Steam is coming to Linux

[SonicTehAwesomeFace]

I've had a windows machine ever since my Ubuntu-powered Dell broke, but this would convince me to re-install Linux if all games will be compatible:


http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/


I hope I'll be able to play my entire library on this. *Fingers crossed*

 

[ekianjo]

I've had a windows machine ever since my Ubuntu-powered Dell broke, but this would convince me to re-install Linux if all games will be compatible:


http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/


I hope I'll be able to play my entire library on this. *Fingers crossed*

Old news this has been announced at least 4-5 months ago, and last year on Phoronix.


You wont be able to play your entire library on it, though. Only Left4dead 2 is confirmed at this stage, and the rest will depend a lot on third parties developers.

 

[elwing]

there are also hint that all valves games based on source engine might get supported later...

 

[TangentDelta]

Lol, 3rd topic on this so far.


With windows turning more towards a smarth-phone-esque environment, gamers are going to move to a previous version of windows, or use linux. The problem with this, is that drivers for graphics cards (among other things) are a bit of an issue for linux. Luckily, as demand increases, the card manufacturers should release linux drivers for their hardware.


Imagine gaming on a tablet...impossible. You can play games lke "angry birds", but that doesn't count as gaming to me. The next generation of gamers are all gong to be freaking angry-birds players!

 

[SNESFAN]

Lol, 3rd topic on this so far.

With windows turning more towards a smarth-phone-esque environment, gamers are going to move to a previous version of windows, or use linux. The problem with this, is that drivers for graphics cards (among other things) are a bit of an issue for linux. Luckily, as demand increases, the card manufacturers should release linux drivers for their hardware.


Imagine gaming on a tablet...impossible. You can play games lke "angry birds", but that doesn't count as gaming to me. The next generation of gamers are all gong to be freaking angry-birds players!

I don't agree with any of this. Except for maybe seeing more mainstream use of Linux. If windows 8 fails because of a direction in ui elements the next version will fix it.


Can you really not remember a failed reception to a windows os that the next version fixed? I remember oh too many new releases that should have been service packs rather than standalone upgrades. People will hang on win7 like they did with xp or 95/98.


I am a angry birds player, and I enjoy it... does that make me not a gamer? I think it constitutes as a game... just a casual one. I still rock out my SNES and NES on a regular basis though. Not to mention my daily grinds on PC and Facebook games. I am a gamer.


My son plays the Wii with all its physical control glory like is laced with PCP. He also rocks out the angry birds and enjoys it. When he's old enough he will be playing PC games I'm certain of it.


Tldr: do not concur with prediction

 

[SonicTehAwesomeFace]

Old news this has been announced at least 4-5 months ago, and last year on Phoronix.


You wont be able to play your entire library on it, though. Only Left4dead 2 is confirmed at this stage, and the rest will depend a lot on third parties developers.

I did a search before I posted this topic. I couldn't find anything related, so I decided to post my own. Yes, I know this is old news, but I wasn't sure if people on this forum were aware.


And about the thing about all games, I figured since Valve has shown awareness of Wine and PlayOnLinux before, they could possibly integrate a modified version of one of the two into Linux Steam (Modified to work with more games, possibly through a series of updates)

Lol, 3rd topic on this so far.

Apparently, I might have missed those other two topics when I searched.

 

[Gerix]

^Did you search this specific board? I think the original was in General Off Topic. My favorite part was when they said the Linux port ran at a higher FPS than the Windows version. Also, if it's done right, a lot of titles with existing ports or emulators could be distributed through Steam. And some people use it just to grab the data files.

 

[ekianjo]

And about the thing about all games, I figured since Valve has shown awareness of Wine and PlayOnLinux before, they could possibly integrate a modified version of one of the two into Linux Steam (Modified to work with more games, possibly through a series of updates)

No no, they would never do that. Making steam work with Wine is a nightmare for normal users (it's slightly easier if you use playonlinux but far from being straightforward for typical 99% of the population).


That's not Valve's position a tall. They want native games on the system. Read the annoucements.

 

[WizardStan]

No no, they would never do that. Making steam work with Wine is a nightmare for normal users (it's slightly easier if you use playonlinux but far from being straightforward for typical 99% of the population).

I have never in all my time had anything even closely resembling a problem getting Steam to work in Linux. What nightmares have you encountered? I am seriously asking this because I can't imagine a simpler process to get running: install wine, double click the msi steam installer, all done. That's been my experience, and I've had to install Steam many times.


Where it breaks down is games that require DX10 or .NET3.5, but most games in their library don't do that, I've just had the unfortunate experience of trying to get Magicka to work recently.

 

[Batou456]

No no, they would never do that. Making steam work with Wine is a nightmare for normal users (it's slightly easier if you use playonlinux but far from being straightforward for typical 99% of the population).

That's not Valve's position [at] all.

Their position according to Phoronix is to port the entire game catalogue and diversify into productivity software in order to be able to avoid what Gabe Newell fears will be an industry devastating Charlie Foxtrot when Windows 8 comes down. If they're serious waiting around for developers to port over isn't part of the program. Given unlike the average GNU/Linux user they can make arrangements to license the real versions of the relevant libraries, threaten off the patent trolls, and bankroll CodeWeavers to _make_ it work what's the problem?

Unless Microsoft is able to stonewall they have the resources to force the issue of making the compatibility layer work/setting up a division to handle native porting. WinE however would have the benefit of being almost directly usable by the Mac user base.


The above of course assumes that Phoronix wasn't just spin doctoring things.

The problem with this, is that drivers for graphics cards (among other things) are a bit of an issue for linux. Luckily, as demand increases, the card manufacturers should release linux drivers for their hardware.

? While things aren't ideal, they aren't exactly on the level where the GPU manufacturers aren't releasing drivers and working with the kernel team.

Also Valve let them play with their Source Engine exactly to enable optimization of the closed source drivers, and the Radeon team (open source ATI/AMD) are expected to catch up to current pretty soon. Hopefully finally fixing things so the power saving features are actually enabled.

 

[TrashyMG]

Steam for Linux is so 2003: http://www.fileplane...-Client-[Linux]


Well it was Steam and it was ported to Linux, but it was only used to download Linux Dedicated Servers for Half-Life, CS and a few other Quake engined games.

 

[3_bit]

I just recieved my code for S4L! Can't wait to see how good my $25 graphics card handles TF2!

 

[ibisum]

I've been in the beta, and have had mixed results with it so far. I bought Serious Sam just for the beta, but it sucks on my normally-working-great Linux amd64 machine for some reason. I think its related to sound, but haven't debugged it yet .. my Linux Steambox is also my main Linux DAW, and I have a very smoothly running Audio setup consisting of multiple networked firewire devices, but it seems Serious Sam doesn't like it, whereas most everything else on my system .. actually does .. including games like TF2, etc. So I dunno whats going on there, but I think that all the hassle about Audio on Linux is sort of preventing a sane approach .. lets find out when they do another update.


Can't wait for more Linux titles, though .. If I recall, Steam has some decent FlightSims that might be ported, and I can't wait for that to happen as its really the only gamestyle I can play for longer than 3 minutes without getting bored these days (or, in trouble, since there might be a 2-year old watching.)

 

[gunni]

@torpor I've been playing Serious Sam on the beta too, seems to run fine for me just slows down a bit when there are a lot of baddies on screen at once. TBH I didn't even think it was going to be playable on my laptop considering I have to use the VESA driver as the proprietry ones don't want to play ball