To make a long story short, I ended up having to reinstall Zorin a few days ago (my own fault), but for some reason I can't get Steam to detect my installed games on a separate harddrive. I realize that the flatpak has issues detecting other drives in Steam, so I installed the Zorin version in the software centre. I also tried to point the Steam storage to this particular drive so it would detect the games, and while it did detect the games, it just ends up greying itself out and then defaults back to the local drive. Does anyone know how to fix this problem?
When you installed the Zorin version of steam (.deb) did you remove the flatpak version of steam too? Sometimes if you haven't, it'll still default to opening the flatpak version instead of the native version.
I did remove the previous program. The problem is that Steam is actually detecting the separate drive (which the flatpak version usually doesn't), but for some reason it's greyed out, and there's a gold star icon next to the drive. I'm assuming this is a mounting issue, but the drive is actually mounted, so I don't know what I can do to fix it. Is there a way to ensure that the drive is mounted properly?
I have experienced this couple times as well. This is due to a Steam Issue.
They only way I ever fixed it was easy and it worked both times; just was annoying.
I needed to apt remove --purge steam then remove residual Steam files (any in home directory that relate to Steam itself, not games).
I needed to mount the drive and ensure it was in fstab (or Disks settings set to automount) to automount at boot. Then reboot two or three times making sure everything works.
Then reinstall Steam from apt fresh.
Go into the settings and set the location. Then it would work and not be grayed out.
These fixes aren't working. I just straight up can't get Steam to work.
Kind of ironic that I can get all of my GOG and Epic games to work perfectly fine on Linux, but not the launcher that's actually made for Linux ... which is Steam.
It's formatted for ext4. It was working before, but when I reinstalled Zorin, that's when the issue came. For some reason it refuses to detect the separate drive.
I should note that the problem is partially fixed. I was finally able to get Steam to read my games by going into the menu and selecting the following.
Settings - Compatibility - Enable Steam Play For All Other Titles
This allows me to play the games, but I still can't select the other drive to install new games. In my opinion, this is just a bandaid solution. I think the problem may be at the kernal level (since I just updated to 17.2), but I really have no idea.
I just launched Steam and looked:
Steam → Settings → Storage
My external drive that holds games has a gold star and is grayed out.
I can access, play any game and install new ones.
So, I checked with Steam: It is grayed out because it is the mounted default - this only symbolizes that you cannot modify that due to it being in use.
So, the grayed out portion appears to be a red herring.
You can install games new by clicking that game (prior to install) and enabling Proton just as you did on your existing installed games - then the install option should appear. I think you found the solution (fingers crossed). It just needs to be set to use Proton.
Yah, I just did a test install and it seems to be working now. I appreciate the help! It's too bad Steam is so janky. It is considerably more annoying to get working as opposed to using Heroic to install my GOG and Epic games, but at least I don't have to manually install each of my games like I do with other launchers.
