Re-enabling Steam Runtime in the Steam package

Due to some issues with libraries in an upcoming Steam client update, I’m forced to re-enable the Steam runtime (Ubuntu libraries) in Fedora’s Steam package. This means that all dependencies are no longer needed but the size of the Steam client can get ridiculously high on the system on where it is installed. For comparison, see the difference in size for an installation that uses the Steam runtime and one that doesn’t (the SteamApps folder is the folder where applications/games are installed):

$ du -hs --exclude=SteamApps
1.3G
$ du -hs --exclude=SteamApps --exclude=steam-runtime
992M

If we could run it without the Steam runtime enabled and also avoid downloading the runtime archives; then the client would weight nearly 500 mb less:

$ du -hs --exclude=SteamApps --exclude=steam-runtime*
805M

Let’s hope that in the future Valve will not mandate the use of Ubuntu libraries for long and will standardize on a specific set of common libraries.

I’ve updated the repository page with updated instruction and pushed updated packages both to the repository and in RPMFusion. Starting from package steam-1.0.0.43-9 the Steam runtime is left at the default value (enabled).