A new Steam update is making native Linux gaming much simpler

There’s been plenty of good news for Linux gamers on Steam over the past few days. We saw proof that Valve was working on an Arm64 Proton layer, and Valve announced a partnership with Arch Linux to help with Steam Deck development. Now, the gaming giant has made native Linux gaming a lot easier by allowing developers to set the runtime to allow better compatibility.

The new Steam Beta update makes native gaming on Linux easier

Valve announced the change in the update notes for the newest Steam Beta patch. There are a handful of nice fixes and tweaks with this patch, but the more exciting ones are under the “Linux” section:

• Steam developers can now select which Steam for Linux runtime to use for native titles. Please consult the partner site for more details.
• Native titles will execute in ‘Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)’ by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment. This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions. Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with “-compat-force-slr off” on the Steam client command line.

By the looks of things, this feature will work on both the desktop and Steam Deck versions of the app. The update allows a developer to set a specific Linux container for the game, instead on relying on the user’s own version. This should help developers get their game working on different Linux distros without too much effort.

If you’re interested on playing your fave titles on the Land of Tux, check out our guides on how to run Steam on Linux and how to play Windows games on Linux with Proton.