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Valve Begins Listing Linux Requirements For Certain Games On Steam
Deathspawner writes "Perhaps hinting at the fact that the official Steam for Linux launch isn't too far off, Valve has begun updating some game pages to include Linux system requirements. Some games don't list only Ubuntu as the main supported distro, with some listing Linux Mint and Fedora as well. A common theme is that Valve recommends you always use a 'fully updated' OS, regardless of which distro you use. And based on the system requirements laid out so far, it's safe to say that Serious Sam 3: BFE will undoubtedly be the most system-intensive game released at launch."
Because having the freedom to choose is good.
Disclaimer: I avidly use Steam on OSX, but I'm constantly frustrated with it's buggy state. If the linux client proves to be better over time (with a good offering of games) I'll be upgrading my linux box and going that route.
Because some people like video games, and some people like Linux as a primary OS. There's a lot more overlap than you seem to think there is here, especially with people who would rather spend the money on a custom-built gaming rig than on a Mac Pro.
Why as a Linux user would I ever want to game on a Mac?
Windows is the best platform? Can I have whatever you are smoking?
Mac hardware is fine, but the OS quite frankly sucks. It tries so hard to not be unixy that it really repels me.
Because as a Unix system, OS X is terribly supported. They made awkward changes to break POSIX compatibility in their basic userland. Sure, we can iTunes all day, but when it comes down to actual work, Linux saves the day with by being a serious UNIX that's not trying to glam over its shortcomings.
While I know of the advantages that Linked libraries give, such as being to update a huge set of programs at once, Allowing us coders to change how programs operate by changing the library source. However in the terms of Distributing software for different distributions it becomes a nightmare for the author. Because they can only really test a small percentage of these distributions, and who know if that unknown distribution uses that library or has the library requires to install it...
Systems like APT do a wonderful job of solving the problem for us. But not all distributions use APT and/or they may have a different set of repositories.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because most Linux users don't want to be subjected to Apple's control of what you can and cannot do on your computer. Not to mention the Apple tax you pay for the hardware. Why do you even ask? What can anyone possibly stand to lose by making more software available on more platforms?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
So if you want to do both unixy world and games why not Mac?.
1) Some people like Linux more than either of the proprietary OSes. This might be because they can configure Linux more, or because it's free, or because it's ideologically free, or because their friend told them to run it, or any of a thousand other reasons.
2) Why not? Many indie developers have already made Linux-compatible games that are also on steam. For instance, most of the Humble Indie bundles have had a requirement of running on Linux, and most of those games also provided steam keys.
3) Other people aren't a Apple shills/trolls?
If it turns out that my video card isn't good enough for Valve, then I can upgrade it. I can't do that with a Mac.
You can kid yourself all you like.
Snickering at Apple products is all about having at least half a clue and knowing that their products just don't cut it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm going to go with cost as a primary one. That better support you refer to comes with a pretty hefty premium. Also, most Linux folks I'm imagine aren't real fans of Apple's walled garden approach when it comes to... well everything. Macs may be a closer blood relative to Linux with it being basically BSD under the hood, but ideologically they're a LONG way off.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
If I wanted to use a proprietary OS that pissed me off continually, why would I not just use windows?
easy answer #1:
no pirating is required, no "stealing" is required, and since the OS is free it's always going to be kept up to date.
Nothing other than Linux is free to keep up to date, and allows you to do so essentially for the life of the hardware.
I just got my beta invite yesterday -after specifying I was on Debian Sid (I never expected an invite since I'm not using Ubuntu). Will fiddle with it and get it running today, I'll definitely buy a few games just because.
Seems like they are close to releasing.
... what "fully updated" means. It certainly sounds like the author thinks that the latest distro and kernel is what's recommended.
It's not.
>Ubuntu 12.04
Valve is recommending the LTS and not 12.10, as well they should. Recommending the latest kernel and distro is asking for nothing but pain for everybody involved.
As far as the hardware recommendations go, they're not outrageous either.
--
BMO
The way I see it, this entire situation is hilarious. Us Linux people have been wanting something like this to happen for, well, forever, and it is finally happening. The lack of serious gaming on Linux has been one of the things holding it back on the desktop market. Now that we're finally getting that, and a serious contender to the Windows gaming hegemony is present, all anyone can do is cry and scream "not good enough dammit not good enough" because not every Steam title ever made will be available on release. I bet if the year of the linux desktop ever happens /. will be the first one to criticize it.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The linked article shows how Amnesia (which is an excellent game, btw, at least part 1 is) will be supported on different platforms, but I'm pretty sure Amnesia already runs on those platforms. So it seems to me that Valve is supporting ubuntu, but will list other OS'es that happen to be supported by the (original) publisher?
Of course this is all deduction from rumors and two screenshots, so take cum grano salis....
The migration to Linux goes beyond simply bringing games to a new platform. It could be seen as an attempt by Valve to diversify in light of Microsoft's and Apple's closed app store platforms.
In the future, Windows and MacOS may only allow you to install new software packages through their stores. They may allow a small number of third party stores to exist in order to prevent anti-trust accusations, but chances are that they'll demand a cut of all sales.
No such issues of power consolidation currently exist in the Linux desktop ecosystem. I don't think the culture would allow it. Just look at how their cousins over in the Android mobile sector deal with it - a few taps in the system settings and you're free to install all the apps from 3rd party sites you want.
I surely hope Linux Mint catches on,, it is basically Ubuntu minus the bad decisions Canonical has made recently.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
You can indeed upgrade the graphics cards on some laptops, and there are external graphics cards that can be used with others
More choices typically work out better for consumers. Sure, you can game on your WinPC, or OSX, or your Dreamcast or XBox or whatever, but arguing that enabling Linux gaming is a bad idea is terribly short sighted. More choices = more competition = better value for consumers.
I, for one, will likely sign up for steam/Linux and make sure to buy a game or three to see how it goes as I support this development. I sincerely hope Valve gets plenty rich doing this as it finally proves a business model that Loki Games (remember them?) couldn't do a decade or so ago. (I bought all their games)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Maybe this is how it already works - but if it isn't here's an avenue I would investigate:
Shouldn't it be possible for Steam to build a hypervisor type environment? If they have a common hypervisor they port the game once to run in that environment. Then all they need to do is get their hypervisor running on Windows, *NIX, MAC, whatever.
There's definitely some additional processing overhead on this, but it seems that it would be a very efficient model once you have the hypervisor built. I would think you could probably push the specs/API/etc to the game publishers and have the game developer team adopt their game to the platform.
I don't know anything about how Steam works under the covers so maybe they're already doing this. I'm curious, but not enough to do the legwork.
Lack of FFM, lack of customizability, lack of middle click highlight and paste. The fact that for some reason applications do not live in /bin and for some reason do not end up in my PATH after installation.
The lack of decent package management is another huge pain. It means like windows many application have their own method of updating which is cumbersome compared to apt or yum.
Basically my biggest usability complaints stem from a lack of X11 conventions that I expect with a UNIXy experience. The whole OSX desktop seems to be designed to only have one window open at a time.
Because I run Linux, I like Linux, and I want to play games on Linux. Does there have to be a more complex answer than that?
You know, I always liked the system layout of the TI-99/4a
>If it turns out that my video card isn't good enough for Valve, then I can upgrade it. I can't do that with a Mac.
Almost all Mac machines are laptops (the Mac Mini and the iMac count as laptops as they use laptop components). When was the last time you saw an upgradeable laptop?
Good point you made there. Apple nigh abandoned its desktop users. Now I'm quite fond of desktops, and desktop gaming. And on my budget my next desktop won't be a mac, but probably/hopefully a linux-mint-debian (I hope I wrote that correctly) desktop. Not a laptop. Not a mac.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I doubt it. Once you've ported the app to use OpenGL you've already done most the work for getting it to work on Linux or OS X. Compared to getting a Windows app to work natively on Linux, getting a Linux app to work natively on OS X is a walk in the park. Plus I imagine the game manufacturers will want to go after the Mac install base. Have you seen the number of Mac laptops in the average college classroom?
It's already there for anyone with beta access to the Linux client.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
So Apple goes out of it's way to make machines that will quickly become doorstops. Thanks for clearing that up.
That's a great reason to avoid Apple right there.
A 5 year old Mac is stuck on light duty.
A 5 year old PC can have a (cheap) new GPU shoved in it and it will happily run current games on Steam.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Allow me to educate you with this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lucid-gpu-graphics-thunderbolt-external,17520.html
Because most Linux users don't want to be subjected to Apple's control of what you can and cannot do on your computer.
Mac users are not subject to such control. Mac OS X is an open platform. You are free to get apps straight from the developer, the Apple App Store is not required.
So you promise to update your application forever whenever a problem with such a library is found?
Do you promise not to complain when an update to the library breaks the game? Or when the game fails to run on your favored niche distro?
If you are planning on playing a lot of video games? Windows is the best platform... for now.
If valve can make steam for linux stable and convert most of its library? Then it will be time to reevaluate that statement.
I can choose to buy an overpriced computer from Apple or build my own with better specs for the same amount of mullah + doing my own wire management + getting the choice of a case (Lian Li makes some sweet products) and slap Ubuntu (I can choose from a large selection of distros) on there. I have the choice of using an nvidia card not AMD. This is important because of driver support. While people complained of white screens with Macs for Diablo 3, I was happily hacking away at monsters.With an SSD the system is installed in less than 10 minutes. Every piece of hardware I own works right out of the box as soon as it's plugged in.
I can play games with Crossover. I can play some, natively now, with Steam for Linux. I buy Indie bundles that include games which will run on Linux
The point is that I get the choice of both hardware and software, that is why I game on Linux, that is why I chose to support Codeweavers by not only becoming their customer but also and advocate and that is why I'm currently beta testing Steam for linux.
So the short answer to your question in the title is: "because I choose to"
I think you two are both idiots.
It doesn't really matter what Debian thinks. Once the software is in your hands, you get to use it any way you like. That even includes running Oracle on it. None of this stuff is new at all.
If you want to run Steam with Debian, nothing is stopping you.
Your choices will dictate the nature of your experience. That's just life.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
hmm... uninformed or trolling?
1. "Apple's control of what you can and cannot do on your computer"
Right, just the other day I was thinking, "gee, it would be really nice if I could run non-Mac applications, too bad I can't compile Qt and use a non-native environment." With the ability to compile there is no "controlling what 'you' can and cannot do".
2. "the Apple tax you pay for the hardware"
Man! That always burns me up to. I mean, once I spec out a system from somewhere else that actually meets the same specification why do the prices always line up? I can't figure that one out either.
3. "What can anyone possibly stand to lose by making more software available on more platforms?"
Well, you have a point. I mean, its not like netflix is avoiding a linux release of its client, or Microsoft doesn't provide its Office Suite on Linux. No company or consortium would have anything to lose by making more software available on more platforms.
Which Core 2 Duo do you have, because I'd be surprised if a E6850 slightly overclocked couldn't handle the vast majority of the latest games just fine, and the E6850 came out 5.5 years ago, and wasn't very expensive when it was released ($260). Of course, the quads were also available at that time, like the Q6600 and Q6700, not to mention the X6800 which is 6.5 years old.
Sounds like you got a 5-6 year old bargain PC and coupled it with a $80 video card ($80 at release!). I'm not surprised you are having some serious performance issues in games today.
He's right, though. A C2D/C2Q plus a more up-to-date card than the (*snicker*) 5570 he has now can handle most things you throw at it with ease.
He just said "It's already been upgraded, and upgrading it more would be a waste of money because I hold the idea that the CPU isn't powerful enough."
Yeah, not any more. Go look at the latest iMac teardown from ifixit.
^I'm with stupid.^
Since I heard they were doing Steam for Linux I can't get it out of my head that they should build their own distro. They should probably pursue a similar strategy than the one Google did with Android.
They could partner with hardware manufacturers and certify PCs or console-like devices that they are compliant with the distribution hardware requirements, maybe setting several levels of hardware support. So you can buy a 'level 3' Steam PC, and be sure that a certain number of games run on it without issues.
I would probably buy something like that if the experience was hassle-free enough.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/steam-on-slackware-4175436118/