Working with non Steam games

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• About
• Creating desktop files
• Workaround for games with several exec options
• Examples
• How-To List
• Reference issues tickets
• Issues
• Troubleshooting
• The game does not open

Table of Contents

• About
• How-To List

About

This page contains useful information for running non-Steam games on SteamOS. Please try to keep this to Linux-native applications and games.

Creating desktop files

On SteamOS, the "Add Library Shortcut" function should discover .desktop files in these directories:

/home/steam/.local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications
/home/steam/Desktop

Also it needs to be an appropriate .desktop file. Please take special note of the below:

• Exec does not support relative paths, only absolute/full paths or commands in $PATH.
• The Exec= line cannot have spaces
• Cannot have a configuration line of NoDisplay=true
• Cannot have a configuration line of Categories=Settings
• Requires the configuration file to have Type=Applications

Workaround for games with several exec options

If you must have multiple options to the Exec= line, consider creating a bash script as a "launcher."

Example: "dragonslayerz-launch.sh"

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/dragonslayerz --u2 --kazoo --elephant-mode

Mark the script executable. You may also want to move the script to a common $PATH location for ease of use (e.g. /usr/bin/). If you choose to use a common location that is owned by root (e.g. /usr/bin/), be sure to prepend sudo to the below command.

chmod +x dragonslayerz-launch.sh

You would then replace the Exec= line with `Exec=/path/to/dragzonslayerz-launch.sh"

Examples

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Retroarch-Src
GenericName=Retroarch-Src
Comment=Retroarch-Src launcher
Exec=retroarch-launch.sh
Icon=/home/steam/Pictures/retro-arch-src-logo.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game
Actions=Fullscreen;Standalone;

As another example, here is the "Return to Steam" desktop-mode shortcut:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Return to Steam
Comment=Exit desktop mode
Exec=/usr/bin/returntosteam.sh
Icon=steam
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Network;FileTransfer;Game;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/steam;

How-To List

• How-to: Minecraft With The Steam Controller On Linux Desktop And SteamOS

Reference issues tickets

• #424
• #148

Issues

If you have a case where you are not seeing this behavior or you think this behavior needs to change, please open an issue ticket with all the details. (including the .desktop file)

Troubleshooting

The game does not open

In this case, if you are certain you have everything you need, and all dependencies installed, check the following:

• Via SSH, or on another TTY (CTRL+ALT+F1, for instance), run tail -f /tmp/dumps/steam_stdout.txt before launching the game and review the output
• Check the permissions on the files you are attempting to access