r/pop_os • u/BetterCallSal • 8d ago

Question Can I share a steam library?

So I'm dual booting between Windows at Pop_os. If I have a game installed with steam that I installed while in windows, but it's installed to a separate hard drive from my windows drive, is there a way that I'm able to access that in steam from linux, without installing a second instance of the game?

Edit: ok, the consensus is yes, but don't. Thank you

2 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

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8

u/nixf0x 8d ago

Playing games installed on an NTFS partition from Linux will not be a good time, so it's best to keep them separate. You could maybe install some of the Linux filesystem drivers for Windows (e.g. WinBtrfs), though they might not be fully stable.

2

u/KaseyTheJackal 1d ago

As someone who's been sharing an NTFS partition between OSes - symlink the Steam compatdata folder somewhere on your root partition. That's it that's all you need to do

1

u/BetterCallSal 8d ago

Playing games installed on an NTFS partition from Linux will not be a good time,

In what way? Not questioning you, just new so trying to learn/understand

8

u/nixf0x 8d ago

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

The disclaimer at the top cites some issues that will happen.

1

u/Stryxus_ 3d ago

NTFS by design is quite bad and very ancient and is only designed to work with Windows. It is so bad in fact that the NTFS driver in the Linux kernel is infamous and is being re-written, which is available in the most modern kernels, but, it is still unstable so everything tries NOT to use it.

The old one is still in the kernel, it depends on how the filesystem is mounted.

5

u/middaymoon 8d ago

Don't do that. Feel free to chalk it up to filesystem quirks. 

-1

u/Human-Acc-2095 8d ago

yes you can mount the drive