How To Install Steam on Ubuntu & Debian

Steam is the best and largest video game platform on PC and has more than 2500 video games available for Linux.

Next, we will show you how to install Steam on Ubuntu and Debian.

Install Steam on Ubuntu

Steam is already in the Ubuntu repositories, so its installation should not give us too many inconveniences.

Steam is a proprietary (non-free) program, so it is found in the “multiverse” sections of the repositories that are not activated by default. This forces us to add this section of the repositories to download and install Steam on our brand new Ubuntu.

To add the “multiverse” section of the repositories we can do it in two ways, via graphics or through the command terminal.

To do it via a graphical interface, we must follow these steps:

  • Open the “Software and updates” section from the Unity Dash.
  • Go to “Ubuntu Software”
  • Check the option (Multiverse)
  • Close

As we see, it's effortless. If we want to perform the same task from the terminal, we will have to write the following command.

sudo add-apt-repository multiverse

Once you have added the corresponding repository, you can now install Steam with the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install steam

Install Steam on Debian

For the Debian distro we will do it in the following way, from the terminal:

Add the “non-free” section to the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

Enable multi-arch support and update the list of available packages:

dpkg --add-architecture i3861aptitude update

Install the Steam package:

aptitude install steam

Did you like the tutorial? We await your comments.

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2 Comments

    1. Amazing, nice attention to details. Debian.net redirects to Debian.org though, so maybe it’s not a problem (?).

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