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I hate to be that person but I've had no issues with the Steam client on Linux, and I've used it full time for years. Including more "advanced" features like in

I hate to be that person but I've had no issues with the Steam client on Linux, and I've used it full time for years. Including more "advanced" features like in home streaming.

whatshisface 6y ago
The nature of Linux platform problems is that they crop up for specific combinations of hardware and software. The biggest thing that Microsoft has over the open source community is the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility. That, and the platform clout to get vendors to make their stuff work.
- Const-me 6y ago
  > the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility For hardware support, the biggest thing is stable kernel ABI for drivers. > the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility Windows doesn't have combinatoric jungle. With their amount of supported hardware, combinatoric jungle would be prohibitively expensive even for Microsoft. Instead, Windows has well-specified ABIs the drivers must conform to. And a set of development tools to verify that's the case, both static like code analysis, and runtime like driver verifier.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Plus reasonably good documentation.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I'm not sure that applies here. Steam specifically ships it's own version of libraries for compatibility between different distributions.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    of course it applies, they have less resources to support more systems than Microsoft do to support one system, this will be reflected in compatibility
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      Unless Steam somehow operates directly with hardware, I don't see how that could happen. They ship their own runtime, with pinned versions of libraries Steam depends on. As far as I know it should work just fine on any Linux system (which is my experience running it on 3 different machines on multiple different distributions over the years).
- jrockway 6y ago
  My experience is that Windows is just as bad. HiDPI doesn't work right unless the developer goes out of their way to support it. Random combinations of software hard-crash the entire OS. (My current easily-reproducible example? If you use PowerToys to tile windows, and a tiling operation happens concurrently with a DPI-resize operation, the computer blue screens! Fun!) I was an early adopter of Linux and used a lot of weird hardware with it, and no combination of dragging windows ever caused the computer to reboot. What annoyed me most about Linux is how I got used to the brokenness, and it got fixed without being able to replicate the brokenness I was used to. For example, circa 2012 I got an early 4K monitor. It was implemented as two scalers connected to one panel, with both scalers connected to the same Displayport interface. Basically, it appeared to the computer as two separate and totally unrelated monitors, but was of course a single monitor. I could not for the life of me get Linux to treat both panels as a single monitor. But I used multiple monitors in the very early days of Linux, before XRandR, and I could never get it to treat my two monitors as separate devices -- windows would just pop up right in the gap between two monitors; X had no awareness of where the boundary was. I longed for that behavior, but the option was simply removed... because who would ever want that brokenness? (I did end up getting it working. There was a bug in the Nvidia driver that allowed you to turn on two options that caused all XRandR related functionality to silently break, and then my one monitor appeared as one monitor to the OS. Of course, even though my graphics card had 3 more video ports on the back, I could never connect another monitor. And I was always worried that a driver update would fix the multiple-interacting-bugs. But it never did! Or at least I replaced the monitor before it became a problem for me.)
Medicalidiot 6y ago
I have only had getting the steam client to launch, and only after a fresh install. This was mainly on OpenSUSE a few years ago; I could get it working maybe 2/3 times after a fresh install, depending on whether I installed all the hacks in the correct order. Once it started up, I never had problems booting it again.
ghthor 6y ago
The in home streaming has been a god send for this pandemic and having a new baby. Baby doesn't like sitting at the computer desk, so taking my handheld and using the home streaming I can play Slay the Spire anywhere around the house hosted by my linux machine. Works great!
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
Do you have a HiDPI display? Do you use screen scaling? There's an open bug on their issue tracker with many more suffering from their lack of support. If you you don't use screen scaling, you might not notice it. Native notifications are simply not implemented, so I guess you merely just haven't noticed that one.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I do not. What do you mean by native notifications? Steam has always had their own notifications, and those work for me as far as I can tell.

I hate to be that person but I've had no issues with the Steam client on Linux, and I've used it full time for years. Including more "advanced" features like in home streaming.

whatshisface 6y ago

The nature of Linux platform problems is that they crop up for specific combinations of hardware and software. The biggest thing that Microsoft has over the open source community is the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility. That, and the platform clout to get vendors to make their stuff work.

Const-me 6y ago
> the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility For hardware support, the biggest thing is stable kernel ABI for drivers. > the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility Windows doesn't have combinatoric jungle. With their amount of supported hardware, combinatoric jungle would be prohibitively expensive even for Microsoft. Instead, Windows has well-specified ABIs the drivers must conform to. And a set of development tools to verify that's the case, both static like code analysis, and runtime like driver verifier.
- foepys 6y ago
  Plus reasonably good documentation.
Kaze404 6y ago
I'm not sure that applies here. Steam specifically ships it's own version of libraries for compatibility between different distributions.
- 867-5309 6y ago
  of course it applies, they have less resources to support more systems than Microsoft do to support one system, this will be reflected in compatibility
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    Unless Steam somehow operates directly with hardware, I don't see how that could happen. They ship their own runtime, with pinned versions of libraries Steam depends on. As far as I know it should work just fine on any Linux system (which is my experience running it on 3 different machines on multiple different distributions over the years).
jrockway 6y ago
My experience is that Windows is just as bad. HiDPI doesn't work right unless the developer goes out of their way to support it. Random combinations of software hard-crash the entire OS. (My current easily-reproducible example? If you use PowerToys to tile windows, and a tiling operation happens concurrently with a DPI-resize operation, the computer blue screens! Fun!) I was an early adopter of Linux and used a lot of weird hardware with it, and no combination of dragging windows ever caused the computer to reboot. What annoyed me most about Linux is how I got used to the brokenness, and it got fixed without being able to replicate the brokenness I was used to. For example, circa 2012 I got an early 4K monitor. It was implemented as two scalers connected to one panel, with both scalers connected to the same Displayport interface. Basically, it appeared to the computer as two separate and totally unrelated monitors, but was of course a single monitor. I could not for the life of me get Linux to treat both panels as a single monitor. But I used multiple monitors in the very early days of Linux, before XRandR, and I could never get it to treat my two monitors as separate devices -- windows would just pop up right in the gap between two monitors; X had no awareness of where the boundary was. I longed for that behavior, but the option was simply removed... because who would ever want that brokenness? (I did end up getting it working. There was a bug in the Nvidia driver that allowed you to turn on two options that caused all XRandR related functionality to silently break, and then my one monitor appeared as one monitor to the OS. Of course, even though my graphics card had 3 more video ports on the back, I could never connect another monitor. And I was always worried that a driver update would fix the multiple-interacting-bugs. But it never did! Or at least I replaced the monitor before it became a problem for me.)

Medicalidiot 6y ago

I have only had getting the steam client to launch, and only after a fresh install. This was mainly on OpenSUSE a few years ago; I could get it working maybe 2/3 times after a fresh install, depending on whether I installed all the hacks in the correct order. Once it started up, I never had problems booting it again.

ghthor 6y ago

The in home streaming has been a god send for this pandemic and having a new baby. Baby doesn't like sitting at the computer desk, so taking my handheld and using the home streaming I can play Slay the Spire anywhere around the house hosted by my linux machine. Works great!

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

Do you have a HiDPI display? Do you use screen scaling? There's an open bug on their issue tracker with many more suffering from their lack of support. If you you don't use screen scaling, you might not notice it. Native notifications are simply not implemented, so I guess you merely just haven't noticed that one.

Kaze404 6y ago
I do not. What do you mean by native notifications? Steam has always had their own notifications, and those work for me as far as I can tell.