I believe the steam-installer does "work". It's just not ideal (it's not an uninstaller).
** Description changed: Summary ------- The steam package is too complicated to maintain well in Ubuntu. It would actually be better for our users if they would just use either the Flatpak, the Snap (not in the Snap Store yet but soon!), or even the steampowered .deb that Valve supports. Please remove steam and add it to the sync blacklist so that it won't be automatically re-added to Ubuntu. Details ------- 1. If a user happens to install Steam from the prominent link at http://store.steampowered.com/ and already has distro steam packages installed, it will break as the steampowered packages ship the same files as the distro packages but without setting up the proper breaks relationships. This is a complicated problem to solve as Steam wants to have a single .deb file and the Debian maintainer prefers to split the package into separate binary packages and doesn't care about what Steam does on their website. 2. steam is a 32-bit app only but nearly all Ubuntu 18.04 users will be 64-bit. This doesn't work well with the Ubuntu/GNOME Software app (LP: #1718453). I had to add an arch:all "installer" package (with AppStream metadata) that depends on the 32-bit package in order for Steam to be installable on Ubuntu 17.04 and 17.10 (LP: #1564570). But the workaround has problems. The Ubuntu/GNOME Software app does not uninstall unused dependencies so uninstalling Steam won't actually uninstall Steam (LP: #1741047). 3. Apparently, appstream has gotten stricter about app icons so the steam-installer package I added will need to include its own app icons instead of relying on the icons shipped in the steam package. This is fixable, but it's a pain and no one has done it yet (LP: #1754852) 4. Steam is available via Flatpak now on Flathub. https://beta.flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.Steam 5. A Steam Snap is being worked on. See below. 6. As a proprietary closed-source app with strict library dependencies, arguably Snap or Flatpak are a better place for Steam anyway. Snap Status ----------- Currently requires --edge and --devmode so it won't show up in the Ubuntu/GNOME Software app yet. Probably won't be there in time for the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. https://github.com/solus-project/linux-steam-integration + + Flatpak + ------- + https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.Steam -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1759715 Title: Remove steam and add to sync blacklist To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/steam/+bug/1759715/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs