Moving the Steam client installation
====================================

I often poke around with the client, check folder sizes in my home folder, etc.
Running a du -hs * in my home folder to check how much space my Pictures or
Music folder take it’s very fast. But since the Steam client is installed in a
hidden subdirectory it’s not really clear how much space it does take,
especially when it reached nearly 70% of my whole drive.

To move the Steam installation (for example in your home folder), simply issue
the following command:

 $ mv ~/.local/share/Steam ~/Steam

And launch the client again, it will adjust all the symlinks for folders, saves,
etc. by itself. Even the desktop / system shortcuts for the games work because
they launch Steam (which is in the path) with the appropriate Steam game ID.

Steam Remote Play (hardware decoding/encoding)
==============================================

Steam Remote Play hardware decoding and encoding are exposed through different
backends, depending on the hardware you are running. These are detected at
runtime, and are all 32 bit libraries also on 64 bit systems, as the client is
32 bit only.

+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| Vendor | Driver  | Encoding    | Decoding     |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| Intel  | intel   | VA-API      | VA-API       |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| Nvidia | nvidia  | NVENC/NVFBC | NVDEC/VDPAU  |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| AMD    | radeon  | VA-API      | VA-API/VDPAU |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| Nvidia | nouveau | -           | VA-API/VDPAU |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+
| AMD    | amdgpu  | VA-API      | VA-API/VDPAU |
+--------+---------+-------------+--------------+

Steam Remote Play configuration
===============================

Valve has supported Steam Remote Play (both as a server and as a client) in
Linux for quite some time. According to the documentation, streaming in the same
network segment uses UDP ports 27031 to 27036 and TCP ports 27036 and 27037.

If you have installed a default desktop, FirewallD should be your firewall
solution. To make sure that Steam can listen on the required ports through your
firewall software, execute the following commands as root.

You should be able to see the word “steam” by running:

 # firewall-cmd --get-services | grep steam

Then get the firewall zone you are in, and enable the service for it. For
example, on my system, to get the firewall zone I’m using:

 # firewall-cmd --get-active-zones 
 public
   interfaces: em1

You may want to set up a home or other trusted zone in your firewall. This will
help protect your system from unauthorized remote access over the internet.
This is out of scope for this help text, but this tutorial will guide
you through the process:

  https://ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-firewalld-zone-by-ip

Then enable the Steam service permanently (i.e. at reboot) on the public or
your preferred zone immediately with these commands:

 # firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=steam-streaming --permanent
 # firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=steam-streaming

Now start up two Steam clients with your user on the same network, and you
should see games installed on both systems as available for playing in both
Steam clients.

For Steam Remote Play outside of your network, there is no need to open any
additional inbound ports.

Joysticks, keyboards and game pads
==================================

The package contains the UDEV rules for lots of gamepads as presented in the
Steam devices repository (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices).
Also it contains additional UDEV rules to make sure some multimedia keyboards
and tablet devices are properly detected as game pads and not mouses.

Steam Controller
================

To use the Steam Controller as a normal gamepad you require the Steam client to
be running and the user requiring Gamepad emulation needs to be in the 'input'
group.

Regular firmware updates will go through regular USB hid reports and can be
performed wired or wirelessly. Valve will also sometimes be releasing infrequent
bootloader firmware updates; these updates are different and can only work when
wired.

When Steam asks you to plug in the controller to start the update, the
controller will change from a HID device to a mass storage device with an
identifier of 'CRP DISABLED'. Steam will then wait for that device to become
mounted somewhere so that it can copy the firmware file into the controller.
If you don't auto-mount mass storage devices by default, you need to mount it
manually when the Steam client is waiting for the volume to get mounted.