How to install Steam in openSUSE

Steam has recently come out for Linux, but the package and installation process is for Ubuntu Linux. Here I’ll try to guide through this step-by-step procedure for openSUSE.

Please, feel free to check the “Spanish version” at ForoSUSE (Spanish official openSUSE forums).

Obviously, the whole thing is under your absolute responsibility, even though I had no problem, I cannot assure you won’t.

First of all, you have to download the package from the official source. You can get it from Getting Started thread. In this thread you’ll find the hardware specs. required to run Steam, and the installation process for Ubuntu.

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I’ve tried to use alien to get a rpm package BUT got some problems with dependencies I could not satisfy. Therefore, we’re going to “decompress” the package in the root directory.
[code=””””””]su -c ‘cd / && ar p /path_to_steam_package/steam.deb data.tar.gz|tar zx'[/code]

You’ll get no prompt, apart from the terminal asking for root password. Now, you have Steam installed in your computer BUT there’s a big problem: it won’t run out of the box (Steam will throw an error about loading a library and won’t start)… I’ve found the needed dependencies by trial and error, starting Steam with the command:
[code=””””””]LD_DEBUG=libs steam[/code]

As my installed system uses 64bit libraries, I had installed the following dependencies (however, some of them might not be necessary, but I can’t assure it now).
[code=””””””]su -c ‘zypper in python-gnome-32bit python3-32bitpython-32bit libpython3_2mu1_0-32bit libgtk-3-0-32bit libgtk-2-0-32bit libpng12-0-32bit libnsssharedhelper0-32bit libpango-1_0-0-32bit pango-tools-32bit'[/code]

On the other hand, if you have a 32 bit system, you should install the following:
[code=””””””]su -c ‘zypper in python-gnome python3- python- libpython3_2mu1_0 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-2-0 libpng12-0 libnsssharedhelper0 libpango-1_0-0 pango-tools'[/code]

After zypper finishes installing software, you should be able to run Steam, getting the “library” view by default (and the Steam offers window before):
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Some issues
1- Steam/Games have no sound: it seems to be a common error, and the “official” workaround is to start steam specifying the SDL audio driver:
[code=””””””]SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa steam[/code]

2- Inverted cursor on Steam and other GTK windows (under KDE and other environments). Seems to be a “graphical environment” problem, due to an inverted error missing in the mouse cursor set (at least in KDE . Sale un “cursor invertido”. In my case, using Oxygen_Black cursor set:
[code=””””””]su -c ‘cd /usr/share/icons/Oxygen_Black/cursors && ln -s left_ptr arrow'[/code]

3- Graphical problems: low FPS rate, etc, specially with some AMD graphic cards: uninstall fglrx driver, and try with free ones.

Hope you can make it work.

Have fun!

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