Are previously downloaded Steam games transferable from Windows to Linux?
I've backed up many of the Steam games I had installed in Windows. Am I able to use these on Linux or do I need to re-download them?
You are viewing a single comment
I've backed up many of the Steam games I had installed in Windows. Am I able to use these on Linux or do I need to re-download them?
Yes they can be. However, if you want to use a compatibility layer with them like proton the game files have to be stored in exFat (Linux file system format) format. If you have them on a drive formatted for NTFS (windows file system format) the game won’t start and wont tell you why. Games with native versions will run fine from a NTFS partition.
I'm guessing symlinking the compatdata folder to a Linux friendly filesystem, like Valve recommends here, would probably fix issues like that. I'm sure there must be edge cases but, in my admittedly not extensive experience, I haven't encountered any myself.
@beesterman @lightnsfw What?!? I run games using proton on an NTFS partition just fine...
If you do this it's safer to use lowntfs-3g so everything is forced to lower case... And yes using a proper linux filesystem is way safer.
So currently my backups are on my media server which is ext4. These would be moved to my gaming system when I wanted to install them. I would just need to make sure that was formatted in exfat for this to work?
No, in that case you're fine. Exfat is really only good for shared drives. Just use the default of your distribution.
That makes sense. Thanks
Sometimes running applications from NTFS will have issues so I recommend doing rsync to a Linux FS before running