this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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I installed Steam on Debian 13 and it wouldn’t run from the desktop shortcut. I had to edit the config for it to start. I installed and tried two games at random and neither worked. So I uninstalled it. Even completely removing Steam needed several shell commands. I’ve been using Linux on and off since its early days so this was very disappointing.
My experience with running Steam on Debian 13 was different from yours. I don't recall having any issues starting Steam. Unfortunately, I don't recall if I had to do anything unusual other than installing it (from the Debian repos?), but it certainly didn't involve editing any configs. This was a clean Debian 13 install, not an upgrade from 12, and it had almost no other software installed, so I wonder if one of those is a factor.
Regarding the games not working though, I think I may be able to provide some help. I found out from someone I know that just installing Steam and trying to start Windows games is not sufficient. Apparently, for whatever reason the Steam client seems to come with some ancient version of Proton that is not compatible with many (most?) games. You need to also install Proton-GE, which I guess has all the latest compatibility updates. The easiest way to do this is to install ProtonUp-QT, which is a GUI to install and manage Proton-GE, and then from there install the latest Proton-GE. After that, there is one more step that's required, unfortunately. For each game you want to play in Steam using the latest Proton, you need to go into that game's settings in Steam and change the compatibility layer to use the latest Proton and not the built-in one. This is my understanding and this may not be the most efficient way to do all this. After I did all this, the games that weren't starting or were freezing shortly after starting began to work flawlessly. I have no idea why it requires jumping through so many hoops.
A pattern that I believe I noticed but haven't completely confirmed yet is that it seems that the whole Proton-GE rigamarole may only be required for games that don't say that they're "verified" under the steam deck compatibility section on their store page. The games that say they have "verified" compatibility with Steam deck may not require any additional steps. I could be wrong about this too.
As a nearly 100% Debian user, I'd recommend trying a distro with more up to date packages/kernel like Fedora or even Bazzite before giving up.
Debian has ancient packages. Frankly, it's not the best suited for gaming, given how late performance optimisations come. Personally I'd like to have driver updates quite promptly.
If you're going to use Debian for gaming, you should probably use the Steam Flatpak.
Debian is stable meaning it has ancient packages. I'd try on a distro that tracks more recent packages
deb 13 was bleeding edge in June
Debian 13 was a new Debian release in June. Meaning the devs and sid/unstable users had done enough to determine that the sometimes 5 year old "new features" in the packages were stable.
I love Debian for it's stability. Makes it great in the homelab. The devs will back port security patches from upstream, but features (especially potentially breaking features) get years of testing before being implemented in the stable release. Even sid (their testing branch) is more stable than most other distros main branch.
But all of that means that the actual features in the packages released for Debian are ancient, especially by gaming standards.
Which is to say, Debian 13, at the time of release, had about as much bleeding edge as a stone sphere.
As a diehard Debian fan - how dare you call out my favorite distro so accurately!
Haha!
it had the very latest gnome and kde releases at the time it finished. I'm sure there are dozens of other packages for which this is true. by Debian standards it was anomalously current. I find it hard to believe there are serious gaps that make even 2025 games unplayable.
edit: speaking, of course, in comparison to other 2025 distros
fwiw I'm running Debian 12 and had no issues getting steam to run, and all games I've tried run great (with a few exceptions but not many).
I really really wouldn't recommend Debian as an OS for games. It's a server/workstation OS. I use it because I like Debian, not because it's a good idea.
I remember changing my grub config to pass arguments to the kernel for gaming performance. I bet you wouldn't need to do this on a distro designed for gaming like Bazzite.
How much of the tweaking is actually noticeable? Not trying to be a dick here. I'm so old that we didn't use to have GPUs, we had graphics cards and nobody had a "rig". Overclocking or hardware mods was the only way if you weren't willing to spend money on new hardware. Not saying Bazzite is that kind of distro but I'm so old I don't trust some spazzed out maintainer with cat ears and a discord channel. Let me break my own shit, you don't have to do it for me.
I have the exact same experience as you with Debian 11-13 and gaming. Both with Nvidia and AMD cards, various chipsets etc. Everything works. Sometimes after reading a few lines of official documentation and installing a package or two but that's about it.
The only thing that ever required some head scratching was the infamous EA and Rockstar launcher but that's not a Debian or even a Linux problem.... Everything else is identical to windows. Click install. Wait. Click play. Everything works in-game. What am I missing?
You know, honestly? I didn't do any like, testing to see how much impact each had. I just used some recommended settings like setting the kernel to PREEMPT and setting mitigations=no (this is a minor security risk, I am spectre vulnerable but this is a performance increase)
My CPU is very old and I have a newer graphics card, so I figured this would help but I didn't do any concrete testing. Seems fine.
Edit: also I had to set my CPU governor to performance. Debian had it on some low-power default setting (forgot now) and this DID matter, a lot, way more than any kernel argument. I control it some other way than a kernel arg, tho
Ah I see. I guess it makes sense to squeeze out every single % in such cases.
I believe most DE has an addon or equivalent for setting that.
TBH that sounds more like a Debian issue than a Steam issue ... though I guess the difference doesn't matter for an end user. Did you install Steam through the .deb or the flathub flatpak? Might want to try the other one.
Also, what DE, because Gnome doesn't like Desktop icons.
May I suggest Bazzite?
Absolutely. I may give it a go because it looks interesting. I need to learn more about it before I install it.
Back in the yonder days of lore, I too ended up on Debian, or at least Debian based distros...
I was actually able to get RDR2 running on Debian via Steam/Proton in like... 2020/21?
That required a good deal of bullshit though, felt like I practically had my own lite custom distro at that point.
Worked online too! Untill Rockstar decided linux users are all dirty hackers/no longer supported.
... they still owe me money as far as I'm concerned.
But good lord, getting a Steam Deck has made me lazy.
Bazzite is just so much easier for 99% of the shit I actually do.
You can use the prepackaged DistroShelf to fairly quickly just set up a Debian or w/e environment, to do things like compiling and such, as Bazzite is Atomic, which means it tends to get mad or break if you directly futz with its core packages.
Gaming on it? Literally works out of the box.
I see you tried particularly hard: did you actually select the proton runtime for the "random" game you selected? I've quite literally have ZERO games in my library that have not played on linux. It's not a fully complete or random sampling, but I've gotten everything to work, but you do have to do the bare f-ing minimum step of turning it on.
I tried three. My point is that people are talking more about Linux as a viable desktop. I despise windows as much as the next person and I really want people to move to Linux.
Many people stick with windows because of gaming but gaming on Linux has to be consistently at least as good and easy as windows. It’s all well and good saying “edit this file, select the right runtime”, but that’s not good enough IMHO.
Installing steam was either download the DEB file (and then run a shell command) or run a bunch of shell commands to add a key and a repo and to install the program. That’s not an attractive picture for non technical users.
But downloading deb files is how you install things on Ubuntu. Just like app files on Mac and exe on Windows. Like, any user needs to do the absolute bare minimum and understand the os they're using.
If the requirement is that Linux needs to run exe fines just like windows, then that's not reasonable and the user should totally just continue to use windows. They deserve the ads.
But if you read the 1/4 page install instructions for steam and Linux, follow the directions, then your things will run just fine. THAT is what people mean when they say Linux works great for users.
No, the Steam deb is special because it's not in the normal apt repos, which is true for both Ubuntu and Debian. And I can believe that Debian has issues with an installer file that was probably made for Ubuntu in the first place. But downloading random installer files is indeed the standard way to install applications on Windows.
No average user is going to do that. If it doesn’t just work it doesn’t work to them.