Can anyone eli5 what the steam runtime actually does? Ive seen scout and sniper on my system and i kinda accept that it has to be there but what does it do?
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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different distros have different environments. as in different libraries, versions and ways of accomplishing the same tasks. this is good for the linux ecosystem but bad for developers who want a predictable and stable set of tools they can build upon.
this system addresses just that by providing this stable set of libraries and tools developers can target instead.
eli5 it's basically so your choice of distro doesn't affect game compatibility, and developers don't have to add manual support for every distro a user might want to run.
Ok thanks! Is it related to proton or is it just for native games?
both. they can also work together for windows games to run predictably through proton without the need for distro-specific tweaks.
that's because proton is not an emulator but a translator, so it's interacting directly with the aforementioned system libraries and kernel instead of emulating those.
it's part of how it can be so fast.
Proton runs on SLR.
Apart from what others already replied, a native game can run on SLR.
If it is being run without SLR, that would mean that you are using your distro's system libraries, which you would find in places like /lib and /usr/lib.
If it is being run on SLR, then it is using the libraries that Steam downloaded in the location the SLR is installed.
You know Proton, and how the various versions have different compatibility? And some games might prefer a specific Proton? This stuff is a… “Linux base” that developers can target, so for example if I make a game tomorrow and target a specific version, it’ll run tomorrow like in 20 years, because no matter how the actual system will change, that “Linux base” I targeted will still be there.
Can anyone eli5 what the steam runtime actually does?
It's the thing that actually runs your games.
I'm confused, I thought they used Arch nowadays?
For SteamOS, yes. Steam Linux Runtime is a container environment for running games so they work across different distros.
I'm curious what kind of code name they are giving to 4.0 (3.0 is sniper, for example). Was it decided yet?
Seems they moved away from code names: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/steamrt/steamrt4/README.md?ref_type=heads
v4 used to have the code name "medic": https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/wip/task725/medic/README.md?ref_type=heads
Ooh, Team Fortress 🤩
Bummer. Sounds like they are afraid of not having codenames for 10.0 and on
saxton_hale
they are already on 4.0, way past 3. they are uncomfortable, in uncharted territory.
We've had 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. Is that just spurious precision or are there .1 releases?