3mo ago

When will Steam stop using i386 packages?

Almost every distro I've used so far ends up having problems installing Steam due to mismatching i386 packages. I've heard that they're being removed upstream. Anyone happen to know a timeline?

32 comments

i could be wrong but my understanding it's still 32 bit because of game compatability with older steam games and since the app itself is only a limited web browser and library. It doesn't need that much memory. So the compatibility wins out for as long as it can.
- Steam itself doesn't run the games, right? Couldn't they easily build a small 32 bit launcher for the older games that need it?
  
  You can start steam just fine without the packages. In fact, if you install without them, it'll ask you to install them every time, but you can skip that and it'll work, just 32bit games won't launch
  Edit: Looks like I'm partially wrong, as pointed out by a commenter below, steam currently only launches the 32-bit version of the client, despite support for a 5l64-bit client
  
  Steam runtime includes a lot of common static libraries that most games expect to be there. This means that older games will still work even though the wider OS might not have 32bit libs present.
- Wine can run 32 bit games with WOW64 without the 32 bit libraries
  
  I'm not talking windows games I'm talking about Linux games

I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Steam itself is only available as a 32-bit binary, if I remember correctly.
checks
Yeah, on my system, looks like a 32-bit binary.
If Steam runs a game, which can be either 32-bit or 64-bit, I believe you need to have libraries for the corresponding architecture for stuff that isn't in the Steam Ubuntu-based collection of libraries, the stuff in ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12*. If you're running a 64-bit binary, you need 64-bit libraries, and for a 32-bit binary, you need 32-bit libraries.
I have GPU libraries for both architectures installed on my Debian system, like libdrm-amdgpu1:amd64 and libdrm-amdgpu1:i386, with multiarch.

I use the Steam flatpak. The nice thing about that is that 32bit libraries aren’t installed on the host system.
- That's what I've resorted to but it's not working as well as the apt package. Freezes often, cloud sync breaks repeatedly.
- Only reason I haven't done that is because of VR. Not sure if VR works through flatpak.
  
  Not out of the box, but you can make it work.
  
  SteamVR works on Linux? What headset, if I may ask?

Part of the problem is, sure, that installing an entire arch for a package touches up a lot of stuff... What I did was I set up a debootstrap schroot and added i386 arch to that so that neither they nor Steam touch my main system. Not only did I never have problems with Steam again, but I actually resumed pretty much from what I was when I got a new machine, simply by copying the schroot files over. Didn't even have to install anything (but the schroot serve on my new system itself).
- This sounds like a good solution. Can you share how you did it?
  
  I basically took the general idea from this Ubuntu doc and made som changes. After installing debootstrap, I followed these general steps:
  set up an user for Steam, with adduser steam.
  created a directory to host the "virtual machine" at /var/lib/chroot/steam64.
  used the page linked above to create a schroot profile directory with the chroot data I want.
  used the page linked above to create a schroot profile entry for the chroot, adding steam as one of its allowed users.
  set up an Ubuntu 18.04 schroot with the following command: debootstrap --variant=buildd bionic /var/lib/chroot/steam64 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
  on the host, allowed cross-"host" applications to lauch windows with xhost +local:.
  once completed, entered the schroot as root and added the needed i386 arch and packages for Steam and for bubblewrap / Chrome containerization.
  still in the schroot as root, installed enough packages for a basic graphical environment (basically: a text editor, xnest and xterm; between their dependencies, they'll take care of most of everything).
  exited the schroot.
  entered the schroot as steam and fired up the Steam launcher manually.
  It's not perfect, there are a few issues (in particular with audio) but once I had the installed schroot ready, I never had to worry about its 32-bit packages ever again. And that was back in.... like, 2019 or something. Six months ago I copied to old schroot to my new machine and resumed playing, with no more cost than having to set up the schroot packages and the steam user (with the same old UID) on the new machine.
  Here's a sample of the schroot profile file I'm using. The "steam64.local" is the profile directory, which is basically a copy of schroot/buildd (or of schroot/minbase) with some configurations in fstab and copyfiles to account for eg.: isolating /var/run and dbus, and giving the schroot access to the home directory for the steam user.
- Have you tried our saviour nixos? Its pretty hot, was very very easy to install and configure.
  
  Tried Nix once, I liked it but overall found it too complicated to setup and manage for the [counts fingers] three programs I was using it for. Might be worth the while if I need a larger library of programs from Outside, but so far Debian and AppImages have not failed me.

Isn't it a regression? I cannot upgrade Debian unstable, either, at the moment. Last time when LLVM had a major upgrade, it took weeks until it was fixed.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1082495

About the same time we get Steam with Wayland support:
"When the sun rises in the West and sets in the East. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves."

Aren't they needed to run all the 32-bit games that are on Steam?

32 comments