Installing Steam from BOTH package and Flathub? Any gotchas?

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?

warmaster ,

The Flatpak version can't do libraries on multiple drives.

million OP ,
@million@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for the heads up. That's a shitty limitation.

D_Air1 ,
@D_Air1@lemmy.ml avatar

I was using the flatpak version on arch for a while with no issues up until I started getting into modding and stuff. I ended up switching to the native version. Some issues were easy to fix by just granting permission to access a certain folder. Other issues I never figured out. Most importantly though, the vast majority of guides and tools simply don't assume flatpak which means that resources and community help is a bit more scarce. I think it is because of people that use the steam deck which is an immutable os that I was able to figure out anything regarding the various different things you may need to do in order to get different kinds of mods and programs to run withing the flatpak sandbox.

vikingtons ,
@vikingtons@lemmy.world avatar

A super minor thing that will likely not matter to most people - I believe steamcli requires the traditional steam package to be installed, and will not work with the flatpak (at least on the atomic desktop systems I've tested with).

If you have both I'd imagine everything would work fine

MajinBlayze ,

I did this for a short while and didn't run into any issues. They have their own separate libraries, though you could change that if you wanted to though.

million OP ,
@million@lemmy.world avatar

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?

MajinBlayze ,

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

million OP ,
@million@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for the further explanation.

A move to microos is what I am evaluating.

MajinBlayze ,

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).

Chewy7324 ,

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.

million OP ,
@million@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Chewy7324 ,

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.

million OP , (edited )
@million@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Chewy7324 ,

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.

slappy ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    narc0tic_bird ,
    @narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee avatar

    Works great for me on Fedora 39.

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