I like to keep my main system as bare bones as possible (it is not though). Projects that come with a plethora of libraries, I try to containerize. My convenient mulle-dockerize script wraps commands such as jekyll into commands that then start and execute a container, but it still was some work to get the Dockerfiles up.

But today I tried something different and I think my old ways may be obsolete now. The name of the possible gamechanger is distrobox.

Install stable distrobox (1.4.2.1)

I used the lazy install method, after all distrobox is just a bunch of shell scripts:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/install | sudo sh

Create a container/distrobox

Note

See the end of this article if you have a NVidia card.

Now let’s create an ubuntu container named “steam” to host the steam executable:

distrobox create -n steam \
                  --image ubuntu:latest \
                  -p \
                  --yes \
                  --home ~/.distrobox/steam
distrobox enter steam

I am gonna call a container managed by distrobox a “distrobox” from here on.

Install Steam in distrobox

Now in the distrobox:

curl -L -O https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/stable/steam_latest.deb

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt -y install pciutils udev libcanberra-gtk-module
# install and fix missing dependencies afterwards
sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb 
sudo apt -y -f install
sudo apt install libc6-i386 # libgl1:i386 libdrm2:i386 libegl1:i386 libgbm1:i386
# depends on ubuntu version seemingly
sudo apt install steam-libs-amd64 steam-libs-i386
sudo ldconfig

Export steam as a local command

The command will be available in a bin folder of my choosing that is reachable from the distrobox:

distrobox-export --bin `which steam` --export-path /home/nat/bin

Once it’s out there, I can move the command to any place I like.

Run steam

Now back on the host:

steam

This will also work, if the distrobox is not running anymore. The output should look something like this:

Container steam is not running.
Starting container steam
run this command to follow along:

 docker logs -f steam

 Starting container...                     [ OK ]
 Installing basic packages...              [ OK ]
 Setting up read-only mounts...            [ OK ]
 Setting up read-write mounts...           [ OK ]
 Setting up host's sockets integration...  [ OK ]
 Integrating host's themes, icons, fonts...   [ OK ]
 Setting up package manager exceptions...  [ OK ]
 Setting up dpkg exceptions...             [ OK ]
 Setting up apt hooks...                   [ OK ]
 Setting up sudo...                        [ OK ]
 Setting up groups...                      [ OK ]
 Setting up users...                       [ OK ]
 Executing init hooks...                   [ OK ]

Container Setup Complete!
Unable to determine whether the expected Nvidia drivers are available.
The Steam client may have limited functionality.
steam.sh[1538712]: Running Steam on ubuntu 22.04 64-bit
steam.sh[1538712]: STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
setup.sh[1538875]: Steam runtime environment up-to-date!
steam.sh[1538712]: Steam client's requirements are satisfied
WARNING: setlocale('en_US.UTF-8') failed, using locale: 'C'. International characters may not work.
[2023-05-13 00:57:28] Startup - updater built Apr 28 2023 18:32:42
[2023-05-13 00:57:28] Startup - Steam Client launched with: '/home/nat/.distrobox/steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam'
...

Patience is a virtue here, as steam will take its time…

Then I installed one of my Linux compatible games, a small puzzler called The Tiny Bang Story. To my surprise it worked. Graphics worked without glitching, Sound worked. It was playable.

Remaining problems

X11 warnings

Though everything seems to work, I see a lot of errors like these, which presumably slow down the proceedings:

_IceTransSocketUNIXConnect: Cannot connect to non-local host myhost
Could not connect to X session manager: Could not open network socket
_IceTransSocketUNIXConnect: Cannot connect to non-local host myhost
_IceTransSocketUNIXConnect: Cannot connect to non-local host myhost
Could not connect to X session manager: Could not open network socket

Firewall problems

I have the Portmaster firewall running. If I turn it off, the process is quite snappy. But the X11 warnings remain.

And the fix!

Change /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc so tcp connections are accepted. (I have a firewall, so I don’t mind):

#!/bin/sh

exec /usr/bin/X -listen tcp "$@"

Now change the steam command, that was exported in a previous step, so the SESSION_MANAGER environment variable is no longer exported:

#!/bin/sh
# distrobox_binary
# name: steam
if [ ! -f /run/.containerenv ] && [ ! -f /.dockerenv ]
then
   unset SESSION_MANAGER
   exec /usr/local/bin/distrobox-enter  -n steam -- /usr/bin/steam "$@"
else
   exec /usr/bin/steam "$@"
fi

Now everything works smoothly.

This also fixes my Portmaster firewall interference problem. It doesn’t matter anymore, if the firewall is up or not!

A distrobox with explicit nvidia support

Install unstable distrobox

For this I needed a more cutting-edge version of “distrobox”:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/89luca89/distrobox/main/install \
| sudo sh -s -- --next --prefix /usr/local

Create a container/distrobox

The --privileged flag is admittedly just some voodoo from earlier attempts, that may or may not be needed.

distrobox create -n steam-nvidia \
                 --image ubuntu:latest \
                 --nvidia \
                 -p \
                 --additional-flags "--privileged" \
                 --yes \
                 --home ~/.distrobox/steam
distrobox enter steam-nvidia

Install Steam in distrobox

The next part is pretty much unchanged, but the command order is maybe a bit more sensible:

curl -L -O https://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/stable/steam_latest.deb

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt -y install pciutils udev libcanberra-gtk-module
sudo apt -y install libc6-i386
# not needed with nvidia image nvidia/opengl:1.2-glvnd-runtime-ubuntu22.04
sudo apt -y libgl1:i386 libdrm2:i386 libegl1:i386 libgbm1:i386
# install and fix missing dependencies afterwards
sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb
sudo apt -y -f install
sudo ldconfig

Everything else is, as explained before.

Then I downloaded and executed Quake 2 RTX and in the console, it recognized my NVidia card. So I would call this a success.