I was going to going to ask this question because Steam Flatpak was listed as last being updated May 2023, but they just updated it yesterday. That’s still about 9 month between updates.
In general if I am on rolling release like OpenSuse Tumbleweed is my Steam package and Mesa drivers going to be more up to date then what the Steam Flatpak provides or are they updating the Flatpak and dependencies more frequently then the Discover app is suggesting?
There’s no way steam packages graphics drivers. That would be crazy, no?
My understanding is the Mesa driver is userland so Flatpaks can include it. I just assumed Steam would include it for slower moving distros.
I am new to Flatpaks and still trying to understand, any correction is welcome.
Mesa comes as separate flatpaks which is hidden in the GUI, and is automatically install when you install a flatpak. The system can have multiple versions of the driver installed. When Steam is ready to use a newer Mesa version, it will do it automatically.
Mangohud, on the other hand, is a flatpak you need to install manually via the command line. You should follow the instruction on their Github page for that.
P.S: In case you like a GUI for things. You should install Flatseal, which provide a GUI for configuring flatpaks.