Arch: Flatpak of Snap for Steam?

I am deadset on not having 32bit libraries outside of a sandbox on my PC. I'm supposed to get a refund on all faulty PC parts I had so I ordered new ones and once they arrive, I will have a fresh system. I used flatpak Steam on my current system and it had no access to my download folder which I found slightly irritating. What would be better on Arch for Steam only: Snap or Flatpak? I am now partial to trying Snap but I figured I'll ask in case anyone has any great/terrible experiences to share. c:

blackbird, (edited )

It doesn't make a big difference so if you install one of Flatpak oder Snap anyways for something else, stay with it. Otherwise I'd recommend Flatpak since it is somewhat native to Arch and there are many guides on how to configure it. Like @julianh said, your privileges issue can be resolved. You don't need a GUI for that, just follow the documentation, it's pretty easy.

UrbenLegend,

Flatpak is better IMHO. It's super easy to setup on Arch. The reason why it had no access to your download folder is just simply due to the sandboxing. Check your Flatpak permissions using Flatseal (also available on Flatpak) or using KDE's flatpak-kcm.

recursed,

Flatseal is a great tool as mentioned by julianh but wanted to mention that you can use the following command to add a directory on an already installed flatpak from this askubuntu post.

flatpak override <package_name_here> --nofilesystem=<path_here>
kimbonaut,

If file access was the only issue with Flatpak, I would try also installing Flatseal as it will allow you to change the access of each application. I tried Snaps on my Mum's Ubuntu machine (I run Fedora, for reference) and I hated it spamming lsblk like it were docker swarm.

julianh,

You can use flatseal to change flatpak permissions. It itself is available on flathub.

loganmarchione,

This is the correct answer.

Dirk,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

I run the Flatpak variant and I am super happy that it only has very limited access to my system.

I do not trust them since this happened some years ago:

https://news.softpedia.com/news/Steam-for-Linux-Can-Delete-Home-Folder-with-rm-rf-470247.shtml

You can always override paths in Flatpak to point to specific host locations.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1086529/how-to-give-a-flatpak-app-access-to-a-directory

Doesn’t worth the potential data loss or other weird issues in my opinion.

You can access all Steam “payload” in the app directory anyways.

${HOME}/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam

And your game data is in ....../userdata/YOUR_STEAM_ID

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