How to get STEAM Working

The step-by-step guide below will install STEAM onto your linux system, follow the steps below :-

First make sure you have the latest version of wine installed if you have not got it already. Instructions available - HERE

Set your Windows version of wine to Windows 7.

Download winetricks by running the following code in terminal :-

 wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Now we need to install some winetricks packages to get STEAM running properly. Run the code below in a Terminal :-

 sh winetricks corefonts allfonts tahoma gecko gecko-dbg vcrun2005

This will install a number of winetricks packages that are needed by STEAM.

Now the time has come to install STEAM itself. Run the code below in a Terminal :-

 sh winetricks steam

This will download and install STEAM onto your linux system for you.

Once the STEAM client has been downloaded and processed in the Terminal, the STEAM installer will automatically start. Run through the steps of installing STEAM and once this is complete, the STEAM client will start and begin to update itself.

STEAM has now been installed on your system. In future to run STEAM it will be listed in your main menu under Applications > Wine > Programs > Steam.

Note : The only thing that consistantly does not work in STEAM is buying games. If you want to buy a game just buy it from the STEAM store online via a browser not via the client.

Known Issues :-

• Fonts appear rough and not smoothed.
• Flash not present - Videos of games in the Store may not play.
• Network Issues - "Could Not Connect to Network" message.
• Update may crash at 26%.
• Links (images, purchases) don't open new Window.
• Missing scrollbar for embedded websites.
• Steam Community In-Game does not work - disable or it will cause all games to crash.
• Won't start with no error message. (Needs a complete reinstall - see reinstall section below).

These problems can be easily fixed. Look in the sections below for the fixes.

How To Install Flash And Fix STEAM So Videos Will Play

To get STEAM to be able to play videos for games in the store follow the steps below :-

You should already have winetricks installed if you followed the HOWTO above. If not follow the instructions above to get winetricks then return here.

If you have winetricks then you are ready to proceed.

We need to install the flash winetricks package. To do this run the code below in a Terminal :-

 sh winetricks flash

This will download and install flash. Once complete videos should play in STEAM.

If this does not work then try the method below :-

Enabling Flash and Scrollbars:

There are three alternate ways to enable Flash and two ways to enable scrollbars in Steam. If you only wish to enable Flash and are comfortable compiling wine from source I would recommend using Jacek Caban's patch. If you wish to have Flash and scrollbars then you must use native DLL's. Note that Flash sound will not work with any of these methods but when a workaround is found it will be posted. The pro of Jacek's patch is that wine-gecko itself will support Flash on websites, the con's are that it requires compilation of wine from source and doesn't enable scrollbars. The pro's of the native DLL methods are that they enable both Flash and scrollbars in Steam, the con's are that they don't enable Flash in wine-gecko, and in fact override wine-gecko and the DLL's must be subsequently set to builtin if you wish to use it.

Also note that any Flash version above 9r47 will not work without flickering in Steam. Therefore you must download and install that version from the Macromedia archives as described below.

1. The Patch Method

First of all you need to obtain the wine source you wish to use, apply Jacek's patch found at http://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=21074, and compile and install wine. Patching and compiling wine is beyond the scope of this howto, however there are many on line howto's for these procedures so just use your favorite search engine to find them and follow their instructions. After that use the following method to install the correct Mozilla version of Flash:

cd
wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/fp9_archive.zip
unzip fp9_archive.zip
cd fp9_archive/9r47
wine flashplayer9r47_win.exe
cd
rm -rf fp9_archive

2. Native DLL Methods

Both methods require that you install the correct ActiveX version of Flash as follows:

cd
wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/fp9_archive.zip
unzip fp9_archive.zip
cd fp9_archive/9r47
wine flashplayer9r47_winax.exe
cd
rm -rf fp9_archive

Now there are two ways to enable Flash and the scrollbars to work. The higher performance option is to use winetricks to do a partial installation of IE6, the lower performance option is to do a full IE6 installation. In both instances IE6 is installed via winetricks, but the higher performance option doesn't load all the DLL's necessary for full standalone operation of IE6. If you're not going to use IE6 for web browsing I'd use the higher performance method. Following are instructions for both:

A. Partial IE6 Install - Higher Performance

cd
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod a+x winetricks
./winetricks ie6 corefonts fontfix gecko liberation tahoma

B. Full IE6 Install - Lower Performance

cd
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod a+x winetricks
./winetricks ie6 comctl32 comctl32.ocx corefonts fontfix gecko liberation mfc40 mfc42 msls31 
ole2 pdh riched20 riched30 tahoma urlmon wininet native_mdac

How To Fix STEAM "Could Not Connect to Network" Issue

For those experiencing the "Could Not Connect to Network" problem often the Windows solution is to delete the ClientRegistry file.  This can be found at one of the following locations:

Windows Path - "C:\Program Files\Steam\ClientRegistry.blob"
Linux/Wine Path - "~/.wine/{youruser}/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/ClientRegistry.blob"
Linux/Wine Path - "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/ClientRegistry.blob"

For most people simply restarting the client avoids the issue. 

How To Fix The Update Crash At 26% Issue

Run this from the directory you installed Steam to:

nice -n 19 wine Steam.exe

If that doesn't work try this:

wine steamTmp.exe SelfUpdate "Steam.exe" 14

If all fails try this before the previous command:

rm ClientRegistry.blob

How To Fix Other Less Common Problems

Chat window does not work

The chat actually working but messages are not displayed correctly. Try resizing and/or minimizing/maximizing chat window.

Steam takes too long to start: (crash 1)

While starting steam actually crashing and writes a small memory dump (*.mdmp files).
To fix this add the following lines to "/etc/sysctl.conf"

# Send and receive buffer sizes to make steam happy
net.core.rmem_max = 131072
net.core.wmem_max = 131072

sysctl -p

Games don't start with message "The registry was in use by another process"

This is Steam bug due to Linux caching some file operations at the wrong time. You can fix this problem by shutting down Steam cleanly (keep running and exiting steam itself until you get a clean shutdown without any errors after "Shutting down" - watch the console you ran steam from) and then restarting it. Once steam has been shut down cleanly and restarted the error should not occur.

If all fails, start Steam, right-click on the game and select Properties. Go to Local files tab and click on Verify integrity of game cache...

Some file systems support extra sync flag. This should solve the problem. However it will reduce performance, so use with care!

chattr -R +S ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam

Steam will not work from ntfs partition mounted using ntfs-3g driver (2.6.25 kernels and older)

This is a known limitation of the driver and/or older kernels. Steam requires functionality (mmap with shared write access) which Wine can not emulate if it's not supported on file system.

To fix: use 2.6.26 or newer kernel. Or install Steam and all content into native Linux file system.

Most/all games crash immediately when loaded or after short time

How To Fix Rough Fonts By Turning On Font Smoothing In Wine.

To make fonts look better in STEAM and in all other Wine applications follow the steps below :-

We need to change a few values in the Wine registry, this is quite easy, just follow what is written below :-

First make a new text document in gedit.

Now copy the code below and paste it into the new gedit text document :-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"FontSmoothing"="2"
"FontSmoothingType"=dword:00000002
"FontSmoothingGamma"=dword:00000578
"FontSmoothingOrientation"=dword:00000001

Now save the document into your home folder as font-smoothing.reg

Now we need to import the .reg file into the Wine registry. To do this run the code below in a Terminal :-

 wine regedit font-smoothing.reg

There may be a little wait as this is processed.

Once complete dfonts will be smoothed and will look a lot better in STEAM and all other Wine applications.

How To Completaly Resinstall STEAM

To completely reinstall Steam without removing all your game files move "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/SteamApps" directory into safe place. Completely remove "~/.wine" directory and install Steam as shown above:

cd ~
mv ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam/SteamApps ~
# install Steam here
rm -rf ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam/SteamApps
mv ~/SteamApps ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steam

nVidia 185 Driver Series Crash

If you are using nVidia 185.x series drivers your X may crash when attempting to run this application.  This is not a Wine bug and the solution is to upgrade your drivers.  You can do this via nvidia.com or your distros package management system.  Ubuntu 9.10 users can add the nvidia-vdpau PPA to obtain the upgrade. 

OUTDATED INFORMATION ALERT

This version of STEAM (Classic Release) is now outdated. You cannot download this version of STEAM from official sources any more.

The latest and relevant version of STEAM is the Official Release. The page for STEAM Official Release can be found - HERE