Installing Steam on Raspberry Pi 4

Question

I am having trouble opening the Steam client after I have already installed it. I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu 20.10 64-bit. I have installed Steam directly from their website. When I try to open steam, it says:

Steam needs to install these additional packages: libgl1-mesa-dri:i386, libgl1:i386, libc6:i386

and asks for my password. I put it in, but now it says:

..........
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package libgl1-mesa-dri:i386
E: Unable to locate package libgl1:i386
E: Unable to locate package libc6:i386
Press return to continue:

I press the return key, it starts running, but then it stops loading and a window pops up that says:

You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run: libc.so.6

What should I do? I just started using Ubuntu this past week.

Solution 1

You can use Steam (and some x86 software) with Box86 (https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86).

You also can use PiKISS (https://github.com/jmcerrejon/PiKISS) to run some extra software, and should help you a lot as well.

---

You can see Steam in action in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0XImOEgVts

This video also shows it, with some extra information and examples of games running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkTbvknZQKU

In the description of this 2nd video, you see the following commands:

sudo apt install linux-cpupower
sudo cpupower frequency-set --governor performance
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-2.0-0

According to it, they were used to make Doom3 run on Raspberry Pi.

---

Remember, this is all very beta stuff, even if it is minimally functional. You may have to make some compromises to get something running, or it may not run at all.

Sometimes, the compromise is in performance.

Solution 2

ARM processors (Raspberry Pi) are not capable of running i386 or amd64 software packages which are designed for x86 processors (and NOT ARM processors or instruction sets).

Further, Steam does not have an ARM variant at the moment for you to install/use and only supports amd64 at the moment, from what I have found in my research.

So, Steam is not likely to function under an RPi environment, judging by its dependencies.

Similarly, most programs that Steam would install or depend upon need to be amd64 or i386 versions, which ARM will not be able to run. Therefore, Steam is not going to function on an RPi. An RPi is also not capable of running resource wise most of the things on Steam either.

Comments

[Nmath]

I don't think raspi is capable of running i386 or amd64 software unless it's been ported to ARM. Someone else may know better. Have you tried to install steam from your package manager?

[slebetman]

If you are lucky you may get ARM support after Apple release their new Macs because it is very unlikely that Steam will abandon the Mac market. Then again, it's also unlikely that Raspberry Pi will be able to run Mac software due to proprietary API, proprietary hardware and the CPU power needed for games

[Austin Hemmelgarn]

@Nmath With a lot of leg-work it’s actually possible to run x86 code directly on a RPi (or ARM code on a x86 system, or either on a PPC or SPARC system, etc) using QEMU. The performance hit from the emulation is bad enough though that it’s useless for most things other than doing cross-architecture software builds (for example, Docker leverages this for multi-architecture builds) or rudimentary testing.

[Shadur]

@AustinHemmelgarn Unfortunately, a lot of that legwork will need to be done by the CPU, and RPi's are not exactly intended to be high performers in that regard...

[Darren G]

ARM processors, used by Raspberry PI, is different on a fundamental level from x86, supported by Steam. Software targeted at one can not run on the other without an emulator (like qemu and box86, suggested on the answers). Ubuntu is able to support both because it is free software, so the whole source code is available, thus it can be compiled to different processors types. Software on Steam, on the other hand, are distributed in binary only form, where they are already compiled to the x86 processor (as well as Steam itself).

[LegoManSam]

Thank you so much! I have decided not to try to run it anymore, because I have another computer that should work better. Though, it stopped working recently.

[Ismael Miguel]

@LegoManSam Thank you for accepting my answer. If you can get it to work, you can install Steam Link and connect to your other PC, running the games there. It supports controllers and keyboard+mouse. I recommend using it over Ethernet, instead of Wifi.