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

 * Official Valve Linux Games List
 * CDR List (includes future (beta) releases for Linux)

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)

Prerequisites
Things you need in order to run steam.

Dependencies
If you don't use the ebuild then you can create a set to conveniently manage and update the steam dependencies without changing your world file. After you have created the file /etc/portage/sets/steam as shown below, run:

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

Troubleshooting
A few tricks to get things working.

Video drivers

 * Nvidia: You will need to unmask latest.
 * If S3TC support is missing, try media-libs/libtxc_dxtn.

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:

Mouse cursor
Many users, especially the ones using KDE, will notice a messed up mouse cursor style: it will look pointer reversed from left to right with a different theme.

To fix this annoyance install a compatible cursor theme ( in this example: ) and run:

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

Alternatively emerge with 32bit useflag and run:

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 help
Before you ask anywhere else, refer to the gentoo forum thread. Post your solutions and update this wiki page if someone confirms. Please don't remove content without Discussion unless it's wrong content.

External resources

 * valve linux blog
 * steam linux community
 * Steam entry in ArchLinux wiki
 * Common Steam Problems & Fixes (team fusion)