Installation and Setup: Steam on Devuan for Hyprland

wolfchar · Today 01:03:17

Steam is a popular game distribution platform by Valve. Since Hyprland is a Wayland compositor, Steam requires additional setup to run on a Wayland session because the Steam client itself is an X11-only application and lacks native Wayland support.

Login as a root user

su - cleanly resets all environment variables, changes the working directory to the target user's home directory, and sources the target user's profile scripts, simulating a fresh login as root:

su -

Enable 32-bit architecture support

Steam requires 32-bit architecture support libraries and proprietary components, so enable it:

dpkg --add-architecture i386

Enable non-free & contrib repository sources

The Steam installer package resides in the contrib repository, and the non-free repository provides the essential 32-bit (i386) graphics drivers, Mesa libraries, and other hardware-specific components required for Steam to function and for games to run correctly. Ensure that both repositories are active in your sources list for your release. Depending on which source list is currently active on your PC, fill in the following information on one of these files:

⚠️WARNING
Having the same repository defined in both /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/devuan.sources can lead to duplicate downloads of package metadata (like Packages and Sources files) during apt update. While APT is designed to de-duplicate packages and won't install the same package twice, it will still download the same repository metadata multiple times if the source is listed redundantly in different files or formats. This results in wasted bandwidth, longer update times, and warning messages like Target Packages is configured multiple times. To avoid this, ensure each repository is defined only once, preferably using a single format.

❗IMPORTANT
The following commands use the ceres (Devuan Unstable) release. It might be necessary to have the unstable release repos enabled, instead of stable, to ensure the proper Hyprland packages are installed. If your current release is Devuan Stable (such as excalibur in 2026), and unstable is not required, it would be best to keep the stable release keyword in the file.

1. Within /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

2. Within /etc/apt/sources.list.d/devuan.sources:

# Modernized from /etc/apt/sources.list
Types: deb
URIs: http://deb.devuan.org/merged/
Suites: ceres
Components: main non-free non-free-firmware contrib
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/devuan-archive-keyring.gpg

Update repositories and install Steam

After enabling the required repositories, update your package lists:

sudo apt update

Install the steam-installer package using:

sudo apt install steam-installer

Install and set up xwayland

The Steam client requires xwayland to run on a Wayland session because the Steam client itself is an X11-only application and lacks native Wayland support. If you're experiencing a display crash or the "Could not open connection to X" error, it's likely because Steam cannot connect to an X server. Currently, under a Wayland session, this is handled by xwayland, which acts as a compatibility layer allowing X11 applications like Steam to run.

Install xwayland via:

sudo apt install xwayland

Verify xwayland is active by running by printing the value of the $DISPLAY enviroment variable. This should return :0:

echo $DISPLAY

If the DISPLAY variable is not set, you can set it manually. The command export DISPLAY=:0 sets the DISPLAY environment variable to :0, telling graphical (a la X11) applications to render their graphical interface on the first local display (screen 0) of the local X server:

export DISPLAY=:0

Restart Wayland session

Restart your Wayland session to ensure xwayland starts with the compositor; an easy way to do that for Hyprland specifically would be:

hyprctl dispatch exit
dbus-run-session start-hyprland

Launch Steam

Finally, launch Steam from the application menu or via the terminal:

steam

By following these steps, you should be able to install and run Steam on your Devuan system using a Wayland-based desktop environment like Hyprland.

Last edited by wolfchar (Today 01:13:46)

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#1 Today 01:03:17