Valve’s October 15 Steam Client Beta notice described a 64-bit Linux client running inside a Steam Runtime container. Valve said the container is intended to make the client behave more consistently across Linux distributions. For x86_64 users, though, the client’s 64-bit architecture does not remove the need for 32-bit system components: Valve still requires both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries and graphics drivers. Valve’s October announcement and Linux beta requirements spell out the change and its host requirements.

The 64-bit client follows an earlier beta

Valve’s March 19 notice had already described a separately distributed experimental SteamRT3 beta client, alongside the regular beta, that had been updated to 64-bit. The October notice described a later Steam Client Beta change: a 64-bit Linux client inside a Steam Runtime container. Valve’s March announcement covers the earlier beta stage.

Valve’s October notice also listed a fix for a case in which the Steam updater interface failed to appear for some users.

What Linux systems need

Valve’s beta requirements set out concrete versions and dependencies. For x86_64, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of required libraries and graphics drivers must be installed. Valve lists 64-bit-only x86_64 systems and 32-bit-only x86 systems as unsupported.

The requirements include:

  • glibc 2.31 or newer and Linux kernel 5.6 or newer.
  • Support for unprivileged user and mount namespaces, plus a D-Bus session bus.
  • An X11 server through Xwayland or an X11 session.
  • OpenGL and Vulkan drivers, including both 32-bit and 64-bit driver versions on x86_64.
  • pipewire-pulse or PulseAudio for audio.
  • An x86_64/AMD64 CPU with CMPXCHG16B and SSE3, and a Vulkan-compatible graphics card.

Valve lists JACK and ALSA dmix as unsupported audio configurations. It describes Arch, Debian and Fedora OS families, along with KDE Plasma and GNOME, as typical desktop targets; other environments may work, with operation more likely when they follow common desktop conventions. The README recommends xdg-desktop-portal, udisks2, systemd --user, and hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding drivers.

A 64-bit client, then, is only one part of the setup: Valve’s beta still depends on a multilib x86_64 system with the listed graphics, display, audio and kernel support.