For those of you playing on Steam Deck, Baldur’s Gate 3 now also features a native Steam Deck build!
Running natively on the platform, you should now see a better framerate, lower loading times, and smoother gameplay 🙌
The store page hasn’t updated yet, but you can see the Linux Steam depots on steamdb.
I would be a little bit surprised if it doesn’t also work on Linux desktop. They’re probably just saying “don’t ask us to fix it if it breaks, we never said it would work”
The Steam Deck comes in essentially one hardware configuration with one operating system complying to one set of standards. Linux users have a higher-than-average tendency to do weird, nonstandard shit on their computers and then complain when it breaks something. On Windows, Steam OS, and Mac, if you test it on maybe 5 different configurations, you’re done. With Linux, you have to test at least four different distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch), two different packaging formats for Steam (Flatpak, native package), and two windowing systems (X.org, Wayland). Plus the proprietary NVIDIA drivers along with open-source drivers. That’s already 32 combinations for 2% market share.
Linux has actually hit 5-6% marketshare. Your point is still valid though, but they could always just say “It might work on other Linux builds but we can’t support them”.
You can always pick one distro and architecture. “Supported on Debian 13 standard install on amd_64”. Debian being very stable (non changing) is actually a prime target for this.
Nope. If you pick the Linux version on a desktop Linux it doesn’t even have a binary, so the game can’t launch. On normal Linux you have to pick the Proton version. The Linux binary only downloads on Steam Deck.
EDIT: This is no longer true. If you simply disable the compatibility modes, the native steam deck now downloads nicely on Linux, and it runs straight out of the box for me, and with much less stuttering
I think they fixed that, the default on desktop Linux is now the Steam Linux Runtime 3.0 and the native version of the game launches flawlessly for me on Fedora 42.
I would be a little bit surprised if it doesn’t also work on Linux desktop. They’re probably just saying “don’t ask us to fix it if it breaks, we never said it would work”
Still lame
The Steam Deck comes in essentially one hardware configuration with one operating system complying to one set of standards. Linux users have a higher-than-average tendency to do weird, nonstandard shit on their computers and then complain when it breaks something. On Windows, Steam OS, and Mac, if you test it on maybe 5 different configurations, you’re done. With Linux, you have to test at least four different distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch), two different packaging formats for Steam (Flatpak, native package), and two windowing systems (X.org, Wayland). Plus the proprietary NVIDIA drivers along with open-source drivers. That’s already 32 combinations for 2% market share.
Linux has actually hit 5-6% marketshare. Your point is still valid though, but they could always just say “It might work on other Linux builds but we can’t support them”.
Linux has 2.6% on the Steam Hardware Survey.
You can always pick one distro and architecture. “Supported on Debian 13 standard install on amd_64”. Debian being very stable (non changing) is actually a prime target for this.
Nope. If you pick the Linux version on a desktop Linux it doesn’t even have a binary, so the game can’t launch. On normal Linux you have to pick the Proton version. The Linux binary only downloads on Steam Deck.EDIT: This is no longer true. If you simply disable the compatibility modes, the native steam deck now downloads nicely on Linux, and it runs straight out of the box for me, and with much less stuttering
I think they fixed that, the default on desktop Linux is now the Steam Linux Runtime 3.0 and the native version of the game launches flawlessly for me on Fedora 42.
How can you install the Linux version? I don’t See an Option in steam.
Right click on Baldur’s Gate 3 -> Properties… -> Compatibility
You can either remove the check mark in “Compatibility” completely or set it to “Steam Linux Runtime 3.0”.
Unless your force a Proton version, the game will use the Linux version automatically.