Ubuntu – Steam not displaying text on wine 1.5 running on Ubuntu 12.04

steam

Hello fellow dwellers of askubuntu, as the title says I'm having difficulties with getting Steam to run properly. I think I have the solution but I am pretty incompetent with Ubuntu (just started using it the other day) so a step by step process would be unbelievably appreciated! Here are the links to what I think possible solutions are:

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=146223

[2] http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31374

I've tried googling how to preform the solutions such as changing the alias/script for steam (no idea what that is) to -no-dwrite or launching with wine Steam.exe -no-dwrite. The dwrite seems to be the issue in all this but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything about it.

Any useful input is what I'm hoping for but for the brave soul who feels like typing a bit more, perhaps a step-by-step list of instructions starting from downloading Steam off the official website, would be my saving grace.

If there is any more info you guys need let me know and I'll of course be happy to oblige!

Best Answer

One alternative to updating your launchers to pass the -no-dwrite option is to disable DirectWrite support in Steam's preferences. While you can do this within Steam if you can navigate the menus and settings dialog box with no text, it is probably easier to change the setting outside of Steam.

With Steam closed, do the following:

  1. Run wine regedit.
  2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam in the tree on the left.
  3. Look for a DWriteEnable value in the pane on the right. If it doesn't exist, add it as a DWORD value.
  4. Set DWriteEnable to 0 and exit out of the registry editor.

Your existing launchers should now start Steam with visible text.

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