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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."
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.
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
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!