How to install Half-Life from Steam on Debian, Linux Mint and Pop!_OS and other distros

In this article we will proceed to explain in an easy way and in detailed steps the way to install the game Half-Life from the Steam platformon a computer with Linux, especially Fedora, although it is also applicable to other distros such as Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, OpenSUSE or Manjaro (some of the most popular).

Some very popular Linux distros:

Ubuntu

Debian

Fedora

Linux Mint

Arch Linux

OpenSUSE

Manjaro

Steam is a gaming platform, the titles it offers can only be played by installing the official Steam client. Thus the first thing is to have it installed If you dont have it installed In this article I explain how to install Steam on Fedora.
Although it is also applicable to CentOS and to almost any distro in the Fedora family, such as Mageia.

That said…just to say: Welcome to FedGamer.net! the site dedicated to gaming on Fedora. Lets go with the tutorial!

How to install Half-Life from Steam on Linux

Step 1: Open Steam on your PC and log in with your user:

Step 2: Click on the Steam tab you’ll see at the top left once you’re logged in. When you click it, a list of options will drop down click on Settings or Preferences.

Step 3: When you click on Settings, a window with several options will open on the left the last is Steam Play. Click it and you will see the following:

As you can observe the first checkbox that says Enable Steam Play for supported titles is enabled if it isn’t, enable it. And at the bottom where it indicates Proton Experimental click there and select the latest version, youll see the first number determines the version as youll notice in the screenshot, at the time of making this tutorial were on 7. Finally, check (if it isnt) the checkbox that says: Enable Steam Play for other titles.

Finally click the OK button. Attached here is another screenshot:

Note: Do not select the experimental version, because although it’s the newest, being experimental it can contain bugs and its best not to use it except if a game doesn’t work as a last resort.

Step 4: With Proton enabled, Steam may restart on its own. If it doesn’t, close the application and reopen it. When it restarts, Proton packages usually download, but if it doesn’t happen now, it will in the next step.

Step 5: Go back to the Steam Library, or Library, and there you’ll find your games. Now Windows games should look like this:

In place of this:

In case you didn’t notice the subtle difference now the Install button appears active because it’s available for our Linux OS, in this case Fedora.

Step 6: Click Install. If the packages didn’t download before, it may start downloading Proton now, so be patient. After that, the game will download and install if it doesn’t, click Install again.

At this point we’re almost done, you just need to follow the installation instructions you see in Steam. When the window you see here appears, if we choose Create Desktop Shortcut it will create a shortcut, like Firefox or LibreOffice. And if we don’t check that option, we’ll have to open Steam each time we want to start the game (which I find tidier, but it’s a matter of preference).

Step 7: Play!

Is the game Half-Life compatible with Linux Fedora

In principle yes, thanks to Proton but I must say that it is not always perfect the adaptation of a video game originally for Windows to Linux. So although in almost all cases it runs without issues there will also be exceptions in some cases. Unfortunately, you cannot know beforehand if an error will occur, in my experience it normally doesn’t, I never had that problem, but it could happen.

To make sure before installing, there is a way: resort to the community, namely: what other players have commented. The community has organized on a site where users leave their feedback on each game indicating the distro, the hardware, etc. At a glance you can see if someone with your distro, be it Fedora, Ubuntu or any other, had a good or bad experience.

The page Im referring to is ProtonDB and to quickly check if a Windows Steam game works on Linux, the best thing is to look at the rating:

Native: It’s a native Linux game, created specifically for it.
Platinum: Works perfectly on Linux.
Gold: Works very well, with maybe a minor fix easily solvable.
Silver: Works with a minor issue that doesn’t impair gameplay.
Bronze: Works, but sometimes stops or has major errors.
Borked: Doesn’t work: won’t start or crashes too much.

Here’s a screenshot as an example. As you can see, for Resident Evil the category is Platinum:

From Silver to Platinum indicates an excellent compatibility level. Another thing we can do is look at comments from users with the same distro as ours. In any case, you can check the compatibility of Half-Life on Linux here:

Check Half-Life compatibility on Linux

Supported languages: Languages supported by this video game:

• 🇪🇸 Spanish, 🇬🇧 English, 🇫🇷 French, 🇩🇪 German, 🇮🇹 Italian, 🇯🇵 Japanese, 🇨🇳 Chinese
• 🇷🇺 Russian, 🇰🇷 Korean, 🇧🇷 Brazilian Portuguese, 🇵🇹 Portuguese, 🇵🇱 Polish, 🇹🇷 Turkish, etc.

Here’s a trailer or featured clip of Half-Life:

Official website: http://www.half-life.com/

Where and how to buy the game Half-Life cheap

There are several retailers where you can buy cheaply Steam games, below I mention two of the cheapest and most reliable:

G2A Store

Kinguin Store

Once youve purchased the game, you just have to redeem the code in your Steam account and you’re set.