Slackware, Simplified: Entry 5 - Multilib and Steam

Today's entry of "Slackware, Simplified" serves to kill two birds with one stone; initially, I was going to do separate entries about multilib and Steam, but then I realized that Steam would be the perfect application to showcase on a multilib system.

For those not in the know, Steam is what's known as a multilib application, which means it makes use of both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries on your system. For the vast majority of Linux distros, this is a non-issue as the distro usually tends to be a multilib system by default, or at the very least, having a multilib system would be as easy as typing sudo apt install steam and getting the necessary multilib dependencies automatically.

Slackware, however, is one of the few distros that is NOT multilib out of the box, but it can easily be set up as such with only 2 packages (these packages don't even have dependencies you gotta manage!).

Simply installing the Steam package and trying to run it won't get you far without the necessary multilib packages, so let's get those installed!

The first package on our itinerary is called compat32pkg. It can be found here. This package requires no dependencies and serves as an automated tool to manage the 32-bit part of Slackware's multilib setup.

You see, there are both 32-bit and 64-bit parts that make up a multilib install, and this compat32pkg only manages the 32-bit portion of that. The package that manages the 64-bit portion of a multilib install is called multilibpkg, and can be found here.

Downloading the packages is as easy as going to the DOWNLOADS sections of the respective sites, and clicking on the latest .tgz package files and installing them is as easy as becoming the root user and typing:

These packages are automated, so just sit back and relax as it turns your 64-bit-only Slackware install into a wonderful multilib system.

Once that's done, we just have to install Steam.

In entry number 2, I talked about setting up Slackware's most famous package repository, SlackBuilds.org using a wonderful package called sbopkg. I also talked about a tool that comes with sbopkg called sqg. This tool creates a queue that can be loaded into sbopkg that consists of whatever package you give it, as well as any dependencies it may have. Well luckily, Steam is a popular enough package that it's included in the SlackBuilds repo for easy installing.

Steam does have dependencies, so all we gotta do here is type (as the root user):

This generates a queue of packages that we'll install by typing:

and selecting Q instead of P when prompted (option Q loads the queuefile with all the dependencies, and option P installs only the package and nothing else).

Once that's installed, we can now open up Steam and play some games!

Hopefully this entry has proven helpful to any gamers reading this, and hopefully you've heard me say enough times that this blog shouldn't be your only source of Slackware info, as both the SlackDocs wiki and LinuxQuestions forum are both amazing resources.

Hopefully you learned something, and I'll see you next time.