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Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta
New submitter jotaass writes "In news that is guaranteed to make the Linux gaming community (in particular, but not exclusively) excited, Valve has just announced that the Steam for Linux client Beta is now open to the public. A .deb package is available here. Interesting as well, they are using an empty GitHub repository solely as an issue tracker, open for anyone to submit, edit and track bugs, with no actual code in the repo."
Let the games begin!
Actually the entire problem with Macintosh Steam is ASPYR Media. Those asshats want to run their own shitty web based store and aren't allowing Steam to publish any of their native ports. Since Most companies port to Mac through ASPYR they have the Mac market by the Balls. Linux doesn't have this problem most ports were done in-house by their respective companies or done by the now dead Loki Software. As far as I am aware those rights reverted back to the original software makers when Loki went Bankrupt. Games like Unreal Tournament1/2003/2004, and Quake/Doom's Linux ports should be coming to Steam.
I never felt Windows was bad enough to cut out for gaming, until I tried Windows 8. I use Linux for a lot of things, even bought all the Loki games when they were around, but never had too much of an issue with Windows Gaming to say I would drop it if Linux caught up.
I changed my mind. Windows 8 has been horrid on the desktop for gaming. I've had several crashes due to DirectX driver incompatibility.. Most of them due to having the XBOX 360 Controller plugged in. I have older hardware no longer supported - and no word if it will be. Metro isn't really that intuitive for launching games (although it is for buying them I guess). My AMD Radeon card has been overheating lately because their drivers aren't up to snuff on Windows 8, go figure... It's been overclocking itself. Which I know isn't all Microsoft's fault - but it does seem like PC Gaming is an afterthought over tablet gaming with the newest release. Seriously, bejeweled type games are at the forefront of the metro store.
Gabe got a lot of flack for looking at linux as a platform that steam will run on, but I'm all for it. A game distributor gets all access to the OS that they will be delivering on? I'd be hard pressed to think of real reasons that game producers won't want to jump at it. Definitely like the idea of a SteamBox too... I can play the same game on my laptop, desktop and console? and have all my save games with me to jump right in at the same point I left off on? Sounds damn good to me.
Steam also gets some flack for pricing - but I always wait for the deals. Trine 2 cost me $4, a game I would've never tried unless it was on the Linux Beta, and loving it... so is my son.
I'm not overjoyed.. maybe 8 years ago I would've been... When enlightment kicked Windows XP out of the water... When Linux Desktop was promising some hope... But, I would definitely replace Windows with Linux as my desktop if gaming went that way... Gaming sucks on tablets for me... and tablet OS's suck for gaming.. So maybe it is finally the year of the linux desktop.
12.04 LTS is the supported version.
Obviously you only read what you wanted to read. Even the client has problems and lacks Steam support.
I'll also add that even some native Valve games run less-than-ideal on OS X. It's pretty obvious that a lot of effort wasn't put into it and if this is the best that Valve can produce do you really expect a better Linux product? Come on now.
My understanding was that SteamBox (or whatever it gets called) will be linux based, so I imagine linux support may actually surpass OSX support in time
However, completely purging it is crap. "dpkg" and "apt-get" remove and purge didn't delete the really big directory, which is ~/.local/share/Steam. This is where your ~1GB went.
The G
Since AMD is worth about twice what Valve is and has 60x the employees, I think it'd be the other way around.
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Blame Google and blame all the buggy software that gets released. Lots of games I'm played and other software I've used should have still been in beta. From my experience there is little difference between beta and released software in the consumer market, mostly just the version label. How is the general consumer supposed to know the difference when they can't see one?
Don't take my writing too serious but what hardware is Steam4Linux supposed to run on?
My P3-Dualcore@1,33Ghz doesn't offer PAE so Ubuntu doesn't run.
My P4@3,2Ghz offers PAE but its Geforce 6800 - although technically within specs - fails starting TF2 because of some GL-extension missing. As the 6800 is the best native AGP solution available this is a dead end. At least it runs Penumbra although every level change will reduce FPS by 90%.
My Core-Q9550@3,4Ghz with its Geforce 260 is technically speaking just fine but officially I may only use Ubuntu 32bit and waste half of my memory (yeah, easy to work around) but still I need the uttmost updated bleeding edge drivers just to move the steam window around. Ayeah, 3D-unity and Steam hate each other. And every 3D game hates 3D-unity and Steam at once. So better disable 3D unity and close steam before launching the game or you will have 5fps.
My i7-3770K and also its Geforce 670 are too new for Unity. Couldn't get both running useful.
The only system running out of the box (mostly - WLAN runs better with hand compiled driver) is my netbook EEE 901 from 2008. Oh but I might mention that Steam needs between 10 and 25% of CPU even with all windows closed and doing nothing at all. So better learn to use cpulimit or your battery will be empty in no time.
Still its an interesting experience.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
This is a byproduct of them working on a console they intend to ship. It'll run linux, so this beta is a nice way for them to test a bunch of their architectural design without actually putting the hardware in thousands of people's living rooms.
As far as bug reporting goes, I doubt they'll prioritize stuff that's not relevant to their expected console architecture. Issues like, "Hey, I have dual monitors and steam blacks one out and it never comes back" are going to be pretty well ignored because the console is unlikely to support dual monitors. This is more about testing out scaling issues for the servers and verifying that updates are working as expected. A more exciting bug report for them would be along the lines of, "XYZ game released an update, but it requires my Steam client to by version 123, and I upgraded Steam to 123, but the game refuses to update."
Oh, and the other thing that's important about this Linux release is that it be valid for the developers to test their ports on prior to the console being finalized. Those limited-run developer hardware kits are way more expensive to issue than just giving studios a Linux install CD and some basic hardware requirements. This beta is probably about making sure the Steam client on Linux isn't too buggy for the devs to work with. This way, when the console is released there will be a healthy selection of titles available right away.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I've tried it on OSX a few times but I'm always put off that it's so totally Windows centric. Search for something and most of the results will be Windows-only. It's full of "OMG try this new cool game!!" recommendations and when you click them you find out that it's only available for Windows. I'M RUNNING THE OSX CLIENT SO FUCKING STOP SHOWING ME WINDOWS-ONLY GAMES ALL THE TIME! FUCKING TEASERS! Until the implement a "only show me stuff I can actually use" configuration option I'm not going to bother more with it.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.