I have a Steam Deck, and I love it. It can handle 90% of my library, and it’s always improving.
I decided to try out a linux distro for my OS, because the biggest drawback has always been the hoops that I had to jump through to get games up and running. I went for Pop OS, since that seemed to be natively friendly with NVidia, and the lowest barrier for entry. However, in Steam, I see that there is a much more limited selection of games compatible with my system. Is there a way around that, to get the same selection as my Steam Deck? Or is it this way because the Steam Deck is a singular platform that is developed for based on specific architecture?
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You need to go to Steam settings and enable Steam Play for all titles, otherwise Steam will only show you native/verified games as playable.
Also I seem to remember doing the same on my Deck a while back, possibly he also did it there but forgot about it since this is a do once and never again thing.
That was exactly what happened. Once I realized it, I smacked my forehead.
It’s funny because when you described your problem I also knew immediately what the issue was since I remember turning that setting on for my gaming PC back when steam play was new (been gaming on Linux exclusively since 2016).
But for the life of me I can not remember turning on that setting on my steam deck. I must have since it works with all games but I really can’t remember switching it on.
I’m surprised that isn’t the default.
It probably should be at this point. The opposite made a ton of sense when Steam Play was new and most games didn’t work, but now the opposite is true (at least in my experience).
I think the reason it’s opt-in is so that people don’t feel like they’ve been ripped off/lied to when they buy a game thinking they are getting a native experience
Which is even funnier because a lot of the times the native builds run worse, if at all, and it is typically recommended to just use Proton. Native clients unfortunately mean jack shit if they aren’t properly supported and maintained by the developers, which is why I’m not too fazed whenever people were warning that Proton will cause fewer native titles. Like, have you seen the Linux gaming market pre Proton? It was not pretty, not even with Wine, but especially with just native titles only. Can’t tell me they would rather go back to that instead of the current situation.
Could I use wine/proton to run windows games on my M2 MacBook ?
No. But Apple has built an alternative, although devs need to do some work to get their games running. That said, Mac gaming is even less popular than Linux Gaming, so don’t expect a good catalogue.
You can buy games for any platform regardless of your Steam Play settings. They just might not show up in your library.
Yeah, makes sense. However, that could be easily solved with a popup or something when you first launch a game that says, “This title has not been verified by Valve to run properly on your platform, do you want to continue? [ x ] Don’t show this again.”
By default only the officially supported games are listed. If a game is not supported this does not in.any way mean that it will not work. In my experience everything except some anticheat infested games will not work. For some rare games some tinkering is necessary, yiucan typically find infos here in the protondb
To make all games visible, go to your settings then go to the “Compatibility” settings, then locate the “Steam Play” section. Toggle on the “Enable Steam Play for all other titles,” choose the latest Proton version from the dropdown menu, click “OK,” and restart Steam.
Thanks for the info. All set up now, and downloading games!
I believe Steam is just showing you games that can run natively on Linux. You have to run Windows games through wine/proton like the Deck does.
I don’t actually have an anything except the Deck running Linux so I can’t help beyond that. I may even be wrong but it’s at least a place to start searching.
You‘re currect but proton is just a click away in steam. If you enable proton „for all titles“ instead of compatible ones you can run nearly anything.
Done and done. Thanks!
Make sure to check protondb if you run into any issues. A lot of games have the tiniest problem that you can clear up with a simple startup flag.
Good luck! :)
Also PCGW since some games are bugged on all platforms.
Whats pcgw?
Nice! Thanks!
I always love seeing someone reach the eureka moment where they realize windows is no longer necessary. There are a few games I had to give up completely, but honestly it’s worth the sacrifice. I’m going on over a year with no windows in my home.
All games in my 300 game library show up with that option enabled. So far everything just ran with minimal tinkering (selecting a specific proton version in game settings)
Thats just insane! Thanks for mentioning it.
You nailed it. Thanks!
You’re close, games Valve has vetted will also allow running by default, so you only need to change a setting to get games Valve hasn’t vetted to run.
Did you turn on steamplay/proton on in the settings? Including the toggle to use it for all titels?
Of course does not mean all games are playable, but they at least should so up in your library to try.
You can test a windows game and especially single player games most just work. If you have some problems you can check it on protondb.com. Maybe someone already found a simple solution.
I’ve got it all set up now, thanks for the instructions. Super exited to try this out.
I really don’t know why they don’t enable this by default on a Linux installation.
Since I can see you already got help to solve your problem. Welcome to Linux, you made the right choice.
If you like Linux and you end up staying, next time buy AMD, everything will be easier and ready out of the box.
