Valve continues to promote and support Linux and probably will never stop since it’s one way of not depending on Windows. It’s well known that Valve is not a fan of Microsoft. They have even created their own Linux distribution, SteamOS, that is still under development.

One of the biggest steps forward for Linux Steam users was Proton. This tool allows to run Windows only games in a seamless way. Just click the game you want to play and that’s it. No configurations necessary. Not all games are compatible but a good chunk of games are. The next step just arrived, support for namespaces, also known as containers.

As mentioned in the general discussions, this feature is available on Steam beta version. It’s easy enough to setup:

  • Open the game’s properties dialog, go to the general tab and select ‘Steam Linux Runtime’ under the ‘Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool’ drop down.

The advantage of this feature is that older games will be better supported in newer distributions since they’re being executed in an isolated contained, specially adapted for that particular game. For developers it will also allow to test games in multiple distributions and to support newer compilers and libraries.

As mentioned in the page it’s not perfect yet. Some titles may fail to run in the contained, the unofficial flatpak distribution is not compatible and some exotic graphic drivers may not work (e.g., Bumblebee, Primus_VK).

Even so this another step forward in Linux compatibility. Being a Linux user myself this may come in handy.