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Left 4 Dead Demo Includes Linux Steam Client Libraries
SheeEttin writes "If you've been longing to play games from Steam on your Linux machine, you may not have to wait much longer — the Left 4 Dead demo includes some Linux libraries, in particular, one named 'steamclient_linux.so.' While the game's full release does not include these libraries, their apparently accidental inclusion in the demo suggests that Steam games will have native Linux clients in the near future. (A job listing at Valve looking for someone whose responsibilities would include 'Port[ing] Windows-based games to the Linux platform' would seem to support this.) The libraries also include several strings nonessential to a pure server, including references to forgotten passwords. Hopefully, this indicates that at least some Valve-affiliated games will have native Linux clients."
He is talking about steam. not only are you forced to run it always in the background when you play the games.
it will call home every time you start a game to see if it's legit even if it's for lan or single player(yes i know one can get around it but do it too often and it will complain). It will prevent you from even running a game that is not up to date even in single player mode or lan, which is a pain in the rear because on some games the newest patch is not always the best. The ability to arbitrarily and without notice change requirements of the game like forcing people to up date their os's to play games that without steam would of played just fine.
the subversion of your fair use rights of being able to take the games you buy to a buy sell or trade store when your throughly sick of it to get some money back on your investment, on top of that boxed games that require steam can't be sold by ebay or any buy sell or trade stores because valve has publicly announced they won't accept those sales as valid even if the buyer proves he has the legit cd and proof of purchase. the fact that it removes from your control the physical medium of the game, some of us have isp's that don't like it when you download multiple gigs of data just because one little file in the steam cache(which you are not allowed to open btw) gets courpt.
to put it bluntly at the cost of my karma, if a game is on steam it's not worth playing. i DO NOT support companies that treat people like this. though on a side note i would find it funny if they ported steam to linux, it would be the first official spyware program for the os.
I have an Intel Skulltrail rig, have 8 cores, and have never put OSX anywhere near it.
A decent try, but Mactards don't have a monopoly on 8 cores either, though no doubt Stevie Jobber has tried to convince you that the only 8 core desktops in the world are Macs.
For one thing, some of us refuse to use microsoft products because the company's operations are detrimental to society. For another, some of us prefer open source/free software for similar ethical reasons.