I just installed Linux Mint 22.1 for the first time and I'm excited to keep my dual boot setup. However, I'm running into issues trying to get Steam to recognize my games that are installed on my Windows drive. I know I could move my entire game library to where Linux expects it, but that might cause problems when I boot back into Windows. Is there a solution that lets me access my games from both operating systems without having to move everything around?
2 Answers
What the previous commenter said is correct! You'll want to look into auto-mounting your drives by adding the UUID of your partition to the fstab file. There are several options to configure it, including making sure it mounts right after your OS drive.
To get Steam on Linux to see your Windows games, you'll need to mount that other partition in your system. You can do this either through the command line in fstab or by using a graphical tool like Disks. Just keep in mind that this will only work if your other partition isn't encrypted.
Will it work if that partition is the main Windows OS? I guess it should be fine as long as no system files get altered, right? Also, don't forget that game saves won't transfer easily because Steam sets up a specific file structure under Windows. If you can set up a separate drive just for games, you could access them from both Windows and Linux, but syncing saves might be tricky.