How to install Steam on Ubuntu 22.04

The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to install and use Steam on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. Steam is a digital video game distribution service available for many different platforms.

Steam can be installed and used on Linux systems, including the Ubuntu distro, as there is an official Linux build available. Steam is easily the most popular PC gaming client, and with hundreds of titles available for Linux, it’s no wonder why Linux gamers would want to install Steam on Ubuntu. Valve, the company behind Steam, officially targets Ubuntu and Debian with their Linux support, which is great news for Ubuntu users.

In this tutorial, you will see how to install Steam on Ubuntu 22.04 through the official package repository, snap package manager, or by downloading the installer file from the official Steam website. You will also learn how to open the application after it has been installed.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to install Steam from Ubuntu package repository
• How to install Steam from snap on Ubuntu 22.04
• How to download and install Steam from the official website
• How to open Steam from command line or GUI on Ubuntu 22.04

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software	Steam
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to Install Steam on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish step by step instructions

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There are three different ways you can install Steam on Ubuntu. Either from official Ubuntu repositories, snap package manager (included by default on Ubuntu 22.04), or by downloading Steam from the official Steam website. Choose whichever method you prefer and follow the corresponding step by step instructions below to install the Steam gaming distribution application.

Install Steam from Ubuntu package repository

1. Start by opening a command line terminal and confirming that the multiverse Ubuntu repository is enabled by using the following command.

   $ sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
   

2. Next, update your package repositories, and then install the Steam package.

   $ sudo apt update
   $ sudo apt install steam
   

3. To open your newly installed Steam application from GNOME GUI (the default GUI on Ubuntu 22.04, although yours may be different), use the Activities menu to search for Steam application and click on the relevant icon to start Steam.

   

4. Alternatively, you can always start the Steam application from the command line terminal by simply typing:

   $ steam
   

Install Steam with Snap Package Manager

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1. To install Steam with Snap, start by opening a terminal and execute the following command with root privileges.

   $ sudo snap install --edge solus-runtime-gaming
   $ sudo snap install --edge --devmode linux-steam-integration
   

   Note: The --edge and --devmode flags are necessary because the Steam snap package is not yet on a stable channel. This will probably change in the future, but for now, it is necessary to install both packages and to use the flags provided here.

2. To open your newly installed Steam application from GNOME GUI (the default GUI on Ubuntu 22.04, although yours may be different), use the Activities menu to search for Steam application and click on the relevant icon to start Steam.

   

3. Alternatively, you can always start the Steam application from the command line terminal by simply typing:

   $ steam
   

Install Steam manually by using the official Steam package

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1. To install Steam with the official software package from the Steam website, start by opening a terminal and enabling the i386 architecture repository:

   $ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
   

2. After that, you will need to update package repositories and install the following prerequisite packages that will be needed in order to download and run Steam. Execute the following commands in terminal.

   $ sudo apt update
   $ sudo apt install wget gdebi-core libgl1-mesa-glx:i386
   

3. Next, you can execute the following wget command to download the official Steam software package.

   $ wget -O ~/steam.deb http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb
   

   Note that this command will download the installer file to your current user’s home directory.

4. Install the downloaded Steam package using the gdebi command:

   $ sudo gdebi ~/steam.deb
   

5. To open your newly installed Steam application from GNOME GUI (the default GUI on Ubuntu 22.04, although yours may be different), use the Activities menu to search for Steam application and click on the relevant icon to start Steam.

   

6. Alternatively, you can always start the Steam application from the command line terminal by simply typing:

   $ steam
   

That’s all there is to it. Now you will be able to open Steam on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, and login to your account to get started downloading and playing games, or messaging friends, etc. If you do not already have a Steam account to login to, you will be prompted to create one when you first start up the Steam application.

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to install Steam on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux, using the official Ubuntu repository, the Snap package manager, and the official Steam software package. Steam is one of the most popular applications for downloading and managing video game libraries on the computer and mobile devices, due to its widespread support and huge catalog of video games, including many with Linux support.