protonscr

Please use x-terminal-emulator as a fallback for xterm | gnome-terminal

steamopen Feature RequestreviewedSteam client
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#665 · opened 2013-01-12 by lumag · updated 2025-11-17 · 10 comments · github
Llumag 2013-01-12 github

Please use x-terminal-emulator as a fallback entry both in steam package control file and in scripts. It should be possible to use any other compatible emulator (like xfce4-terminal or rxvt).

MMrSchism 2013-01-12 github

Duplicate of #620.

Llumag 2013-01-12 github

@MrSchism
The problem is that you are currently ignoring the traditional behaviour of asking for x11 terminal program on Ubuntu/Debian. You can use xterm/gnome-terminal, but there are people who use other terminal emulators. So I'm kindly asking to add a system-default alternative to a terminal-emulators program.

MMrSchism 2013-01-12 github

This was brought up in #620 and they acknowledge that this issue is being looked into and will be solved as soon as possible.

Jjohndrinkwater 2013-04-10 github

Reopening as #620 was fixed and didn’t resolve this issue.

Ddimazanyat 2013-04-10 github

+1 very actuality

HHairyDude 2013-10-11 github

I gather that Steam depends directly on gnome-terminal because using gnome-terminal via x-terminal-emulator is problematic. The same probably applies to mate-terminal, which as part of Mate (Linux Mint's desktop environment, a fork of GNOME 2) is a fork of gnome-terminal. There is currently a bug in Mint where desktop launchers for terminal applications open them in xterm instead of x-terminal-emulator, but working around it (by removing xterm and adding a symlink) breaks Steam's dependencies, unless I install gnome-terminal or konsole, neither of which I will ever use.

QQuintasan 2015-05-19 github

Can we get some closure on that? This is kind of annoying.

Kkotx 2023-02-06 github

+1 Please resolve this as I use Tilix, not xterm or gnome-terminal and would rather not unnecessarily install either.

TTamas-Toth-ebola 2023-04-10 github

Please! As @kotx wrote sometimes we are using other options which are totally valid and working methods but Steam doesn't care about it.

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2025-11-17 github

Quoting steam's 1.0.0.78 package changelog:

  * Specifically require gnome-terminal, konsole or xterm, and don't accept
    x-terminal-emulator. We require a terminal emulator that can be told to
    wait until the command it is running has exited, and that isn't the
    case for all x-terminal-emulator implementations, resulting in Steam
    trying to start before its dependencies have been installed, which will
    fail. (Reopens: steam-for-linux#9265)

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