base for the Steam Deck too (which is ironic since the steam deck is what made me aware of read only root Linux and flatpak in the first place).