After our SteamLUG Game Night, johndrinkwater, Cheeseness and I hung around mumble discussing several podcasts. Or, they were, I was just chewing almonds - apparently quite loud.
At some point it was mentioned (I believe this was Cheeseness) that no-one has really tried installing Steam on a fresh install. A larger quantity of us have a day zero installed, with a multitude of fixes and workarounds, special libraries, testing versions of the Steam runtime.
But being a new Ubuntu user, who just heard he/she could Steam on this amazing Linux distribution, the amount of effort and knowledge required to get Steam working must not be any bit harder or difficult than installing Steam on a competely new Windows 7 install. At least, that’s my requirement.
I’m not an Ubuntu user. I use Windows 8 when I’m at work or at school, and Gentoo when I am at home. And I am also trying this out on a NVIDIA Optimus laptop, though it should be a pretty common usecase by now.
Some of the steps will seem a bit idiotic for a common Linux user, but I have worked in tech support since 2010 and this is hard to phrase politely - even though it is meant as polite as possible - I’ve experienced a new level of ignorance.
And I have parents.
Also, during the last and fourth install, my OCZ Vertex 4 died. I’d like to continue to test these configurations, but due to unfortunate I will not be able to do this for quite some time.
I really want to test the setup as if the user read the ValveSoftware github README.
Hardware
- CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz
- RAM: 16GB PC3-10600
- HDD: OCZ Vertex 4, 256 GB
- GFX: NVIDIA QUADRO 1000M 2GB VRAM (Optimus
Please notice that I reset my BIOS before installing each time.
32 Bit Installations
Ubuntu 12.04.1 32-bit
- Install Ubuntu.
Choose not to install updates.
- Visit Steampowered.com.
Download Steam.
- Open Steam.deb.
Install through Ubuntu Software Center.
- Start Steam.
Update Steam.
Successfully launches.
Asked to add ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates.
Press add.
- Install and launch Team Fortress 2.
Required OpenGL extension "GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc" is not supported. Please install S3TC texture support.
Google “S3TC ubuntu”.
See installing libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 should solve this problem.
- Open Ubuntu Software Center.
Search for S3TC.
Install Texture compression library for Mesa.
- Launch Team Fortress 2.
Valve intro is Green.
Menu is completely broken.
Click the supposed close button.
Game closes.
- Notice a PCI icon in the toolbar.
Click it.
Click Install drivers.
Get suggested to installed 2 different packages, with no clear indication of version number. (It is indicated briefly in the license)
Activate the highlighted one.
Asked to Reboot.
- Reboot.
- Launch Steam from desktop icon.
Steam doesn’t launch.
- Guess updates are needed.
Search update in dash.
Open Update Manager.
Check.
Install.
Done.
Reboot, just in case.
- Launch Steam from desktop icon.
Steam still doesn’t launch.
- Google “Steam won’t launch Ubuntu”
Find thread about running nvidia-xconfig as root.
sudo nvidia-xconfig.
Reboot.
- Resolution is now 640x480.
Cheat a bit and look into Xorg.log.
See the intel is at fault.
Cheat a bit more and disable Optimus in BIOS, only using NVIDIA.
Reboot.
- Resolution is now correct.
Launch Steam from desktop icon.
Steam successfully launches.
Steam prompts me to install nvidia-experimental-310 instead of nvidia-experimental-304.
Upgrade.
- Jockey-gtk crashes.
Crashlog appears with a too large window to see everything.
Crashlog won’t resize or present scrollbar.
Ignore warning.
- Launch Team Fortress 2.
Menu looks as its supposed to.
Launch training.
- Successfully launched and played Team Fortress 2.
Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit
- Install Ubuntu.
Choose not to install updates.
- Visit Steampowered.com.
Download Steam.
- Open Steam.deb.
Install through Ubuntu Software Center.
- Start Steam.
Update Steam.
Steam wants to install Jockey-common [Y]
Successfully launches.
- Install and launch Team Fortress 2.
Launch training.
- Successfully launched and played Team Fortress 2.
64 Bit Installations
Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit
- Install Ubuntu.
Choose not to install updates.
- Visit Steampowered.com.
Download Steam.
- Open Steam.deb.
Install through Ubuntu Software Center.
USC complains about broken cache, press OK.
- Start Steam.
Update.
Successfully launches.
Asked to add ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates.
Press add.
- Install and launch Team Fortress 2.
Required OpenGL extension "GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc" is not supported. Please install S3TC texture support.
Google “S3TC ubuntu”.
See installing libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 should solve this problem.
- Open Ubuntu Software Center.
Search for S3TC.
Install Texture compression library for Mesa.
- Launch Team Fortress 2.
Required OpenGL extension "GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc" is not supported. Please install S3TC texture support.
- Google
S3TC Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit Steam.
Learn that Steam should be run from terminal with a variable.
force_s3tc_enable=true steam
- Steam launches.
Asked to add ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates.
Press add.
- Launch Team Fortress 2
Valve intro is Green.
Menu is completely broken.
Click the supposed exit button.
Game closes.
- Notice a PCI icon in the toolbar.
Click it.
Click Install drivers.
Get suggested to installed 2 different packages, with no clear indication of version number. (It is indicated briefly in the license)
Activate the highlighted one.
Asked to Reboot.
- Reboot.
- Launch Steam with workaround in terminal.
Steam doesn’t launch.
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0".
Google error, see that I need some video drivers.
- Search
Additional Drivers in Dash.
Select second option, as first option was selected in step 8.
Asked to reboot.
- FATAL FAILURE My SSD drive broke.
Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit
- Install Ubuntu.
Choose not to install updates.
- Visit Steampowered.com.
Download Steam.
- Open Steam.deb.
Install through Ubuntu Software Center.
- Start Steam.
Update.
Steam wants to install Jockey-common [Y]
Successfully launches.
- Install and launch Team Fortress 2
Launch training.
- Successfully launched and played Team Fortress 2.