Steam for Linux client adds support for Linux namespaces

The Steam client for Linux now supports using namespaces (a.k.a containers) to run game titles.

• This feature is available in the latest Steam client beta, and can be used for all native Linux titles in your Steam library.

• In order to run a title in a container, open the game's properties dialog, go to the general tab and select 'Steam Linux Runtime' under the 'Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool' drop down.

This new feature offers several advantages:

• Titles are better isolated from the host system, improving a host of potential problems and enabling new features such as home isolation.
• This feature improves Valve's ability to support older titles on newer distributions moving forward.
• For developers, making sure your title runs in the container environment ensures better compatibility across multiple distributions, reducing your QA load.
• For developers, Steam will be able to support newer runtimes via containers, which will include newer compilers and libraries.

How to use home isolation:

• Set PRESSURE_VESSEL_SHARE_HOME environment variable to 0 before running steam.

Whenever you run a title with PRESSURE_VESSEL_SHARE_HOME=0,

~/.var/app/com.steampowered.App [AppId]

gets mounted instead of the host's /home path.

: we found a small issue that will be addressed shortly with this feature. You need to create a ~/.steam/steambeta symbolic link pointing to the same destination as ~/.steam/steam, created like so:

ln -s ~/.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steambeta

This is experimental! There are a few caveats:

• Some titles will not run as-is in the container:
  Titles that do not run in the container can be reported to Valve at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/
  Please provide a copy of your Help > System Information output when filing issues.
• The unofficial flatpak distribution of the Steam client is not compatible at this time.
  The flatpak solution wraps the entire Steam client, whereas Valve's approach is to wrap individual games first. Both approaches rely on the same technologies and we are looking into improving compatibility in the future.
• Some of the more exotic graphics drivers setups like Bumblebee and Primus_VK will likely not work at this time.
  The container is setup to use the graphics drivers from the host system. We expect this release will bring us more testing coverage and identify various use cases that need to be improved.