Steam

Valve has released a native (currently x86-only) Linux client for their Steam platform as part of a closed beta.

Notice
This is beta software. The .deb released by Valve is actually only an installer that pulls the actual steam version from their servers and places it as well as the games into ~/Steam/. So, the official package manager cannot be involved in managing games and steam updates.

Games
This is a list of games that already work for the native linux client:
 * world of goo

Installation
Download the .deb archive and put the following files into the same directory: Make steam executable and run it. There are also a few icons in the .deb archive.
 * bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz (from the .deb archive)
 * steam.desktop (from the .deb archive)
 * steam (get the script here)

Dependencies
You can create a set to conveniently manage and update the steam dependencies without changing your world file.

Now run:

Kernel
You need tmpfs activated in your kernel and /dev/shm mounted.

Video drivers

 * Nvidia: You will need to unmask latest.
 * If you are using open-source drivers that are based on mesa (e.g., nouveau, radeon), you need to unmask >=mesa-9.0, see.

Fonts
Some people seem to have problems with missing fonts. A user reported it being solved by emerging.

Sometimes Xorg does not recognise the new fonts installed. To fix this temp. run:

Flashplayer on amd64
Get the 32bit flashplayer from adobe and extract libflashplayer.so to your current working dir. Now run:

Currently no known side-effects or interference with regular browsers.

Running non-native games
Non-native games can be "piped" through wine via binfmt. See here and here. This currently works only for games which have OS-check disabled.

Further Troubleshooting
Before you ask anywhere else, refer to the gentoo forum thread. Post your solutions and update this wiki page if someone confirms.

External resources

 * forum thread
 * Ebuild request for steam-installer
 * valve linux blog
 * steam linux community