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Alien Pastures tried Stream games in Slackware Linux



Valve is updating its Steam client for Linux regualarly, fixing the issues which are reported by lots of interested Linux gamers. I was a bit behind with updating my Slackware remix of the client binaries but I have overcome the flue and pushed an update, bringing the steamclient package for Slackware to the latest version, 1.0.0.22.

I did not have to change a lot to the “steam” script which is part of the original debian/ubuntu package. Basically I had to ensure that Steam and its games will be using ALSA instead of PulseAudio since we do not use PA in Slackware. I also added a ‘hack’ which causes the steam startup script to execute a file “${HOME}/.steam4slackware” if it exists. You can add extra definitions of environment variables into that file if you run into sound issues. The default definition of “export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa” may not be enough for you, perhaps something like adding “export AUDIODEV=hw” is needed for your system. Using “${HOME}/.steam4slackware” allows you to leave the steam script unmodified.
  Steam games in Slackware