Installation

Installation

There are a number of ways to install SteamTinkerLaunch. Please remember to restart Steam after any of these installation methods, as Steam will not refresh the list of available Compatibility Tools until it has been restarted.

Table of Contents

• Package Manager
• ProtonUp-Qt
  • Dependencies
• Manual Installation
  • Dependencies
    • Hard Dependencies
    • Optional Dependencies
  • Download
    • Latest Stable
    • Development Release
  • Build and Install
    • System-Wide
    • Local (Non-Root)
• Steam Deck
  • Download
  • Install
  • Usage
• Steam Flatpak
  • Command Line
  • Software Center Frontends
• Distro-Specific
  • Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Distributions (Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, etc)
    • Pacstall
    • Manual
  • Nobara
  • SparkyLinux
  • OpenSUSE
• Uninstall
  • Package Manager
  • ProtonUp-Qt
  • Manual Installation
    • System-Wide
    • Local
  • Steam Deck
  • Flatpak
    • Software Center
    • Command Line

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Package Manager

The preferred method is to use the package provided by your package manager, though they may not always be available or up-to-date. Some distributions offer either official or community maintained SteamTinkerLaunch packages. Several are listed below, but you might find other community packages in the wild as well.

Don't forget to add SteamTinkerLaunch as a Compatibility Tool, as this is the preferred way of using SteamTinkerLaunch with Proton.

ProtonUp-Qt

It is possible to install SteamTinkerLaunch for desktop and Steam Deck via ProtonUp-Qt, a frontend for installing and managing Steam compatibility tools. You can install the latest stable release of SteamTinkerLaunch out of the box, but for the latest Git release you will need click the "About" button and enable the "Advanced Mode" option. ProtonUp-Qt will manage adding SteamTinkerLaunch to your PATH for you as well.

On Steam Deck, SteamTinkerLaunch will automatically update to the latest Git, but you are free to enable this option and install SteamTinkerLaunch Git anyway.

See the dedicated ProtonUp-Qt wiki page for a list of features and how to use SteamTinkerLaunch as a launch option for native games when installed via ProtonUp-Qt.

Dependencies

Please ensure before attempting to install that you have met all of SteamTinkerLaunch's hard dependencies (listed below). ProtonUp-Qt can warn you if you are running the AppImage or running a build from source, but it cannot warn you if you are using the ProtonUp-Qt Flaptak. The most common missing or outdated dependency is Yad, please ensure it is installed and that you are using version 7.2 or higher. To check your Yad version you can run yad --version from the command line. If you get an error, Yad is most likely not installed. If you are a more advanced user and would like a way to use a custom Yad install, please see SteamTinkerLaunch's Yad wiki page further guidance.

Manual Installation

If SteamTinkerLaunch is not available via your package manager yet, you can install it manually. However, please check if there are any documented installation steps specific to your distribution before going ahead and installing manually. There may be an easier method to get SteamTinkerLaunch installed on your distribution or more steps than mentioned here.

There are several Hard Dependencies which are required to use SteamTinkerLaunch. When installing manually you will need to manage and install these yourself. There are some Optional Dependencies (e.g., Feral GameMode) which are needed for extra functionality, but not required for SteamTinkerLaunch to build and install.

Dependencies

Please note that a Steam installation of some kind is required before using SteamTinkerLaunch.

Hard Dependencies

The following packages are required to build and install SteamTinkerLaunch:

Package	Notes
awk	gawk fully tested, mawk should work as well.
bash	Only shell tested.
git
make	Required for manual root installation with make only.
pgrep
unzip
wget
xdotool
xprop
xrandr
xxd	Part of vim.
xwininfo
yad	GUI toolkit. Version 7.2 or higher required (see #98). As well as system-wide installs, SteamTinkerLaunch also supports Custom Yad installs and the Yad AppImage.

Most distributions should have the required hard dependencies, however not all distributions package an up-to-date Yad version. Check the Yad wiki page for information on resolving this.

Optional Dependencies

As SteamTinkerLaunch offers a lot of third-party functionality, there are a number of optional dependencies which may be installed. These are not strictly needed for SteamTinkerLaunch to run but may be needed to use various functionality. Flatpak variations of these dependencies may be available but may not work with SteamTinkerLaunch.

NOTE: SteamTinkerLaunch does not require all of these dependencies, but if there is any functionality of SteamTinkerLaunch you would like you will need to install any required dependencies before it will be available. These can be installed after SteamTinkerLaunch is installed, so you can expand/remove SteamTinkerLaunch dependencies as you desire them.

Package/Program	Description	SteamTinkerLaunch Wiki Page
Boxtron	Steam Compatibility Tool for running DOSBox games natively.	Available.
GameMode	Configurable game optimization tool from Feral Interactive.	Available.
GameScope	Tool from Valve for running games in an isolated Xwayland instance.	Available.
GDB	Debugging utility for programs from GNU.	N/A
ImageMagick	Command line image editing suite. Used for Game Icons for Game Desktop Files.	N/A
jq	JSON Parser utility. Used to get updated Proton versions for Vortex, and for other things like Steam Deck compatibility rating. Installing this is highly recommended.	N/A
libnotify	Used to send desktop notifications. A custom notifier may be defined. See Notifier wiki page.	N/A
MangoHud (including MangoApp)	Vulkan and OpenGL overlay for monitoring performance metrics such as FPS, temperatures, CPU/GPU load and more.	Available.
net-tools	Allows for game network activity monitoring.	Available.
Nyrna	Utility for putting games and applications to sleep to free up resources.	Available.
p7zip	Command line port of 7-Zip to Unix-like systems. Required for extracting SpecialK archives.	N/A
pev	Extracts data from game executables.	Available.
ReplaySorcery	Low-overhead instant-replay solution for Linux, similar to AMD ReLive/Nvidia ShadowPlay/OBS Replay Buffer.	Available
rsync	Versatile file copying and backup utility. Used for backing up and restoring the steamuser folder of a Proton prefix.	Available.
ScummVM	Runs classic graphical adventure games and RPGs. Required for starting ScummVM games natively via Roberta.	Available.
strace	Diagnostic and debugging utility used for writing game logs.	Available.
usbutils	USB utilities library (including lsusb). Used for checking if a VR headset is present.	N/A
vkBasalt	Vulkan post-processing (shader) layer similar to and mostly compatible with ReShade shaders.	Available.
vr-video-player	Virtual reality video player for playing stereoscopic videos, regular videos and games.	N/A
Wine	Runs Windows applications on Unix systems. Used for running applications with system Wine and performing associated Wine configurations.	Available.
Winetricks	Provides workarounds for various problems with Wine. Used for installing Winetricks workarounds/verbs on Wine/Proton prefixes.	Available.
xdg-utils	Desktop environment application integration, such as for opening default browsers or text editors.	N/A

Download

Latest Stable

If you want to use the latest stable release of SteamTinkerLaunch, download to the Releases page.

Development Release

Optionally, you can download the latest bleeding-edge development release of SteamTinkerLaunch from the main repository page by clicking the green "Code" button and selecting "Download ZIP."

Keep in mind that this will install a version of SteamTinkerLaunch with the very latest changes, including the latest features and bug fixes. The cost of this is that there may be regressions or broken functionality from the last stable build. Choose whichever version you think best fits your needs.

Build and Install

Once all of the Hard Dependencies and all of the desired Optional Dependencies are satisfied, and you have downloaded SteamTinkerLaunch, you can install SteamTinkerLaunch either system-wide or locally.

Extract SteamTinkerLaunch to a folder of your choice, and navigate into that folder from the command line. For example, if you have downloaded SteamTinkerLaunch to your Downloads folder, you might run cd ~/Downloads/steamtinkerlaunch.

System-Wide

To install SteamTinkerLaunch system-wide, simply run the following command:

$ sudo make install

This will usually install SteamTinkerLaunch to /usr/bin/steamtinkerlaunch. To find out where it is on your system, you can run which steamtinkerlaunch to find the exact path.

After installation, make sure to add SteamTinkerLaunch as a Compatibility Tool by running steamtinkerlaunch compat add, then restart steam.

Local (Non-Root)

It is possibe SteamTinkerLaunch locally, without having to install it system-wide (initially proposed by #548.) One of the benefits of installing locally is simple uninstallation compared to system-wide manual installation.

Below are the steps to install SteamTinkerLaunch locally:

1. Navigate to your downloaded SteamTinkerLaunch folder from the command line, and make SteamTinkerLaunch executable if it is not already with chmod +x steamtinkerlaunch.
2. Set the language for SteamTinkerLaunch by running steamtinkerlaunch lang=lang/langfile.txt, replacing langfile.txt with the name of a language file from the lang folder.
   • For example, if you wanted to set your language to Dutch, you would run steamtinkerlaunch lang=lang/dutch.txt.
   • SteamTinkerLaunch's languages are mostly community-maintained and may be incomplete. If you want to update existing translations or translate SteamTinkerLaunch into your language, PRs are welcome!
3. Now that SteamTinkerLaunch has been initially ran, you should copy your desired language file to the lang folder in the SteamTinkerLaunch config directory
   • This folder is usually ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch
   • Using the example of Dutch again, you would copy the dutch.txt file to ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/lang.
4. Run steamtinkerlaunch compat add to add SteamTinkerLaunch as a Steam Compatibility Tool.
5. Add the path to the steamtinkerlaunch script to your PATH variable so that you can run SteamTinkerLaunch commands from anywhere. Refer to your distribution/shell documentation for specific steps on how to do this, but some general steps are listed below.
   • The specific steps to do this vary between shells/distributions, but the PATH variable is usually defined in your shell profile (such as ~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile).
   • If you downloaded SteamTinkerLaunch to your Downloads folder, on a regular distribution your path might be something like /home/gaben/Downloads/steamtinkerlaunch/steamtinkerlaunch.
   • You'll want to add a line that resembles export PATH=, and add the path to the steamtinkerlaunch script to the end of it, with a colon separating it from the rest of the path.
   • The path variable should end up looking something like export PATH=/usr/bin/:/usr/local/bin:/home/gaben/Downloads/steamtinkerlaunch/steamtinkerlaunch. This is not an exact path and shouldn't be copied, but should give you a general idea of how to add SteamTinkerLaunch to your PATH.
6. Restart Steam so that SteamTinkerLaunch shows up as an available compatibility tool.

To use SteamTinkerLaunch as a command for native Linux games, you have to enter the absolute path to the SteamTinkerLaunch script. For example if you have SteamTinkerLaunch n your downloads folder, your launch option might be /home/gaben/Downloads/steamtinkerlaunch-master/steamtinkerlaunch %command$.

Please report any issues you have using SteamTinkerLaunch locally, including in your report that you followed the manual non-root installation method documented here.

Steam Deck

Please note that SteamTinkerLaunch can also be installed via ProtonUp-Qt on Steam Deck. The instructions below do pretty much exactly what ProtonUp-Qt does when installing SteamTinkerLaunch, so choose whichever method you prefer. Installing via ProtonUp-Qt also has the added benefit of automatically adding SteamTinkerLaunch to your PATH.

As of v10.0, SteamTinkerLaunch is compatible with the Steam Deck, with a few caveats and missing external functionality due to how SteamOS is set up. See the Steam Deck wiki page for more information, and please report any bugs you encounter on the issue tracker.

Steam Deck support is heavily secondary for SteamTinkerLaunch, I am not interested in using SteamTinkerLaunch on SteamOS and don't have a use-case, therefore there is extremely little testing done on this platform. Community contributions are the primary way fixes and improvements are expected to happen. As a result of this, it is probably a good idea on Steam Deck to install SteamTinkerLaunch-git to get the latest bug fixes (using the default master branch version).

Download

Stable

Download the latest release from the GitHub Releases page. However, this version may be very out-of-date, so only use this if you have a specific reason to!

Latest

It's probably better in the majority of cases to use the latest release of SteamTinkerLaunch from git. You can do this by cloning the repository, or downloading the code archive and extracting that. You can then proceed to follow the installation instructions below.

Install

Installing SteamTinkerLaunch on Steam Deck is different than on a regular Linux desktop, as you do not need to install it system wide.

1. Open the folder where you installed SteamTinkerLaunch
2. Right click on the file steamtinkerlaunch and go to Properties (Alt+Enter with the file highlighted if you have a keyboard attached)
3. Go to the "Permissions" tab and check the "Is Executable" checkbox, then press "Ok"
4. On an empty part of the folder, right click and select "Open Terminal" (Shift+F4 if you have a keyboard attached).
5. From here, you can run ./steamtinkerlaunch. You can simply type ./steamt and press "Tab" to autocomplete (either with a physical keyboard or your on-screen keyboard)
6. Wait for the script to finish, and then run ./steamtinkerlaunch compat add to ensure SteamTinkerLaunch is added as a compatibility tool in Steam.

Once again, remember to restart Steam and/or your Steam Deck after installing SteamTinkerLaunch to ensure the list of Compatibility Tools in Steam is updated.

Follow the instructions in Step 5 of manual non-root install for guidance on how to add SteamTinkerLaunch to your path on Steam Deck, ensuring you add it to the correct Shell profile(s) that you want to use.

Usage

SteamTinkerLaunch supports being launched from with games from Steam in Desktop Mode and in Game Mode. SteamTinkerLaunch may behave differently if launched from the command line.

Also, by default, using SteamTinkerLaunch as a Steam Launch Option is not enabled. See the wiki page for steps on how to set this up.

Steam Flatpak

(Credit to the SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak authors for the installation documentation!)

SteamTinkerLaunch can be installed as a Flatpak only for Steam Flatpak. See the Steam Flatpak wiki page for more information.

Although the SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak is hosted on Flathub, currently Flathub doesn't list addons/extensions of runtimes on their website. Therefore you will either have to install the SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak through the command line, or through a software center such as KDE Discover.

SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak is currently available as Stable, which is based on the latest stable release of SteamTinkerLaunch, and as Beta, which may contain Flatpak-specific fixes not yet available in Stable (note that this is not a git release). For more information on the SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak Beta, see this comment by the Flatpak maintainer.

Command Line

To install the latest stable SteamTinkerLaunch for Flatpak Steam from the command line:

1. Set up Flatpak on your system as directed in the Flathub setup guide.
2. Install Flatpak Steam if it isn't already installed.
3. Install SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak with flatpak install com.valvesoftware.Steam.Utility.steamtinkerlaunch.
4. Launch Steam and select "Steam Tinker Launch" as a Compatibility Tool from the dropdown list.

There is also a SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak Beta available which is intended to provide Flatpak-specific fixes not yet available in a stable SteamTinkerLaunch release. Using this may give you some Flatpak fixes faster at the cost of potentially decreased stability in other areas. To install:

1. Add the Flathub Beta repository if it is not already available with flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub-beta https://flathub.org/beta-repo/flathub-beta.flatpakrepo
2. Update your Flatpak listings to include the new repository with flatpak update --appstream
3. Install SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak Beta with flatpak --user install flathub-beta com.valvesoftware.Steam.Utility.steamtinkerlaunch

You can verify that the installation succeeded by verifying that SteamTinkerLaunch's version has a date in the version number, such as v11.12.20221005. You can check the version number on the SteamTinkerLaunch Main Menu.

Remember to report any issues following the guidiance on the Steam Flatpak wiki page.

You can switch back from using the SteamTinkerLaunch Beta at any time by reinstalling the Stable release with the above steps.

Software Center Frontends

Some Software Center GUI frontends that allow you to search Flathub, such as KDE Discover or GNOME Software, may allow you to find and install SteamTinkerLaunch for Flatpak Steam even though it is not yet listed on the Flathub website. You can install it from these frontends, but do keep in mind that regardless of how you install it, Flatpak SteamTinkerLaunch is only for Flatpak Steam!

Some software center frontends, like KDE Discover, may also give you the option to install Flatpaks from the Flathub Beta repository, provided you have added the Flathub Beta repository to your system.

If you want to switch back to Stable, you can uninstall the Flatpak and reinstall, selecting the source as "Flathub Stable" if applicable.

Distro-Specific

Note: ProtonUp-Qt installation should work on any distro as long as you meet the SteamTinkerLaunch Hard Dependencies. Only follow the guidance in this section if you have a specific reason to avoid using ProtonUp-Qt.

Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Distributions (Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, etc)

(Credit to apacelus and /u/RandoMcGuvins for the original Ubuntu wiki page information)

Note: SteamTinkerLaunch requires Ubuntu 21.04 or later. If you a using an Ubuntu-based distribution please ensure it is using Ubuntu 21.04 or later. See the Ubuntu wiki page.

SteamTinkerLaunch can be installed on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros either via the Pacstall package manager, or it can be installed manually. You may still need to run steamtinkerlaunch compat add after installing with either of these methods.

Pacstall

SteamTinkerLaunch can be installed via the Pacstall package manager with the following command:

$ pacstall -I steamtinkerlaunch-git

This will install SteamTinkerLaunch with its dependencies, including an up-to-date version of Yad. This packages a Git release of SteamTinkerLaunch, meaning it should be a bleeding-edge release and may have some bugs. Please report any bugs you encounter on the issue tracker, noting that you are using Ubuntu and Pacstall.

Manual

SteamTinkerLaunch can be installed on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions manually with the following steps. Please make sure you have met all of SteamTinkerLaunch's Hard Dependencies.

1. Install some missing core dependencies with sudo apt install -y git make gawk xdotool.
2. Install Yad in one of the following ways:
   • Yad from source systemwide.
   • Install the Yad AppImage.
   • Use a custom Yad binary, if you have one.
3. Download SteamTinkerLaunch either by:
   • Using the latest stable from the GitHub releases page.
   • Using latest bleeding-edge Git release from the main repository page by pressing the green "Code" button and clicking "Download ZIP".
4. Open a Terminal and navigate to the folder where you downloaded SteamTinkerLaunch. For example, if you downloaded it to your home folder, you would type cd steamtinkerlaunch.
   • You can verity that you are in the correct folder by typing pwd. If the path you see ends with steamtinkerlaunch, then you are likely in the correct folder.
5. Compile and install SteamTinkerLaunch by running sudo make install.
6. Run mkdir ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/lang
7. From inside the steamtinkerlaunch directory in the command line, run cd lang
8. From here, run ls -l to list all the files in this directory. This will list all the languages that SteamTinkerLaunch is available in.
9. Look for the name of the language you want to use SteamTinkerLaunch in, or English if your language is not available.
10. Run cp your_lang_file.txt ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/lang, replacing your_lang_file.txt with the name of the actual file.
11. Run ./steamtinkerlaunch to configure SteamTinkerLaunch for the first time. This will properly create all of the configuration files at ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch.
12. Update GTK Icons with gtk-update-icon-cache.
13. Run steamtinkerlaunch compat add.
14. Restart Steam to refresh the list of Compatibility Tools.

Nobara

The latest stable release of SteamTinkerLaunch comes preinstalled on Nobara.

If you wish to use a more up-to-date version, you may want to uninstall SteamTinkerLaunch and install with something like ProtonUp-Qt.

SparkyLinux

SteamTinkerLaunch is available in the repositories for SparkyLinux. You should be able to install it system-wide with sudo apt install steamtinkerlaunch. It is also available under the Game section in APTus.

OpenSUSE

Most of the hard dependencies should be available on OpenSUSE via the main repos, though they may need to be installed manually. Yad is the main dependency that is missing and requires manual compilation.

User SolarNyan has outlined the steps for installing SteamTinkerLaunch on OpenSUSE in #726. The steps are as follows:

1. Open YaST
2. Download all SteamTinkerLaunch hard dependencies except for Yad
3. Yad has to be compiled from source following its compilation steps:
   • Before compiling Yad, install autoconf, automake, intltool, and gtk3 with all of its dev versions (GTK4 might also work, optionally all GTK2/3/4 packages can be obtained)
   • Once the dependencies are satisfied, open a terminal, navigate to the yad folder, and run su (this is required as a dependency of Yad will be inaccessible without su escalation)
   • Following this, run autoreconf -ivf && intltoolize
   • Finally, build Yad with ./configure && make && make install
4. You can now install SteamTinkerLaunch however you like, either manually or with ProtonUp-Qt.

SteamTinkerLaunch is also available in the form of various community packages for OpenSUSE. If one of these packages is up-to-date, feel free to use it as well.

Uninstall

SteamTinkerLaunch is very straightforward to uninstall. The first step is to run steamtinkerlaunch compat del, which will remove SteamTinkerLaunch as a compatability tool from Steam.

Next, remove the /dev/shm/steamtinkerlaunch folder. This stores some temporary files which are fairly small but removing it will give you a clean uninstall. If there are other similarly named folders in /dev/shm, feel free to remove them too.

If you don't think you'll ever use SteamTinkerLaunch again in future, you'll want to remove SteamTinkerLaunch's configuration folder. Please note that this folder may contain third party executable tools such as ModOrganizer 2 (including ModOrganizer 2 mods by default), and community Proton flavours downloaded via SteamTinkerLaunch such as GE-Proton. You may want to remove this folder as it can be quite large and if you won't need it anymore, it can save on disk space to remove it. On most installations this folder is ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch. For Flatpak, refer to the Flatpak steps.

Please remember to remove SteamTinkerLaunch as a launch option for native Linux games, if you have this set for any of your games.

Finally, you will need to follow the relevant steps below to remove SteamTinkerLaunch itself depending on how you did your installation.

Package Manager

Refer to your package manager's documentation for how to remove a package.

ProtonUp-Qt

Select SteamTinkerLaunch from the list compatibility tools and click "Remove selected". If any games are currently using SteamTinkerLaunch as a compatibility tool, it will prompt you.

ProtonUp-Qt also lets you remove the SteamTinkerLaunch configuration folder. If you would like to do this, enable the checkbox when prompted for uninstallation.

Manual Installation

System-Wide

If you're using an up-to-date release of SteamTinkerLaunch, you can uninstall with sudo make uninstall. This will remove SteamTinkerLaunch entirely from your system files.

Local

For local installations you only have to remove the folder you are running SteamTinkerLaunch from. If you manually added SteamTinkerLaunch to your shell path, remember to remove it as well.

Steam Deck

Simply delete the ~/stl folder to remove SteamTinkerLaunch from your Steam Deck.

Flatpak

Software Center

You can uninstall SteamTinkerLaunch from any Software Center that has support for managing Flatpaks, such as KDE Discover, even if you did not install it through this frontend.

Newer releases of some Software Centers will give you the option to remove any lingering configuration files for your Flatpaks. You can use this option to remove the remaining SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak files automatically.

Command Line

You can uninstall SteamTinkerLaunch Flatpak with flatpak uninstall com.valvesoftware.Steam.Utility.steamtinkerlaunch. This should work regardless of whether you're using the Stable or Beta.

You can then remove the folder ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/ if it still exists. This will remove any lingering SteamTinkerLaunch configuration files.