How to Install Steam on Debian 11 Bullseye

Steam is a video game cross-platform that Valve created. It was launched as a standalone software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games and expanded to include games from third-party publishers and now boasts a library filled with thousands if not tens of thousands of games across all gaming consoles.

In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Steam on your Debian 11 Bullseye desktop.

Prerequisites

• Recommended OS: Debian 11 Bullseye
• User account: A user account with sudo privilages or root access (su command).
• Required Packages: wget

Updating Operating System

Update your Debian 11 operating system to make sure all existing packages are up to date:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Root or Sudo Access

By default, when you create your account at startup with Debian compared to other distributions, it does not automatically receive sudoers status. You must either have access to the root password to use the su command or visit our tutorial on How to Add a User to Sudoers on Debian.

Install Steam as a .Deb Package

By default, Debian 11 doesn’t come with Steam, so you will need to install the Steam application manually, and you will need to download the installation .deb file found on Steam’s repository and then execute it using your command-line terminal.

To do this, open your terminal from the application menu, then enter the following command to download the .deb package as follows:

wget https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steam.deb

Next, you execute the .deb package you downloaded from Steam’s repository with the following command:

sudo apt install ./steam.deb

Example output:

Type “Y,” then press “ENTER KEY” to proceed with the installation.

When installing Steam using the .deb package, it will automatically install itself into your repository list to receive updates in the future. You can verify this by running the apt-cache policy command:

How to the Launch Steam Client

With the install complete from either installation method, you can run Steam in a few different ways.

First, while you are in your terminal, you can use the following command to launch Steam:

steam

Alternatively, run the Steam & command in the background to free up the terminal:

steam &

However, this isn’t practical, and you would use the following path on your desktop to open with the path: Activities > Show Applications > Steam. If you cannot find it, use the search function in the Show Applications menu if you have many applications installed.

Example:

On first-time use, you will notice Steam will automatically open up a new terminal window informing you that it needs to install additional packages.

Example:

Enter your password if prompted, then you will be prompted to install an extensive list of dependencies.

Example:

Type “Y,” then press “ENTER KEY” to proceed with the installation.

Note, you will be prompted to hit the return key “ENTER KEY.”

Press return to continue: 

Next, Steam will download and update itself automatically.

Example:

Depending on your hardware and internet, the installation should be completed pretty shortly. Once done, the Steam login screen will then greet you.

Example:

Next, log in to your Steam Account or create one; you will then be into the Steam client like below:

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Steam client on Debian 11 Bullseye.

Comments and Conclusion

You have learned to install the Steam application natively on your Debian desktop. From here, you can sign up for a free account and start finding free games or paid. The Steam library is quite massive, and with Linux gaming gathering steam, it’s a matter of time before there are just as many options for gaming on Linux as there are on Windows.