Talk:Steam

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Killing compsitors (Compton)

Instead of

killall compton && %command%; nohup compton &

wouldn't

killall compton; %command%; nohup compton &

be better as it does not rely on compton running when you start up a game? I've been frustrated more than a few times when I'd start a game, forgetting that compton wasn't running and the steam game would hang. —This unsigned comment is by Wartz (talk) 15:38, 9 March 2015‎. Please sign your posts with ~~~~!

I think both are terrible. The proper way would be to to read the compton manual and adjust the configuration accordingly (i.e unredir-if-possible = true). But if you did use a command like this, know that compton has a -b switch to daemonize, making nohup redundant. -- Alad (talk) 14:58, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me in that direction. unredir-if-possible seems to work fine with fullscreen games instead of outright killing the compositor. I'm not sure how much of an effect the compositor has on windowed games though. Wartz (talk) 17:30, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Hardware decoding for In-Home Streaming

For Intel Graphics

See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187922

For NVIDIA Graphics

First, make sure that lib32-libva-vdpau-driver is installed from the AUR. Then, move the old steam vdpau folder out of the way:

mv ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/vdpau/ ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/vdpau.bak

Then, link in the vdpau folder from your system:

ln -s /usr/lib32/vdpau ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/.

To prove to yourself that it's working properly, make sure you have "Display performance information" ticked in your steam settings on the client under In-Home Streaming/Advanced Client Options. Now when you start streaming, press F6 on the client. The "Decoder:" line should show "VDPAU hardware decoding"

An update of the steam-runtime will likely overwrite these changes. Greyltc (talk) 12:29, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

How to read Minidumps?

Set up Steam and have been playing around with a runtimeless install. It seems to work okay sometimes, other times it seems to randomly crash, giving minidumps that sit in /tmp. I'm familiar with using gdb to backtrace coredumps but these minidumps are something else, and I'm having a hard time finding out how to actually use them to figure out what's going on. Anyone have any clues? If so, that's perhaps something to add to this page. Insidious611 (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Running games with bumblebee

Hello,

it took me some time to find out why my games wouldn't run on the nvidia graphic card. I found out, that I needed Bumblebee and primus installed with 32-bit support. Also this page by steam was very helpful. Maybe somebody more experienced can add this to the article or I'll do that when I find the time.

Nomalag (talk) 14:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the case for all GPU rendering and not just a Steam issue? Or do other GPU-intensive programs run on your NVIDIA card without Bumblebee and only Steam requires it? If it's the former, then we don't need to change the article.
Silverhammermba (talk) 21:36, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
The emphasis lies on the 32-bit support. At the time that I installed Bumblebee I didn't have any 32-bit programs. When installing Steam I did not go through the installation guide of Bumblebee again. Also it might be helpful to mention that some games are 32-bit and that you actually need to install 32-bit support.
Nomalag (talk) 08:42, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Proton Arch Pkg vs Proton from within Steam

The section about proton does not discuss the possibility to use the system installed proton (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/proton/) as an archlinux package instead of the steam downloaded binary. people might end up having two different proton setups without knowing.

Dp (talk) 20:37, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Remove/move flatpak instructions

Instructions for adding repositories with the flatpak framework shouldnt be the immediate focus on a wiki page about Steam on Arch Linux:

  • remove the instructions for Flatpak and add links to the official flatpak site.
  • remove the instructions for Flatpak and add links to the flatpak wiki page (related articles or see also section)
  • remove the flatpak instructions entirely.

Imagine all the Arch wiki pages to edit if flathub change their flathub url etc.

X3rMD&X1 (talk) 23:50, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

If it's really a problem then yeah it can be moved to Flatpak, or maybe a subpage of it (e.g. Flatpak/Application-specific troubleshooting). That's what we did with Flatpak#"File not found" error when Open local HTML pages in Firefox recently.
With this said, I don't think that the existence of this section here is the slippery slope you make it out to be. Steam is kinda different from other applications in how it uses its own runtime for games, and I believe in the client too. With or without Flatpak, by default Steam won't be using your system shared libraries. The fact that you are going to have some indirection no matter what, in combination with the fact that going the Flatpak route can immediately fix some issues with the client, makes me think that this section is different than a Flatpak section in other pages. -- CodingKoopa (talk) 06:15, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
For the hypothetical Flatpak/Application-specific troubleshooting page, a good analogue is Bubblewrap/Examples. -- CodingKoopa (talk) 03:57, 24 January 2023 (UTC)