Location of installed files --------------------------- This package installs a separate copy of Steam for each user that runs the steam command. The Steam installation directory can be found by examining the ~/.steam/root symbolic link, and is usually either ~/.steam/debian-installation or ~/.local/share/Steam. By default, Steam games are installed in a steamapps subdirectory of the Steam installation directory. To install Steam games to a different location, add a second "Steam library folder", which can be set as the default: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4bd4-4528-6b2e-8327#default Privilege separation -------------------- Steam is proprietary software, and its purpose is to run games, most of which are also proprietary software. The games are not sandboxed, so each game has the ability to take any action that your user account can do. One way to prevent access to personal files is to create a new user account (perhaps named something like "steam" or "games-player" or "guest"), and use the fast user switching feature of most desktop environments (for example, system menu -> power icon -> "Switch User" in GNOME 43) to run Steam as that user, instead of your ordinary user account. Prompting for administrative actions ------------------------------------ Some versions of Steam attempt to configure NetworkManager, as a result of code intended for use in SteamOS. If you are running Steam as an unprivileged user on a desktop Linux distribution, this results in numerous polkit prompts, which can be annoying. These polkit prompts can be prevented by installing a polkit policy file that will deny permission for those actions without a prompt, for example /usr/share/doc/steam-installer/examples/50-steam-no-admin-actions.rules. The example file assumes your unprivileged user is named "games-player". To use the example file, edit it to fill in an appropriate username and copy it into /etc/polkit-1/rules.d. Audio Configuration ------------------- The easiest way to get sound working in steam is to setup and configure PulseAudio (see https://wiki.debian.org/PulseAudio for hints) or pipewire-pulse (see https://wiki.debian.org/PipeWire). If you're not using PulseAudio or Pipewire, there are a couple of environment variables that steam will use. An example steam launch with settings for alsa is: $ SDL_AUDIO_DRIVER=alsa AUDIODEV=hw:0,0 steam For more information, see the documentation for alsa, sdl, etc.