Interesting. Steam works out of the box with the libc on Slackware, Arch Linux, Fedora, etc. Any idea why?
Are you talking about the distro-packaged version of Steam or the one downloaded off of Steam's site? (Because I'm referring to the latter, as Steam-launcher currently in Debian testing lists as required dependencies jockey-common and libc6 >= 2.15. Both of which are not found in Debian testing. (The former because it isn't how Debian does things, and the latter because it's not in Debian (except 2.17 is in experimental, but I'm pretty sure most are not about to install a system-wide glibc from there.))
The package on the website is for Ubuntu and variants. If you're using another distribution you should talk to the distribution maintainers or use this unpackaged version:
http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_latest.tar.gz
Do you have issues with the tar.gz archive?
It only launched with the Ubuntu glibc.
A user has created a Debian package of steam which looks pretty good. I've suggested some improvements and you're welcome to as well:
https://github.com/GhostSquad57/Steam-Installer-for-Wheezy
Based on the description that's just a few scripts and a repack of the Ubuntu glibc. Not actually addressing the underlying issues, namely:
1: Steam depending on an Ubuntu-specific build of glibc-2.15
2: Does Steam even need anything specific to 2.15/Ubuntu glibc 2.15? (And not, for example in 2.13?)
This is an issue in the long term because 2.15 will eventually get supplanted by newer and better versions, but if Steam chokes/needs complete rebuilding every time a distro changes glibc versions, you're going to have more problems.
It's not an Ubuntu specific build of glibc, it's just newer than what's currently in squeeze and wheezy.
This post briefly explains why Debian hasn't updated yet:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/07/msg00617.html
If you have an amd64 system and you don't already have a 32-bit C library that you need, you can download an experimental libc from the debian repo:
ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/e/eglibc/libc6-i386_2.17-0experimental2_amd64.deb
and then install it like this:
dpkg -i --force-depends libc6-i386_2.17-0experimental2_amd64.deb
Then steam will run just fine on your system, if you have commercial AMD or NVIDIA drivers.
Cheers!
Point 1: The Steam client did not work with two locally compiled copies of 2.15.
Point 2: The Steam client did not work with 2.16 from experimental.
Point 3: The Steam client did not work with 2.17 from experimental.
Bonus point: Installing something like glibc system-wide with those options would have a good chance of breaking massive amounts of stuff.
Ubuntu libc-2.15.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), BuildID[sha1]=0x805b42c3b37952e22d09339a834897e5faa75594, for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, stripped
Locally compiled libc-2.15.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), BuildID[sha1]=0x6bbaccff690729c0cee6fcda315c1275578b4c37, for GNU/Linux 2.0.0, not stripped
Also locally compiled libc-2.15.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), BuildID[sha1]=0xeb2590cad48ada1c8616a12106e84d539bfb5c1a, for GNU/Linux 2.6.30, not stripped
Debian experimental libc-2.16.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), BuildID[sha1]=0xce75290b0a7133c08fcd9040d6e713abb7d92b88, for GNU/Linux 3.4.0, stripped
Debian Experimental libc-2.17.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), BuildID[sha1]=0x09d819955829f04e0e97b6de72f06747696e266e, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, stripped
None of these were installed system-wide, and only the Ubuntu specific version works for Steam.
Conclusion: Steam depends on Ubuntu glibc=2.15 not on glibc>=2.15.
Conclusion: Steam depends on Ubuntu glibc=2.15 not on glibc>=2.15.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
I'm running Steam on 2.17-0experimental2 on Debian Experimental (installed system-wide) without any problems.
Probably you're doing something wrong.
I fail to see how I'm 'doing something wrong' -- unless you count thinking that someone would realize that depending on Ubuntu-glibc=2.15 is a bad thing as 'doing something wrong'.
Using LD_LIBRARY_PATH to get around not feeling like installing something likely to cause a lot of breakage should not produce different results for Ubuntu glibc 2.15 and all other i386 glibcs I've tried that are >=2.15.
I'm not sure how it's working on your system -- just that it does not work on mine except with one and precisely one (as of last I checked) glibc version.
Nothing extracted yet.
Pretty much the topic.
My preference is to locally compile rather than install things that aren't in Debian's repositories -- which is why I compiled 2.15 of glibc into a local prefix that wouldn't interefere with anything else, only each and every version other than Ubuntu's 2.15 seems to cause Steam to error. (And yes, these are i386 builds.) (Haven't tested other Ubuntu glibc versions, but..., that's not as relevant as it not working with vanilla glibc 2.15.)
(I'm pretty sure no one else has reported this. I think anyway.)