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Phoronix Confirms GNU/Linux Steam and Source Engine Clients
nukem996 writes "After initially reporting in 2010 that Valve was working on a native GNU/Linux client, one has finally been confirmed. Michael Larabel recently visited Valve's Bellvue, WA based office and has been able to see it himself. Included in the article are screenshots of the client running and speculation of a release."
Valve has yet to officially comment, but you'd hope they wouldn't invite someone up to their offices and send them home to spew lies.
I won't. I'll be dancing in the goddamn street with a crowbar. I've been watching with interest the burgeoning Linux games industry and it's about to go critical with this, that's for sure. It's not just Steam, it's Source. So that's the back library taken care of. And now I can play keyboard/mouse games again for the first time since I abandoned the Windows world! YAY!
Don't know about you, but I have always had good luck playing Windows games via Wine. That includes Steam games. I'm currently playing Skyrim this way.
The number of games that don't work via Wine is an ever-shrinking list, though you may have to acquaint yourself with Winetricks and the AppDB. While a native Steam/Source client is only going to improve things for you, to speak as though there were no way at all to play keyboard/mouse games without Windows is simply not true. I've been doing it for years now.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
For what it is worth, ScummVM works just fine on Linux. And many classic DOS point-and-click games also work great in DOSBox on Linux.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Well, as a guy whose wallet is frequently raped by Steam Sales, and as one whose used the Mac version of Steam, I can say a few things:
1) Steam does make it convenient to buy games - arguably *too* easy. I can buy a game in about thirty seconds and have it downloaded within at worst two hours (for a 20GB epic), often as little as two minutes (for the 100MB indier-than-thou titles). Seriously, it's not uncommon to hear Steam fans complaining about how they get hooked into impulse-buying games on sale that they never play (I've actually played perhaps half the games I own on Steam, and that's considered "doing pretty well").
2) Prices for some games are definitely in the impulse-buy range. There's an entire section for "under $5", mainly containing extremely old titles (Doom, Half-Life) or low-budget indie games. And they literally *always* have some sale going on, and at least twice a year they have massive sales.
3) The initial lineup of Linux games will primarily be Valve's own recent titles, as well as whatever indie games already have Linux versions. Roughly one in four titles I own are Mac-compatible (fifty or so out of two hundred); I would anticipate seeing less than that for Linux, perhaps one in eight.
* For some reason, Valve's only ported Half-Life 2 and later to Mac, and I would expect the same on Linux. So no Half-Life 1 (there *is* Half-Life: Source, the port to the HL2 engine), no Opposing Force, no Counter-Strike 1.6, no Ricochet.
4) There *is* DRM. The DRM is normally pretty benign and limited - as long as Steam is running in online mode (on only one computer at a time - someone else signing in to the same account elsewhere will boot you out), you'll have zero problems. Offline mode exists, but it does have oddities (it's perfectly usable, but you'll actually have to think DRM, at least while setting everything up). Note also that some third-party games have their own layer of DRM, so if you're a militant anti-DRM fanatic, check the game details (it *does* say "this game uses additional DRM" or something to that effect).
light-handed DRM
You're joking, right? Steam is one of the most intrusive DRMs out there. You need to be online to install games. You need to be online to play games. Allegedly there is an offline mode but that only works 50% of the time if you don't plan ahead and go offfline while you actually still have a working connection.
Let's not forget the mandatory client that wastes resources, bombards you with ads and adds minutes to the start-up time of games unless you always keep it running; and who wouldn't want to have an app running that logs what software you have installed and what/when/how long you play.
Aside from that there is no guarantuee that Steam will let or will be able to let you play your games in the future. If the publisher has a change of heart or Steam gets sold/goes tits-up, you'll potentially lose all games you have on that platform.