Running Steam games with an Nvidia GPU on ParrotOS 6.4

Posted Jan 1, 2026

By CodeStuffBreakThings 5 min read

Introduction

This guide documents the steps that I took to install and run Steam games on my computer that has an integrated graphics card and a dedicated Nvidia graphics card.

Historically, the easiest ways to install Steam were to use the official .deb package from Steam’s website or use apt, but ParrotOS no longer supports 32-bit binaries which the traditional Steam installer requires. I installed and ran Steam using flatpak.

While the steps that I took worked for me, your mileage may vary and I recommend that you properly back up your data before making any changes to your system!

The ParrotOS discord server has some very knowledgeable people in there, and I recommend posting there if you have questions or run into a problem that you are stuck on.

Installing Nvidia drivers

Before installing Steam, I installed drivers for my graphics card. I’m not entirely sure if it was necessary for me to use Nvidia’s proprietary drivers instead of the open-source nouveau drivers, but I will explain why I did this later on.

Create a config file to block the open-source nouveau driver from running

  
sudo bash -c 'echo -e -n "blacklist nouveau\noptions nouveau modeset=0\nalias nouveau off" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf'

Check for apt repository updates and install the proprietary Nvidia drivers

  
sudo apt update && sudo apt install nvidia-driver

Reboot your machine

Display graphics card information and validate that the proprietary Nvidia drivers are in use

inxi -G

There should be a string that says “driver: nvidia” rather than “driver: nouveau”
Make note of the version number that is specified after “v: “ as this will be needed later

If you would like to display additional information about your GPU and that applications that are using it, install and run the Nvidia System Management Interface

sudo apt install nvidia-smi
watch nvidia-smi

Geting GPU environment variables & switching between GPUs for applications

switcheroo-control is a tool that can be used to list GPU-specific environment variables that can be set when running an application. It can also be used to execute a program using a specific GPU, however I was not able to get this working with flatpak and did not spend a lot of time troubleshooting this since using environment variables worked for me.

Install switcheroo-control

sudo apt install switcheroo-control

List available GPUs and make a note of the environment variables listed for the Nvidia GPU

switcherooctl --list

In my case, the environment variables were

__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only

Installing Steam

Install flatpak

sudo apt install flatpak

Install the flathub repository (this is where Steam and the Nvidia flatpak packages will be pulled from)

sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Install Steam

flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam

The Steam flatpak installer should prompt to install the necessary flatpak packages, including the Nvidia flatpaks.

Confirm if the Nvidia flatpaks are installed

  
flatpak list --columns=application:f | grep org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia
flatpak list --columns=application:f | grep org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia

Output returned for both commands would indicate that the Nvidia flatpaks are installed.

If no packages are returned in either of the above command outputs, this is where it comes in handy to know the Nvidia driver version that is installed on your system.
For example, if you have driver version 535.247.01 installed, then you would want to install these flatpak packages:

flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-535-247-01
flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-535-247-01

The format of the Nvidia package naming is org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia- with the version appended, but the periods are replaced with hyphens

Running Steam

There are at least a couple different ways to run Steam; each are valid and it really comes down to a matter of preference on which one you use (I personally use method 2).

Method 1: Setting environment variables at program execution

This will temporarily set the GPU environment variables when running the flatpak Steam process:

  
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam

Note: The environment variables that you need to use may be different. Refer to the earlier switcherooctl --list command.

Method 2: Setting environment variables in flatpak for the Steam package

This will permanently configure the environment variables that need to be set when running Steam. Each environment variable is set using the --env parameter.

  
sudo flatpak override --env="__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia" --env="__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1" --env="__VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only" com.valvesoftware.Steam

Note: The environment variables that you need to use may be different. Refer to the earlier switcherooctl --list command.

Verify that the environment variables have been set

flatpak override --show com.valvesoftware.Steam

Run Steam

flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam

To remove the environment variables

sudo flatpak override --reset com.valvesoftware.Steam

Creating desktop shorcuts

If you would like to create a desktop shortcut to run Steam, here are some examples. The important part is the Exec line which contains the command to run.

Method 1

If you used method 1 in the Running Steam section above, use this to create a desktop shortcut

  
cat > ~/Desktop/Steam.desktop << EOF
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name[en_US]=Steam
Exec=env __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia env __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 env __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam
Name=Steam
EOF

Method 2

If you used method 2 in the Running Steam section above, use this to create a desktop shortcut

  
cat > ~/Desktop/Steam.desktop << EOF
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name[en_US]=Steam
Exec=flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam
Name=Steam
EOF