In which I install Steam on Linux...

Steam is now officially supported on Linux! I decided to try it out.

Hold your horses!

Firstly - there are only 78 games supported* at the moment. So just be aware some of your faves might not be there yet.

Secondly - if you are running an Nvidia card you need to have x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers version 304.4 or higher installed. Steam will install but it won't get past login if you don't do this. You can solve this on Gentoo quite simply:

• emerge x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers -avuDN

*Though I had 14 of them thanks to Humble Bundles.

Layman

Currently Steam isn't included in the main Portage tree. You're going to need an overlay and the easy way to do this on Gentoo is by using Layman. If you don't have it already:

• emerge layman

You will need to add the following line into /etc/portage/make.conf:

• source /var/lib/layman/make.conf

Then use layman to add the overlay:

• layman -a steam

Installation

So you'll want to emerge the overlay:

• emerge steam-meta -avuDN

Sit back and let it install. Once it is installed you can open the Steam client through the KDE menu. It will take a while to update itself before asking you to log in. Having gone through Steam's new computer confirmation you will be presented with the familiar interface.

Handily when you head to your library you can select Linux Games at the top displaying which games you can install (in my case: TF2, Bastion and Closure are the first few I'm going to test). Install away and enjoy Steam on Linux :D

Tom Out!