64 Bit Steam Client

[Zema Bus]

Valve have been cooking! A new Steam Client Beta is available with something quite special for Linux gamers, as Valve work to continue improving Linux gaming.

This is some pretty impressive sounding stuff that Valve have done here, and should eventually (when stable) ensure we get a great Steam experience across many different Linux distributions - and finally with 64bit too that people have been asking for a long time. It's called the "Linux SteamRT3 Beta" and Valve explained it in the patch notes as:

The Steam for Linux client can now be run inside a Steam Runtime container. This will help the Steam client provide a more consistent experience across multiple distributions. This is the same technology we use for Steam games.

The SteamRT3 beta client is distributed alongside the regular beta client. You can opt-in to the beta client via the 'Use experimental SteamRT3 Steam Client' toggle in Settings->Interface.

The SteamRT3 beta client has been updated to 64 bits.

Please report issues specific to the SteamRT3 beta in the Beta Forums or the steam-for-linux issue tracker.

From gamingonlinux.com

[Grogan]

Great... so now the whole thing is going to have to run in a container. I'm tired of this.

[Zema Bus]

I'm hoping it's an optional setting and not mandatory. The word "can" sounds like that might be a possibility, but it's hard to tell.

"..more consistent experience across multiple distributions" - like in Ubuntu where Steam already runs in a container

[Grogan]

I took the "can" to mean, by opting into the SteamRT3 beta client.

It will be a long time before that trickles down to the stable Steam client. I quit the beta some time ago, because I prefer updates to be rare (almost never lol). There's nothing that doesn't work for me in the stable client, so there's no need to be on the beta train anymore.

If they were to build a fucking NATIVE 64 bit application, there would be no need for this bollocks. The client then wouldn't have to depend on libraries that any distribution wouldn't have.

[Zema Bus]

I stopped using the beta for that reason too a few years ago, after it bit me a few times too many

[Grogan]

In the earlier days, the beta client gave you the latest runtimes for Proton etc. but now all that is mainstream.

I wish they'd stop being so silly with the Steam client. All you have to do is link against older GNU (glibc and libstdc++), statically link some things, bundle some things, and your application will run on most all distros.

Look at Mozilla Firefox official binaries (non flatpak), for example. Libreoffice distributed binaries for another. They don't run in fucking containers.

Hell, I've still got a LibreOffice that I compiled in 2019 that you can pry from my stiff, dead fingers. I built it on a Linux from Scratch system on the old computer (with static linking and bundling of libraries) and it still runs on my Arch and Crux systems here today. (and I do mean today, I just tested it again before opening my mouth lol)