So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

Tatwi · 2023-06-23 21:39:47

TL:DR Answer:

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
sudo apt install steam lutris libglvnd-dev pkg-config libopusfile0 libsdl2-net-2.0-0

Then use Steam to install your Steam games and Lutris to install your GOG games. You could use Lutris for both, but Lutris still needs to open Steam anyway, so you may as well use Steam directly. Interestingly, Lutris can add links into Steam for your GOG games automatically, so you can use a single interface/loader for your games.

The Epic game store would lock up after pressing log in. I didn't care enough to find out why, as I only own one game on it (Kena: Bridge of Spirits). If I fix it later, I'll post how it was done.

The games I own play well, either the same or close to how they played in Windows, using the default Steam or Lutris settings, except where noted below.

Steam Games:
No Man's Sky, Bejeweled 3 (Proton 8.0-2), DiRT Rally (Original), Ghostbuster's Remastered, Black Mesa

GOG Games (Windows):
Flatout 2, Grip, Lego Star Wars: Clone Wars, My Time at Portia, Potion Craft

GOG Games (Native Linux):
Spiritfarer, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Torchlight II

For reference, here are my specs:

Daedalus, Xfce, 1920x1200 resolution, Intel i5-10400, 2x8GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GTX1660 (not Ti/Super, Driver 535.54.03 manually installed), Kingston 1TB nvme SSD (root), Crucial MX500 250GB SSD (my previous SSD that I am now using as a sacraficial /tmp /var drive, with lots of over-provisioning).

Hope this helps!

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Original Post:
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First, thank you again for Devuan. I really appreciate being able to install MATE and carry on with Debian'ing like nothing ever changed!

I've dual booted Windows for two decades, because for playing games using Winders was "100% the performance with 0% the effort", but I am thoroughly exhausted by the Rube Goldberg machine that Windows and its associated services have become. Seriously, the last straw was when I signed up for the PC game pass, went to play a Star Wars game, found that my Xbox account was somehow linked to my kid's EA account, and spent an entire afternoon determining that there really isn't a way to contact anyone at Microsoft to fix the accounts. It's all just layers of circular references, even calling the support number (which I could only find via Google, of course) just tells you to go to their website... I'm out.

I am quite adept with GNU/Linux, I've even used it to play Windows games over the years, but it's always been janky and annoying, so I just dual booted the issue away. Not this time though! As such, I thought it would be wise to seek the knowledge of those who regularly use Steam and GOG in Devuan.

I'm using Daedalus (6.1.0-9-amd64) with Nvidia (535.54.03), MATE, and Xfce. SuperTuxKart runs awesome; all the normal Linux stuff is setup again (just did a fresh install of chimaera net-install no-gui dist-upgrade today). I'm down with flipping over to JWM or Fluxbox to game if need be.

So before I start eating up those precious TBW by flailing software willy nilly onto the o'l SSD, how are the kid's gaming on Linux these days?

Last edited by Tatwi (2023-06-30 11:30:36)

GlennW · 2023-06-24 03:54:36

Hi, I have steam running ok.

I think it still needs 32bit libraries.

Enable multiarch:

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update

then install steam with...

apt install steam

that'll get you started.

Tatwi · 2023-06-25 04:12:35

GlennW wrote:

Hi, I have steam running ok.
I think it still needs 32bit libraries.
Enable multiarch:
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
then install steam with...
apt install steam
that'll get you started.

Neat that the Steam installer is in the repos now. I guess the Nvidia proprietary drivers are too, but I am old so I had already installed them from the website, which necessitated installing libglvnd-dev, pkg-config, and Steam's dependancies to satisfy the driver's 32Bit compatibility.

Compared to the last time I tried it (a long time ago), No Man's Sky runs well enough to be playable. It ran smoother at higher settings in Windows, but it's still a bit better in Devuan with the i5-10400 than it was in Windows 10 with my FX-8320 (both using the same GTX 1660). I care more about consistent frame times than graphical settings and it's smooth at the 75Hz refresh rate of the monitor, so good enough. It's not like that time I tried playing it using my old AMD R9 270 2GB graphics card, which was still choppy in an 800x600 window at the lowest settings with FSR 2.0 performance mode enabled lol...

Steam has come a long way. Proton is great! I used to loathe Steam, because for 14 or so years our Internet was barely usable (rural wireless) and it would take hours sometimes to update Steam itself, let alone the single player game I was hoping to play. Offline play is why I bought a bunch of games on GOG back then, but we have fibre optic Internet now, so yeah, kinda wish I had purchased them on Steam. Ah well.

Any suggestions for GOG games? I'd rather not install a web of nonsense like Lutris, Winetricks, Protontricks, blah, blah... I'd just like to play the games, ya know? GOG Galaxy as straight forward as Steam/Proton? A boy can dream!

Incidentally, NMS and Bejeweled 3 both run more smoothly in Xfce than MATE. I tried JWM (with JWM Kit - so handy!) as well, but it seemed that both games played the same as they did when using Xfce. I'm actually fine with using Xfce, it was my main DE in the years between Gnome 2 and MATE post Mint 17.3. Thunar... I don't dislike it, but Caja is definitely more polished (and still usable in Xfce). Gotta say, Mousepad is the best basic GUI text editor, so Xfce wins some battles too!

steve_v · 2023-06-25 04:43:30

Tatwi wrote:

Proton is great!Any suggestions for GOG games? I'd rather not install a web of nonsense like Lutris, Winetricks, Protontricks

Native GOG games are native and include a (mojosetup) installer. For windows games you'll have to use wine the same as steam does, and currently the easiest way to manage that is lutris.
I don't know what you're on about with "web of nonsense", all windows games use wine or proton (which is also wine), the only difference is the "game manager" frontend. Be it steam, lutris, playonlinux, minigalaxy, gamehub etc. etc. they're all using wine and DXVK for windows game compatibility.

As far as lutris in particular, almost any game that steam can run through proton, lutris can run through it's GE-proton wine builds with a similar level of automation. These days it even integrates with GOG, Humble, itch and a bunch of other services besides for automated download and installation.

Tatwi wrote:

GOG Galaxy as straight forward as Steam/Proton?

GOG galaxy has no GNU/Linux support whatsoever. While it can be run in wine (for the periods where random updates don't break it that is), IMO there's not much point unless you need its multiplayer functionality.

Last edited by steve_v (2023-06-25 04:45:58)

Tatwi · 2023-06-25 04:59:49

Managing Lutris "bottles", various Wine prefixes, and so amounts to a "web of nonsense".
Steams,

1. Install Steam.
2. Install game.
3. Play game.
3a. Pick different Proton versions from a drop down until the game works.

on the other hand, is not.

steve_v · 2023-06-25 05:38:59

Tatwi wrote:

Managing Lutris "bottles", various Wine prefixes, and so amounts to a "web of nonsense".

Lutris does not and never has used the term "bottles", nor does one have to manually manage wine prefixes.
As for selecting wine/proton versions from a dropdown list... That's literally exactly how it works in the lutris runner configuration.

OTOH, If connect GOG account -> refresh list -> select game -> click "install" -> click "next" a bunch of times -> click "launch" is a "web of nonsense" to you, perhaps you are better off sticking to steams proprietary, curated, walled garden of not-thinking-too-hard...

thierrybo · 2023-06-25 13:03:32

On a Devaun/Debian stable i would say "go steam 'flatpak' from backports". I noticed that if you stayed on flatpak 1.10, some proton and therefore some games no longer work, while with the same proton, same games with flatpak 1.14 works.
It's the same with lutris & Heroic so the interest is quite major for gaming.

Tatwi · 2023-06-27 11:25:37

thierrybo wrote:

On a Devaun/Debian stable i would say "go steam 'flatpak' from backports". I noticed that if you stayed on flatpak 1.10, some proton and therefore some games no longer work, while with the same proton, same games with flatpak 1.14 works.
It's the same with lutris & Heroic so the interest is quite major for gaming.

Using the installer included in the apt repos, Steam updated itself the latest version. It's been a good experience with the games I have tried: No Man's Sky, Bejeweled 3, DiRT Rally (Original), Ghostbuster's Remastered, and Black Mesa. Bejeweled needed Proton 8.0-2, but the rest worked with Experimental. Man I wish I had more Windows games on Steam!

The first distro I used was Slackware, back '98, but I switched to Debian (Libranet) in 2001, because apt is awesome! I've played with Slackware since and I love it in principle, but I really don't miss using it at all! For Windows games in Devuan, I wish it were as simple as "apt-get install stardew-valley", with a prompt to log into your purchasing platform for verification. Hmm...

I like "doing one thing" and for computing, traditional Debian excelled at being a single, coherent OS. Maybe that's caused by my C64 and DOS heritage, but it's what I like. In fairness, I did think Damn Small Linux, Salix, and Knoppix were cool, but not really as daily driver systems.

Anyway... We're here on this forum, using this OS, because Devuan is the continuation of that original Debian experience. Personally, I really don't want a bunch of frameworks, subsystems, managers, launchers, stores, installers, and containers mucking up the experience of my "personal computer". As I said in my first post, that type of Rube Goldberg machine is a big part of why I no longer want to use Windows. I'm not going to muck up the nice, clean, reliable, enjoyable Debian experience that Devuan delivers.

Having mostly ignored using Windows games on Linux over the years (apart from WoW and SWG), I don't know much about the subject. I do remember trying Lutris around 2013, but as I said, with a dual boot, it wasn't worth the trouble. However, in 2023 Lutris does seem to be the path of least resistance to play the games I have purchased on GOG and Epic, so I will give that a whirl next. If Lutris worked with Steam games without having to launch Steam, I guess that would be an ideal "one thing" for Windows games on Linux, but I am absolutely not into chain loading launchers to use programs. Type command or click icon, that's my speed, man!

TL:DR:
- Apt is awesome. Log live Apt and Devuan!
- Steam is awesome! Almost like Apt for Windows games.
- Still exploring options for non-Steam Windows games.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2023-06-23 21:39:47

So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#2 2023-06-24 03:54:36

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#3 2023-06-25 04:12:35

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#4 2023-06-25 04:43:30

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#5 2023-06-25 04:59:49

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#6 2023-06-25 05:38:59

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#7 2023-06-25 13:03:32

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

#8 2023-06-27 11:25:37

Re: So what's the right way to install Steam and GOG in 2023?

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