Vitaliy Alexeyev

synshell · Compatibility · syn-steam

Steam on computers and phones

Steam for the synshell desktop — one package for x86_64 computers and aarch64 phones: Valve's bootstrap on the computer, the native ARM64 Steam client installed on first start on the phone, Big Picture under the phone shell.

README

syn-steam is a pacman package with one PKGBUILD for both architectures (the aarch64 client installer is the setup/ crate of the synshell workspace, binary syn-steam-setup). It replaces steam, steam-devices and the former phone package steam-arm64. Valve's client itself is not in the package — it may not be redistributed; it installs itself into ~/.local/share/Steam and keeps itself up to date.

Features

  • One launcher — /usr/bin/steam [--bigpicture|--desktop]: under the phone shell (synmobile-shell) Big Picture opens by default, full screen and made for touch; otherwise the usual interface. If the client is already running, the mode is passed to it with a steam://open/… link.
  • Computer (x86_64) — Valve's bootstrap (/usr/lib/steam/bin_steam.sh), as in the Arch steam package.
  • Phone (aarch64) — on first start steam calls /usr/lib/syn-steam/syn-steam-setup: a window with the Steam Subscriber Agreement and download progress. The components of the steam_client_linuxarm64 manifest are taken from Valve's CDN, checked by size and SHA-256 and unpacked into ~/.local/share/Steam; after that the client updates itself. Without a network there is a message and “Retry”. 14 languages.
  • Android kernels — SysV IPC emulation over /dev/shm (LD_PRELOAD), a setuid bwrap 0.10.0 for pressure-vessel (kernels without user namespaces), its own Xwayland and Openbox when started without DISPLAY.
  • Devices — shortcuts, icons and the udev rules for controllers and VR headsets (as steam-devices).
  • Windows games — the “syn-wine” compatibility tool of the syn-wine package runs them on the system Wine without Proton; on a phone x86 code is emulated by FEX inside Wine.

Install

syn-steam is not published to AUR; it is built from this directory.

cd crates/syn-steam
makepkg -si                      # computer (x86_64)

Phone: cross-build on an x86_64 host with synmobile synport hostpkg syn-steam. Optional: syn-wine (Windows games), ntsync-autoload (NTSync), xdg-desktop-portal-impl (file and folder pickers).

Usage

steam                            # Big Picture under the phone shell, the usual interface otherwise
steam --bigpicture               # always Big Picture
steam --desktop                  # always the usual interface

The aarch64 installer also works in a terminal:

/usr/lib/syn-steam/syn-steam-setup --no-window   # install without a window
/usr/lib/syn-steam/syn-steam-setup --check       # exit code 0 if the client is installed
/usr/lib/syn-steam/syn-steam-setup --manifest --channel publicbeta
                                                  # print the manifest (beta channel)

--root DIR installs into another directory; STEAM_ARM64_CHANNEL=publicbeta chooses the beta channel for the first install started by steam.

Part of synshell

syn-steam is part of synshell — a Wayland desktop environment in Rust for computers and phones, built on the syngui UI framework.

License

Valve's files — the Steam license (LicenseRef-steam); udev rules of steam-devices — MIT; syn-steam-setup — GPL-3.0-only.