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."

Comments

It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the games begin!

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

For both linux gamers!

Re:It begins.....

[SomePgmr]

I think the goal here is to fix that, but credit where credit's due, I laughed.

Re:It begins.....

[jones_supa]

Hey, there's a nice multiplayer setup there already.

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the fact that I got a woman to install Linux because her game had a lot more fps on Linux than on Windows (she was actually a damn good gamer), and it was easier to modify the game on Linux (she wanted a pink gun), should tell you something about how easy it actually is, to fix that.
Also, another woman only didn't stay with Linux, because there was no proper webcam chat and animated emoticon support for the protocols she needed because of her friends and family using that.

They both liked Linux's look and feel a lot more because pretty much the first thing they did, is select their widget kit, colors, background, etc, and adapt everything to their style. Something that wasn't possible to that extent under Windows or OS X. And Compiz played a large role. So large that a third woman I knew wanted to change solely because of that!

They all were disappointed, that their other games didn't work on Linux. And one of them *hated* GIMP, and wished you could install Photoshop. (Yes, there is Wine. But you know yourself that that is not at all a clear-cut thing, and while it may install, you may have to do some trickery here and there, that was too much for her.)

They were all the girly type of woman. Not geeks. So yeah. Fix those problems, and you'd practically be overrun with people who want to use Linux instead.

The only bigger problem are professionals who e.g. need very specific software. Like musicians, designers, etc. Because there, there is no option to just use another program. They need *those* programs. Those dozens of exact programs... that happen to run just on Windows and OS X. :/
At least Maya is available for Linux... (IMHO, the developers of Maya are among the best in the world. The whole application is a piece of elegance and beauty. So no surprise they chose to support Linux too.)

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

But seriously what percentage of Linux users are gamers (on Linux or other OSes) and what percentage practically use it for gaming? Is there any data available? I guess this kind of data should have been gathered for marketing purpose (product design, market research). As another member mentioned though, the purpose of the project is possibly to make Linux game consoles and attract users to cheaper open source consoles.

As a 15 years Linux user (mostly for servers and sometimes as desktop) I guess I have used games on Linux for less than 2 hours (I am not a gamer anyway).

Re:It begins.....

[r1348]

Well judging by the Humble Bundle sales data, linux gamers are roughly as many as mac gamers, so yes, they're a significant market.

Re:It begins.....

[gadget junkie]

For both linux gamers!

...Well, they had to test the multiplayer games as well, paying someone to share the experience was necessary.

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Maya is available for Linux... (IMHO, the developers of Maya are among the best in the world. The whole application is a piece of elegance and beauty. So no surprise they chose to support Linux too.)

Yes, because the user desktop experience had everything to do with that decision. Not like setting up large renderfarms with bulk licensing of a commercial OS was any more expensive, or that getting networks setup and distributing data across that renderfarm was likely easier on Linux without the need for other network management software. Yep, it was all because linux had a pretty UI and resembles OS-X without having to pay the costs associated with OS-X.

Re:It begins.....

[lipanitech]

Great to see more companies supporting Linux making it a real player in the desktop market. You can have the best OS in the world but if there's no application support it will not survive.

Re:It begins.....

[somersault]

But seriously what percentage of Linux users are gamers (on Linux or other OSes) and what percentage practically use it for gaming?

I use Linux. I've also been a gamer all my life.

The point is that you can't "practically use" Linux for most games, because they aren't available on Linux. This is a good step on the way to rectifying that. The situation used to be the same on Mac OS, but that's been gradually changing over the years. One nice thing about that is that any game that runs on Mac OS shouldn't take very much tweaking to run on Linux too.

Re:It begins.....

[DrXym]

I think the goal here is to fix that, but credit where credit's due, I laughed.

I think the goal is for Linux users to act as guinea pigs for Valve's console / cloud gaming service in whatever form it takes. I doubt the number of Linux users / games would justify the existence of the service for any other reason.

Re:It begins.....

[crazyjj]

For both linux gamers!

...Neither of whom can use Steam because their distros are incompatible.

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Why anyone on /. can seriously believe that Valve intends to maintain their Linux port one moment beyond the announcement of the "SteamBox" baffles me. I use Steam, I think it's a great service (on Windows). I have no illusions about what Valve is really after here though - they want, they need, to be the 3rd console maker+ecosystem, and they need that to happen before Microsoft with Windows store, and Apple with The App store, and Google Play captures the rest. They see their market about to disappear before their very eyes.

Re:It begins.....

[DrXym]

Well I think if their console does appear eventually that Steam on Linux may as well exist as well. I just question the economics of it existing just all by itself. The number of desktop Linux users with gaming capable machines as a % has to be very small - it' be lucky to be 1% and I expect its considerably less. However if Linux ports fall out of the work to make a console, or a cloud service then possibly it's justifiable.

Re:It begins.....

[binarylarry]

What OS do you think the SteamBox is going to run?

I'll give you a hint, it's got a penguin for a mascot.

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Windows is highly customizable. There are tons of visual styles to choose from (or create your own) and you can use desktop gadgets or Rainmeter (or similar).

Re:It begins.....

[Kevin108]

I'm not sure why we Linux users need Steam. There's only two games: TuxRacer and "Find the Dependencies."

But seriously, I'm really looking forward to what Steam can do for Linux.

Re:It begins.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well judging by the Humble Bundle sales data, linux gamers are roughly as many as mac gamers, so yes, they're a significant market.

Keep in mind that pie chart on HB is total payments; not total purchases.

That said I agree w/you that the Linux market is still significant based on the pie chart.

Re:It begins.....

[rossz]

I got a woman ...

Ha, we know you are lying. This is slashdot.

In a hurry, eh?

[symbolset]

Not taking their time with this one.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

They kind of already built it twice...

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[iggymanz]

how do you mean, this is still "beta" just as the limited audience release was with beta version. now if they DON'T work out the bugs found and push it into production, then it would be rush-job. but so far not fair to accuse them of rush.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[symbolset]

Not where I was going with that. I'm excited to see them making good progress so quickly.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[skade88]

Valve started making steam for Linux over a year ago, they kept it to themselves until it was almost ready.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Dexter Herbivore]

What gets me is that this story has been tagged "donotwant". Who is so cynical that they believe that games via Steam on Linux is a bad thing? I can understand an individual choosing not to use the service, but branding it as "donotwant" for all Linux users?

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[oakgrove]

It's called trolling. Ask for it by name.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Ash Vince]

It's called trolling. Ask for it by name.

Or it someone philosophically opposed to the idea of closed source software running on an open source OS?

People with that view do exist, and dismissing their point of view as a troll is a nice easy way of ignoring it without taking the time to think about it.

There is also the fact that the console they produce is going to be a legal mind field as it will invariably involve lots of closed source software running on top of an open source OS. Surely this is going to have the same issues around it that Tivo had as the people who produce the games are going to demand that the steam layer remains closed source, including its limited DRM that prevents people selling games second hand after the bought them?

Personally I have no trouble with closed source software be it running on linux or not. I also think Steam is great and would never sell games on to someone else after I finished with it even if I could so I think it is great that Steam is coming to linux.

I bet if you went and asked RMS he would strongly disagree though and would have very valid and heartfelt reasons why he though this was a step in the wrong direction.

Some people object to the mere idea of intellectual property existing at all so they would only be happy with Steam coming to linux if it was entirely open source and the only games available were also open source only. These people often frequent slashdot in case you hadn't noticed :)

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[dbIII]

I bet if you went and asked RMS he would strongly disagree

That he can't do anything about it, and the NVIDIA drivers, and the many other things he objects to in linux distributions truly demonstrates that it is not and never was gnu/linux.

"Debian gnu/linux" is of course a different story because Debian can call their distro whatever they like because unlike RMS they've actually put one together, and they can also keep out things they don't want in there.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Arker]

Yes, anyone that disagrees with you is clearly trolling.

I think the entire article is a troll.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[arth1]

Valve started making steam for Linux over a year ago, they kept it to themselves until it was almost ready.

No, they've run limited beta for quite a while now. Unfortunately, only participants with certain specified hardware/OS setups were eligible to participate.
Having six widely different Linux systems here, not one of them did.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[oakgrove]

Yes, anyone that disagrees with you is clearly trolling.

While that may or may not be true it certainly isn't what I was saying. The guy I responded to asked a loaded question by presuming it was cynicism that led to the "donotwant" tag. My opinion is much of the anti-Steam/Valve/Gabe Newell is simple troll rabble-rousing. Note the fact that this is the comment section of a tech blog not a deposition. Opinions are welcome.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[LateArthurDent]

Personally I have no trouble with closed source software be it running on linux or not. I also think Steam is great and would never sell games on to someone else after I finished with it even if I could so I think it is great that Steam is coming to linux.

You wrote a well thought-out post that urges people not to dismiss different points of view as the writing of a troll, so I'm not going to harp too much on that one sentence, other than to say that, in my point of view, your logic is misguided. What you're saying is that since you wouldn't be one of the people who exercise the right to resell the games, it's alright if that right is taken from those who would.

It's perfectly fine for you to choose not to resell games, and I understand how you don't feel like you're losing anything by being a Steam customer, but I still believe that Steam should be opposed on philosophical grounds. I will grant that it provides better DRM than most, but it's still DRM, and it's still infringing on my rights. As such, I am not a customer, and I am not glad to see it show up in Linux.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask for it by name.

Indeed, and its name is Oakgrove (aka TrollGrove), the baddest unemployed mofo on Slashdot. Word up, knee-grow!

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[skade88]

I got into the limited beta using Debian. :D

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[oakgrove]

Or it someone philosophically opposed to the idea of closed source software running on an open source OS?

People with that view do exist, and dismissing their point of view as a troll is a nice easy way of ignoring it without taking the time to think about it.

But can't I do both? I've thought about the whole closed source binaries running on top of the open platform quite a bit since I've been using Linux on the desktop for a number of years now. My conclusion? Better an open OS with a few proprietary applications to fill the cracks than a closed OS and everything being the other way around. That's a personal choice though and I don't try to force it on anybody else. I may politely recite the as seen by me virtues if it comes up but that's about it. Besides, Linux had proprietary shops writing applications for it a looooong time ago so that ship has pretty much done sailed for anybody keeping score. Not only that but Valve produces a tiny fraction of the games on Steam so, whoever's offended, be sure to spread some of that ire around while you're huffing and puffing. And don't look now but the Android Market is full of closed source apps and sure as shit, Android is a Linux to the core. If you think Dalvik is reason enough to beg to differ then I'll direct your attention to the vast quantity of well known apps that are compiled from native code with the NDK making them Linux binaries.

To conclude my repost, some of the previous paragraph is predicated on a presumption made by you that isn't even true. Whether I agree with them or not, people that are sincere in their preference to resist the encroachment of proprietary software on the Linux landscape don't even remotely qualify as trolls. I used the "t word" for the simple fact that I believe the "donotwant" tag on this submission was put there by an actual troll, that is, someone with an axe to grind and not as a representation of a sincere belief. It's an opinion. Deal with it.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[oakgrove]

Word up, knee-grow!

Worried you wouldn't be taken seriously so you figured dropping the old stereotypic racist comment at the end might bolster your credibility some? Did it work? Are you homophobic too? I'm sure a faggot joke would make a great encore you fucking worthless, mouth-breathing, shit-for-brains, jackass. Go ahead, douchebag. Let's see what you can dig out of the shit that's so old it wasn't even funny the first time Moses said it joke scroll. Of course, if you're feeling real froggy, you might surprise us all and point that collection of 200 odd neurons you try to pass off as a brain in the same direction for once and actually come up with something original. I know that's asking a lot so just baby step it and start by shitting out an insult that's honest to Goddamned funny!

Please do.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Sable Drakon]

So you think that you've the right to re-sell a wholly digital license for something you've purchased? Even when nearly all of the licensing agreements attached to these things state they're non-transferable. You've got to understand that by agreeing to said license, you waive those rights. They're not infringing upon anything, you're willingly giving them up. If you're going to oppose something, at least get your facts straight. You have no right to resell Steam games by virtue of the license you buy and the SLA attached to Steam, which must be agreed to when Valve updates it. Agreeing to that license is a willful act, remember that the next time you buy digital goods and read what you're agreeing to in the first place.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Ziggitz]

I do not support the notion that physical medium for an intellectual property is valid as a resellable product. It worked when it was difficult to produce such mediums, but such challenges have all but disappeared. I refuse to buy a piece of IP as a physical medium, have it treated like a license to use, and then be forced to rebuy if it is damaged.

Take Redbox for example. It is insane that we have vending machines selling pieces of plastic and aluminium that we are valuing so much that people are stealing them. Imagine if you had to retake your driving test if your license was lost or destroyed or reapply for citizenship if you lost your green card. I will not be shafted by the use of a physical medium as a license agreement.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[exomondo]

What you're saying is that since you wouldn't be one of the people who exercise the right to resell the games, it's alright if that right is taken from those who would.

No, because that right isn't 'taken', in fact if you choose to use Steam that right is never even granted. Steam coming to Linux doesn't 'take' anything from you.
However if you really wanted to you could probably work around it by buying each game under a different Steam account and selling the credentials to that account.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[exomondo]

Yeah you know i should be able to sell my car license, or my boat license, or my non-transferable airline tickets...I know they say I can't and that I did agree to that when I acquired them but it's taking away my rights...apparently.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[shutdown -p now]

People with that view do exist, and dismissing their point of view as a troll is a nice easy way of ignoring it without taking the time to think about it.

Have you considered that, perhaps, some of us have already thoroughly reviewed that point, and found it to be nonsensical?

There is also the fact that the console they produce is going to be a legal mind field as it will invariably involve lots of closed source software running on top of an open source OS. Surely this is going to have the same issues around it that Tivo had as the people who produce the games are going to demand that the steam layer remains closed source, including its limited DRM that prevents people selling games second hand after the bought them?

Not anymore so than Android.

The problem with Tivo wasn't DRM on the content. It was the fact that the console did a kernel signature check, so you couldn't install a custom kernel even though you could compile one. Even then, it wasn't really a legal problem - it's perfectly legal under GPLv2, which the kernel is released under (which is why Stallman devised GPLv3 to make such a thing illegal).

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Sable Drakon]

It's not taking them away, it's you giving them up.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[exomondo]

My apologies, the '...apparently' probably wasn't a good signal of sarcasm. I totally agree with you, this notion of rights being taken away is ridiculous.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Ash Vince]

Have you considered that, perhaps, some of us have already thoroughly reviewed that point, and found it to be nonsensical?

Yup, I have done the same. I still recognise it as a valid point of view rather than someone trolling though.

Not anymore so than Android.

Good point, I had not thought about that as a similar example.

Re:In a hurry, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

First sale doctrine is a right that Steam takes away.

It is not Valve that grants you your rights you corporate whore. The fact is that Steam TAKES AWAY rights that you would otherwise have.

People who willingly give up their rights to corporations should die in a fire because they are too stupid to live.

WTF is wrong with you people?

Good for Linux.

[dstyle5]

I got in the November wave of beta invites and so far I l like what I've seen. The only reason I've stuck with Windows at home is for gaming and if Valve can get enough traction behind Linux gaming I can finally cut out Microsoft. It will take years for that to potentially happen but Steam on Linux it can only serve to help Linux in general. Valve has already worked directly with AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Canonical to name a few companies and if consumers and game companies see some success more will (hopefully) follow.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't count on it. Just go and look at the number of titles that aren't available for OSX via Steam even though the publishers have OSX clients and you'll see that either Steam doesn't take "3rd party" platforms seriously or publishers aren't as warm and cozy to supporting non-Windows sales as one would be lead to believe. And while Steam's support of the OSX client has increased in the past couple of months there is still a large and noticeable gap between Windows and OS X support from Steam.
 
Don't expect Linux to be much better.

Re:Good for Linux.

[binarylarry]

That's okay, a huge percentage of games are crap.

We just need a number of really good ones.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah, "I can finally quit winders and microsoft'. If you cared, you'd have enjoyed the soda-masochiitc choir of running games under wine.

Re:Good for Linux.

[DMJC]

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.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoyed your mom. Does that count?

Re:Good for Linux.

[SCPRedMage]

I don't think I've ever heard of someone enjoying beating themselves with a 12oz can of Pepsi before...

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't have this problem most ports were done in-house by their respective companies or done by the now dead Loki Software.

+1 LOL, Linux doesn't have this problem because it has no big publishers doing ports.

Re:Good for Linux.

[sheehaje]

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.

Re:Good for Linux.

[richlv]

why should publishers, instead of actual developers (covered by "in-house" above), do any porting ?

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good for Linux.

[aiht]

I don't think I've ever heard of someone enjoying beating themselves with a 12oz can of Pepsi before...

Drinking the damn things is masochistic enough for me.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Good for Linux.

[Darkness404]

Because most game developers are concerned about making the game be fun and the actual game mechanics rather than strict programmers who think in terms of, oh, we need to optimize this subroutine.

Publishers though specialize in making sure the platforms are compatible and they have the resources to do such a thing fairly easily.

For example, consider Minecraft. Mojang doesn't have the resources to port the game to Xbox and iPhone/Android so they used publishers to do that. Because of this Mojang can focus on what they do best (making Minecraft fun) instead of having to spend resources making Minecraft work on different platforms.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all of the older games on Steam that run on top of DosBox (like I suspect Doom does) should be pretty trivial to port to Linux.

Re:Good for Linux.

[MachDelta]

There is a huge and important difference between OSX and Linux though. Gamers want to have more control over their systems, and they demand the ability to assemble their own machines. In a practical sense, Mac offers neither but Linux offers both. Gamers hate pre-built systems because they are either gutted of any respectable performance, or they are outrageously marked up. Many gamers would prefer to move towards open software, but the DirectX ecosystem has them by the balls. If Valve can build momentum on the Linux side of things, there will be a greater shift towards Linux than there ever will be towards Mac. It will probably be slow at first, but it does have potential down the road. So I would not judge the motions of one by the other, at least not yet.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Belial6]

The reason that tablets suck for gaming is that the touch interface is only good for a few specific types of games and the screens are too small. With more and more tablets supporting HDMI and bluetooth controllers starting to be supported, that could change.

Re:Good for Linux.

[richlv]

that's increasing the role of a publisher into a "real" developer.
it also creates situation where initial development is not concerned about cross-platform compatibility, thus making ports much more complicated and expensive.

i reject the argument about umping all developers in a group that is only concentrating on the game mechanics - they (all developers) do have to interact with underlying architecture anyway, so you could have "designers" who care about game mechanics, and lower level specialists who would ensure that the overall architecture is flexible and portable :)

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

No for reals. Does it?

Re:Good for Linux.

[sheehaje]

Yes, it could change my opinion... Right now the developer mentality on them is write little and make a little.. Something like Witcher 3 on a tablet, or EVE-Online, or any of the mainstream MMORPG's that immerse the user would be key.... Vendetta Online, while a weak desktop game by today's standards found new life on a tablet... No reason other games can't make the jump... But the reason PC gaming still goes strong isn't always the power behind the game, but the way you play it. Keyboard and Mouse... Cosnoles haven't replaced it (how many gamers play WoW with a controller?)... And not saying a controller is bad - but there is a sweet spot to PC gaming. As much as Steam pushes big picture (a 43+" screen is nice), nothing beats the immersion of a good sized monitor (23 or so) and keyboard and mouse... Tablets are good diversions while riding the bus.. or even on the couch for a bit... they leave a lot desired when someone wants to REALLY play a good game that isn't Solitaire on steroids... I don't see PC or Console gaming going away anytime soon... Pong would've never been pong if they made it tablet size...

I know your point though... Bring a tablet --- hook it up to a tv... then hook up the controllers... then hook up blah blah blah... but isn't that what the console already is? My estimation is SteamBox becomes like a Roku box, but with real gaming... they will probably introduce a decent controller for it that crosses over somehow... but somewhere in the corner is the desktop to escape too... There will (should) be always some game that is developed on a creation content machine (as I am now calling desktops) that is meant to be played on the creations content machine... Nethack still feels like a piece of shit on a tablet --- 30 years later...

Re:Good for Linux.

[HerculesMO]

Windows 8 is based off the same basic architecture as Windows 7, with performance enhancements. Windows 7 drivers work in Windows 8.

The fact you're having crashing means you either have crappy hardware (or bad drivers), or you have something else going on. I game better in Windows 8 than I ever did in 7.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just wondering why Valve's showing is so meek, the library is pretty weak compared to Desura http://www.desura.com/platforms/set/linux and even Gamolith has a larger selection of Linux games.

CAPTCHA = coinage

Re:Good for Linux.

[sheehaje]

One last point to my horrid opinion on gaming... Back in the BBS days (yes, those), I used to be able to login and play the same game on my TRS-80 or on my friends Commodore 64 down the street... Tradewars... it's almost like pixels are finally catching up to ASCII in portability terms.

Re:Good for Linux.

[sheehaje]

Maybe I have bad drivers, crappy hardware, and my capacity at gaming sucks.. But I feel like the old ladies that used to complain of upgrading from Word Perfect to Office...

Maybe at 40 years old I should just put down my mouse, and order depends..

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never felt Windows was bad enough to cut out for gaming, until I tried Windows 8.

Say what? Windows 8 is faster for games than 7.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

When somebody actually bothered to measure it, it turned out that Windows 8 was actually slower. AND it had compatibility problems. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-performance,3331-13.html

Re:Good for Linux.

[grumbel]

Just being trivial to port does not mean that anybody will actually bother to do the port. Also the porting is in the hands of the publisher who owns the games, not Valve, thus when the publisher doesn't see interest, it won't happen. Also see GoG a lot of their catalog would run fine in Dosbox or Wine, yet they haven't bothered to offer Linux support, it being not very hard and somebody actually doing it are two very different things.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anubis IV]

No. You danced around the actual issue while missing it completely, and ended up blaming the wrong party as a result.

First off, Aspyr has no one by the balls. If anything, they're the one getting squeezed. None of these companies port to Mac through Aspyr. Rather, Aspyr (as well as Feral Interactive et al.) is licensing the rights for Mac versions of games from the original publisher. Historically, this was a gamble for the Mac publishers like Aspyr, since the Mac market was a lot smaller, purchasing those rights cost a lot of money, and even with porting AAA best-selling titles on Windows it wasn't a sure thing. Nowadays, however, the risk has decreased to the point that EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard-Activision, and the other big publishers are increasingly choosing to capitalize on the Mac market directly by offering their own ports, rather than only profiting indirectly via licensing fees. I'd say that only a fraction of Mac ports are actually done by third-party licensees these days, though admittedly they tend to be big-name AAA titles that attract a lot of attention.

But to get to the heart of things, the real reason a lot of Mac versions of games are missing from Steam is because all Steamplay (a.k.a. cross-platform) titles are packaged together as a single sale. That's not a problem when both versions have the same publisher (e.g. an in-house port), but it is a complete deal-breaker when the Mac version is created by a third-party Mac publisher, since only the original publisher gets paid. Without setting up a revenue sharing contract with the original publisher (which would be incredibly messy for reasons I'd be happy to elaborate if you can't think of them on your own), or else selling the rights to the Mac version back, they'd have no way to earn money from purchases on Steam. Thus, your grousing is entirely misplaced, since this is a problem with the way Steam is structured.

That's also why Aspyr, contrary to what you suggested, has no problems selling their games on other stores. For instance, Borderlands 2 was just ported to Mac by Aspyr about a month ago, and it's on the Mac App Store and GameFly (née Direct2Drive) in addition to their own store. All of those allow Aspyr to be paid specifically for the Mac version of the game, which is something that's not possible with Steam.

Now, none of this is to say that Steam should change in some way. Despite the fact that I think the blame for this issue lies with Steam's store model, I actually think it's better that all Steamplay titles are package deals, rather than allowing for stand-alone Mac purchases, that way you don't end up with a lot of Windows gamers accidentally purchasing Mac versions or other confusion of that sort. Just because I think they made the right decision does not mean they are blameless, however.

Re:Good for Linux.

[n30na]

I agree that this is true in theory, but my experience thus far is that things are very.. quirky.

I ran Win7 until I moved to Win8 about a month ago, and getting games that ran fine before to start is sometimes an issue, particularly games that use GFWL, ironically. Other weirdness is not uncommon as well.

Another issue I'm having, though honestly it's hard to pin fault for this, is that every boot I need to reinstall graphics drivers (nvidia), or games will just crash if they use dx10/11.. the error can even be traced back to something nvidia-related via the event viewer.

It's not the end of the world, but you'd think most games, especially GFWL games, would work just was well in Win8 as 7.

People will say that it's a new OS, and that things will be fixed in time, but they're missing the point. the ball is being dropped, and other platforms look more attractive because of it. Plus, I used Win7 starting at the first RC and never had any extra issues getting games to run, unless they were games that didn't run without hacks in vista either.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully we will see Myth 2 coming back too :)

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a huge and important difference between OSX and Linux though. Gamers want to have more control over their systems, and they demand the ability to assemble their own machines. In a practical sense, Mac offers neither but Linux offers both. Gamers hate pre-built systems because they are either gutted of any respectable performance, or they are outrageously marked up. Many gamers would prefer to move towards open software, but the DirectX ecosystem has them by the balls. If Valve can build momentum on the Linux side of things, there will be a greater shift towards Linux than there ever will be towards Mac. It will probably be slow at first, but it does have potential down the road. So I would not judge the motions of one by the other, at least not yet.

That sounds like an AWESOME theory, until you look at how many consoles are out there.

Re:Good for Linux.

[sheehaje]

My guess... They are in beta..

They already ported the Source engine - so games like LFD2 (which they used for the port), and Portal 1 & 2 were left out (both commercial)... and they left a small test bed of games that they can get good feedback on. The one thing I already see - the Steam Client is far from perfect, but running well - some of the games are not yet... Linux, and OpenGL are still infants as far as game development... But if a few hurdles are overcome --- especially nvidia and amd drivers, then maybe it opens a certain type of floodgate... Once a system is stable and consistent to develop on - and standards actually are standard, it makes development that much easier... That was always a knock on Linux gaming - and I would not be surprised if Steam does come out with their own Linux gaming distribution.... much to the horror of Canonical and the FSF... But hey... open source means open for anyone...

Re:Good for Linux.

[MurukeshM]

But then, the things outrageous about consoles are price of storage and the restrictions. Not the price of consoles themselves.

Re: Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

So next year is the year of Steam on the desk top?

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux, and OpenGL are still infants as far as game development.

Eh nope, OpenGL is superior to DirectX performancewise and always will be because it can write directly to GPU. Sure, DirectX is more used at this time "because it's Windows", and if that's what you measure maturity by then run along; but if you want to make it a race about technical maturity, OpenGL wins hands down.

Re:Good for Linux.

[thetoadwarrior]

The issue with OS X is that someone else buys the rights to do the mac port so the original publisher has no say and for whatever reason those mac devs don't seem to care for steam. I doubt that would happen with Linux since it would be starting fresh and doesn't have some rubbish legacy regarding ports.

Re:Good for Linux.

[StonyUK]

A gamer with old hardware? Maybe you should be plugging that controller straight into your XBox :)

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8 is based off the same basic architecture as Windows 7, with performance enhancements. Windows 7 drivers work in Windows 8.

No, not all W7 drivers work in W8. I have a couple of devices which don't work at all in W8, so I went back to using W7.
And performance is pretty much exactly the same (other than hybrid boot).

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple , fuck OSX, its a small market and the consequence of living in a 'walled garden paradise'

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

<scotsman>No TRUE gamer uses a console...</scotsman>

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah Blah boring! No Mac ports on steam! Boo hoo ... Can't even get Quake or even Doom on steam... But let's face it , who buys it for the games , desk top publishing is where it's at

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why valve of working on a console running this using the big screen mode. That will give this a big push.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... steam is to blame because some ass hat is too greedy to take a smaller cut... wake up you idiot!

Re:Good for Linux.

[windwalkr]

Not a smaller cut. No cut whatsoever.

Re:Good for Linux.

[gmuslera]

Maybe porting them for the OS of the Steam console could give some extra reasons.

Re:Good for Linux.

[iive]

Without setting up a revenue sharing contract with the original publisher (which would be incredibly messy for reasons I'd be happy to elaborate if you can't think of them on your own), or else selling the rights to the Mac version back, they'd have no way to earn money from purchases on Steam. Thus, your grousing is entirely misplaced, since this is a problem with the way Steam is structured.

And why is Aspyr not setting up such a deal with the original publishers?
Honestly, what you said may apply for old titles, but if they know that this is the problem they may start pushing this clause in their new contracts.

Now, Steam could add their ports as a new separate title from the main title. The problem is that in order to play same game on two different devices you'll have to purchase it twice. People are not happy when they have to pay twice.

Hum... maybe Steam could add the Mac port as DLC, they depend on the original title and they can be from another publisher. Of course the idea is the "DLC" to cost only as Aspyr share. However depending on their contract they may not be allowed to sell it separately.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Xner]

Eh nope, OpenGL is superior to DirectX performancewise and always will be because it can write directly to GPU.

What does this even mean?

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Aspyr's catalogue is pretty small. I seriously doubt that these ~30 games make or break gaming on Mac.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Storage on a PS3 is anything you like using any 2.5" HD or SSD from newegg. MS and Apple are the ones that don't want you replacing drives, not Sony. Probably the only thing they got right, and will probably screw up with the PS4.

Re:Good for Linux.

[polyp2000]

There is 1 potential difference with the Linux scenario that does not exist for OSX and that is that they plan on creating a Linux based console / "SteamBox" -- if that happens its success will depend on getting support from other publishers. Its a big IF - and a dramatic one should the console be the success that Valve want. (assuming games purchased for the "SteamBox" would be compatible with Linux desktop machines of course).

Re:Good for Linux.

[iCEBaLM]

Not all windows 7 drivers "work" on windows 8. I have a creative X-FI sound card that works flawlessly on Win7, on 8 it stutters and freezes up some apps....

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

At 40, just buy new hardware that IS supported; chances are that your budget might have more leeway now then it did when you originally purchased your current HW (if that is not true, my humble apologies for a boneheaded suggestion).

New HW doesn't stop you from switching to Linux (heck, it gives you a box to do it on!) and in the meantime it removes an ongoing headache.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Kjella]

Gamers are on the upgrade treadmill because games put them there aka "But does it run Crysis?", not because they so desperately want to be. As long as the games are made to perform on the hardware people got, they're quite happy - just look at consoles. Yes, I appreciate the ability to pop open my case and put in a faster card but beyond that I'm not interested in tweaking it. Outside a very few competitive FPS gamers and overclockers who spend more time fiddling with settings and running benchmarks than playing nobody cares if you got 59 fps and I got 56 fps. Most games are not twitch games where milliseconds count.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Sepodati]

Metro isn't really that intuitive for launching games

Clicking on the tile to start the game isn't intuitive?

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft, you should know better than to expect Creative to write a driver that works.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Thruen]

I think you're really narrowing down who would be considered a gamer. All of my close friends are gamers, but I'm the only one that can build my own gaming PC without help. None of them are Slashdotters, most of them really like Macs for their simplicity & stability (it's what I run when I'm not gaming, too), none of them give a damn about open software, and while a few of them are familiar with what Linux is, not one of them uses it. I'm not trying to say any one preference is better than another, but I think your perspective is terribly skewed. Fifteen or twenty years ago, sure, most gamers were self-proclaimed geeks and would have loved to build their own PC. But today, there are many more gamers, and the old stereotypes don't hold at all. Most gamers don't care about Windows vs OS X vs Linux, they want to be able to have fun and not spend a ton of time or money trying to get to that point. Now, I've used various Linux distros in the past and I don't hate it, but it really is far more work than the average user will ever want to endure just to get it and keep it working, much more so if you build your own rig. You can say it isn't much, but I'm sure most people here are not strangers to helping family/friends set up a computer and you know it's too much for them. I'd really like to see any open OS take off and overtake Windows as well as OS X so the world can adjust to using freely available software and let that become the way of things. But realistically, it's going to take much more than game availability to make Linux appeal to the masses. And before the Android comparisons come out, the cell phone market and PC market are not the least bit related, a popular OS on one is typically not so popular on the other (Windows, I'm looking at you) even when they are almost the same.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason that tablets suck for gaming is that my hands are not invisible.

Re:Good for Linux.

[VGPowerlord]

A gamer with old hardware? Maybe you should be plugging that controller straight into your XBox :)

Going from "older hardware" to "antiquated hardware" isn't exactly an improvement.

And yes, I know you're referring to the 360 not the original Xbox.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Eunuchswear]

That's okay, a huge percentage of games are crap.

90% of everything is crap.

-- Theodore Sturgeon.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Brannoncyll]

But then, the things outrageous about consoles are price of storage and the restrictions. Not the price of consoles themselves.

That's only because console manufacturers typically sell their consoles at a loss with the intention of making their money back from games and accessories. The Playstation 2 and 3, as well as the XBox and XBox 360, and now the Wii-U all were/will be sold below cost price.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase "by the balls" keeps squeezing into these threads of late...launch title for Valve's console in 3...2...1...

Re:Good for Linux.

[BitZtream]

The entire rest of the world would seem to disagree with you.

Most 'gamers' use fixed hardware known as a 'console'.

OSX beats the ever living shit out of game sales compared to Linux.

The niche of forums you talk to people on gives you a REALLY skewed version of the world.

The rest of the world doesnt' think like slashdot, they are what I like to refer to as 'balanced'.

The only place where your statements hold true is in small communities like slashdotters, and while slashdot has a fair number of followers, on the global scale, its still tiny.

Re:Good for Linux.

[BitZtream]

It means the person writing it doesnt understand either OpenGL or DirectX and doesn't know what he's talking about.

He doesn't understand what roll a drive plays in the process.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing "hard core gamers" with "people who play games" The former is a very small subset of the later.

Most people play games on whatever machine they already have, rather than buying a machine to play games. In that regard Apple computers are ahead of the curve a little bit as they aren't "budget" computers and are reasonably capable mid-range gaming machines. Linux on the other hand is on almost no over the counter computers. And well, Windows pretty much rules this space.

People who build a machine to play games want to be able to take arbitrary hardware and install it into their rig and have it work (what's the point of building your own machien if it's just like everyone else's). Linux isn't there driver wise. Apple isn't there strategy wise. Other than that their only OS requiernmet is that it have lots of games, and neither Linux nor OSX are there.

I'd say Apple could break into the gaming market if they wanted to (they'd need to turn the Mac Pro into a product aimed at gamers), but Linux doesn't really have a chance. For the foreseeable future Windows will remain king.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anubis IV]

And why is Aspyr not setting up such a deal with the original publishers?

How would you propose it would work? As I already said, it's a mess. Mac sales are far below Windows sales, so splitting it 50/50 makes no sense, nor can I see any metrics that would allow you to split it equitably. Assuming Steam provides them with the data, splitting it based on the computer made to make the purchase makes no sense, since many gamers purchase from Steam while at work, where Windows is over-represented compared to at home. You could try to base it on which version actually gets downloaded and played, but what about gamers who play both versions? And if they play both, but play one more than the other, what then? As I said, it's messy.

Now, Steam could add their ports as a new separate title from the main title. The problem is that in order to play same game on two different devices you'll have to purchase it twice. People are not happy when they have to pay twice.

Already discussed this. It leads to confusion and unhappy gamers with the way Steam's interface is set up.

Hum... maybe Steam could add the Mac port as DLC, they depend on the original title and they can be from another publisher.

Doing it that way makes no business sense. If you think about what you're proposing, your system would result in Mac gamers paying more, the Mac publisher receiving less money, and Steam overcharging customers based on their OS. Right now, a Mac gamer pays for the Mac version, which at launch date usually has the same price as the Windows version. With your proposal, they'd have to pay for the Windows version + DLC to unlock the Mac version, meaning that they just had to pay more than a Windows gamer. And with the way things are now, all of the money from the Mac version goes to the Mac publisher, but with your proposal, only the DLC revenue, which is likely much less than the full retail price of the game, would go to the Mac publisher. Your idea is a lose-lose scenario for both Mac gamers and Mac publishers. Not to mention that it'd make people irate at Steam for charging different prices to different customers based on their OS. Why would anyone ever agree to it?

Re:Good for Linux.

[TheNinjaroach]

Windows 7 drivers work in Windows 8.

This isn't entirely true. My coworker who manages all of our PCs is testing Windows 8 on his Lenovo laptop. He gets blue screens two or three times per week because of driver issues that haven't been worked out yet.

Re:Good for Linux.

[drinkypoo]

I ran Win7 until I moved to Win8 about a month ago, and getting games that ran fine before to start is sometimes an issue, particularly games that use GFWL, ironically. Other weirdness is not uncommon as well.

I stuck with WinXP for ages because Civ2 won't run on Vista or 7, even in XP mode. Runs fine on XP in vmware player on Windows, of course, but then I might as well run Linux, so I am. It runs even better on a Linux host.

Re:Good for Linux.

[digitaldigit]

No, it's not really increasing the role of a publisher into a real developer, at least not very often. The publisher just hires another developer firm to do the porting and thus they remain largely a administrative organization. Like Halo; Bungie developed, Microsoft published, and Gearbox ported. I agree with your second point, all game projects (smaller projects, 2-6 people involved) I've been involved in have had development teams that consist of people that both fit into the 'designer' category and hardware specialist. Indeed in this day and age with radically different platforms and controllers, quiet a few key game designers have to be able (again, small teams) to adapt either the game design to the platform, or adapt the hardware to the game.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a fair point, unless the PC gamers are the ones who like control over their system, and console gamers are the ones who don't care.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of the 10 games we benchmarked, only one demonstrated a significant difference in moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and only on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660. That game was Borderlands 2, where our average measured frame rate dropped from 86.6 to 81 FPS. But at that speed, the five-frame drop is hardly worth fretting over.

The title of the article is "With A Couple Of Exceptions, Gaming on Windows 8 Is A Similar Experience"

Somehow you read that as Windows 8 is slower AND (emphasis yours) has compatibility problems.

Re:Good for Linux.

[VGPowerlord]

Most people play games on whatever machine they already have, rather than buying a machine to play games. In that regard Apple computers are ahead of the curve a little bit as they aren't "budget" computers and are reasonably capable mid-range gaming machines. Linux on the other hand is on almost no over the counter computers. And well, Windows pretty much rules this space.

Apple has a nasty tendency to use mobile graphics cards in its desktops (with the exception of the Mac Pro). I wouldn't exactly call that "ahead of the curve."

Re:Good for Linux.

[VGPowerlord]

One last point to my horrid opinion on gaming... Back in the BBS days (yes, those), I used to be able to login and play the same game on my TRS-80 or on my friends Commodore 64 down the street... Tradewars... it's almost like pixels are finally catching up to ASCII in portability terms.

Not exactly catching up. Facebook games are right over there if you want to play them.

The catch being that's not the kind of games that Steam deals with.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason I've stuck with Windows at home is for gaming and if Valve can get enough traction behind Linux gaming I can finally cut out Microsoft. It will take years for that to potentially happen but Steam on Linux it can only serve to help Linux in general. Valve has already worked directly with AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Canonical to name a few companies and if consumers and game companies see some success more will (hopefully) follow.

Been using the Windows Steam client for about a week on Wine/Kubuntu 12.10 and I'm actually surprised at how many are playable so far--not all, but enough to make me happy for a long while, which includes Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which I've never been able to do under Win7.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

civ 2 runs great for me on win 7 and win 8, user error. I play that and alpha centauri right after fairly often.

Portal 2

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this put pressure on game companies to refine and maintain their Linux ports or how exactly does this unfold?

Re:Portal 2

[iggymanz]

first the game companies would wait until production release, then see how many Steam users become Linux ones, and how well Valve can hold that market.......say in a year it would be obvious if the effort worth the expense

Re:Portal 2

[multiben]

It gives game developers an *opportunity* to port games to Linux, but nothing more than that. And with a market share of 1-2% that's going to be a hard sell. The Linux market is going to have to prove itself to be worth the added development costs, otherwise games companies won't invest.

Re:Portal 2

[Anonymous Coward]

It really depends. If they are using something like unity, where they can just check another box, its not a hard sell. If they have to port their custom engine written in C# with DX12 to Linux, well I don't see that happening.

Re:Portal 2

[Anonymous Coward]

See the Humble Bundle stats.
Linux gamers there makes up much more than 1% or 2%, and they consistently spend more than their Windows counter parts.
Linux and Mac gamers may even be under-represented in their stats as the default is to represent you as a Windows purchaser.

Re:Portal 2

[dririan]

Even some games that use un-managed code (such as games that use the Source, Unreal Engine, or id Tech engines) don't need much work to get Linux support. The current Humble Bundle contains the first Unreal Engine 3 game (Dungeon Defenders) ported to Linux, and apparently it was done by one person! It all depends on the engine's portability. If, as you say, they use a custom engine in C# with DirectX 12, it's going to take a bit of effort to get ported. Fortunately, Steam on OS X has increased the number of games on OS X quite a bit, and because both OS X and Linux are Unix-ish (hell, OS X is UNIX on x86) and only support OpenGL, it's not super hard to port from OS X to Linux. Granted, there still is work to be done, but not as much as is needed to port from Windows to OS X or Linux without proper engine support.

Re:Portal 2

[JazzVoid]

Humble Bundle is not an indicator. It's great that Linux users spend more, but if you'll take Windows or console game market in account, $2 per game spent by Linux users is nothing. All these games on Steam together worth around $60.

Re:Portal 2

[Belial6]

The key to getting people to switch is to offer multi-platform support. If you get access to both the Linux and Windows version when you buy a game, many people would consider running Linux if that is the only game they play. If you only get the single platform version, buying the Linux version creates the risk that if you must revert to Windows, you lose your favorite game. This means that people who would rather purchase the Linux version get pushed back to Windows as a safety net before Linux gets a chance.

Re:Portal 2

[bloodhawk]

Nothing is ever just a check box, They need support/documentation and testing for the platform, testing costs alone can make some games non viable. However many of the bigger games if they have reasonably portable code could definitely be an option.

Re:Portal 2

[BitZtream]

Linux users are over-represented because they intentionally pay more to make themselves look important in the hope of gaining some support. Even though they are 'paying more' they are paying no where near what those games are worth when sold originally for Windows, everyone is paying less that could be had.

Linux users forget to change the OS? I don't think so, no fanboy is missing the opportunity to prove their OS is better.

Fuck Valve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve has no commitment to free software, they should stay off the platform. This will just push the social retards of the computer world (gamers) into using our OS.

Re:Fuck Valve.

[binarylarry]

Our OS?

Re: Fuck Valve.

[skitchen8]

Pretty sure "our" in the Linux sense means "everyone's" so what exactly is your point?

Re:Fuck Valve.

[Johann Lau]

"social retards of the computer world (gamers)"

As somenoe who has been a gamer since childhood, who sometimes plays multiplayer games, who has seen a video or two on youtube, I have to say this made me laugh and nod. Fuck em if they can't take the truth ^^

Re:Fuck Valve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely, which is good for GNU/Linux. More users means more hardware support, and they will be using more free software. The only losers with this move are Microsoft and, maybe, console makers with Valve's console (which I don't know if will run GNU/Linux or Windows).

Re:Fuck Valve.

[Anonymous Coward]

The social retards (often nerds) are already using 'our' OS. Perhaps you meant the whinny, immature kids? They won't be able to get past the x86 or x64 download option.

From the support I've given, I'm sure some will end up installing Ubuntu inside their Windows OS in order to run the linux games (would there be any good linux only games?) in that (Game running in Ubuntu running in Windows). They'll complain about linux being really slow and that everything runs better on Windows.

Sigh. Better than getting no support at all.

Segmentation fault, core dumped

[DiSKiLLeR]

I installed the .deb on my stock standard Ubuntu 12.10 system.

It installed fine. I ran it. It came up and started updating itself fine.

It installed said updates.

And now it dies with Segmentation fault, core dumped.

This is why linux fails on the desktop, sigh...

And this really truly is a stock standard 12.10 ubuntu system barely used :/

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Wizy]

It is still beta. This is one of the reasons its still beta.

I've been in the beta for about a month now, and it works great for me.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Microlith]

Yup, it fails due to factors entirely outside its control...?

It's an open beta, file a bug report and post the core. Or avoid it until it exits beta.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[halivar]

I'm pretty sure that in an open beta a core dump is useful info. After all, that's the purpose of a beta, no?

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Nutria]

This is why linux fails on the desktop, sigh...

Because all Windows software runs perfectly bug- and hassle-free?

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Georules]

Yeah, that's why it's a beta. Did you submit the segfault information to steam? That's exactly the information they want to collect.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[wadeal]

Watch all the Linux Fanboys jump on this post

Should probably of added about the atmosphere these kind of people create that makes Linux intimidating and makes you feel as if everything that breaks is your fault.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they suggest the 12.04 LTS. Probably for this reason.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, it's rare for a Windows program to actually take the whole system down unless there is actually an issue with the computer at the hardware level (bad ram, etc). Closest thing I've seen to a serious crash was a program crashing the video card drivers, but Vista and higher automatically restarts the graphics drivers when this happens without the need for rebooting.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch all the Linux Fanboys jump on this post

Should probably of added about the atmosphere these kind of people create that makes Linux intimidating and makes you feel as if everything that breaks is your fault.

I don't see anyone jumping on the post, just saying "Hey it's still beta and be sure you file a bug report!" The same thing that would be said about any BETA. NOBODY is implying it's their fault and if you can't comprehend that Slashdot is not the place for you. Even in the state /. is today.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

12.04 LTS is the supported version.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great on my 12.10 for team fortress. What game were you playing, and can you report the bug?

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[aiht]

For the most part, it's rare for a Windows program to actually take the whole system down unless there is actually an issue with the computer at the hardware level (bad ram, etc). Closest thing I've seen to a serious crash was a program crashing the video card drivers, but Vista and higher automatically restarts the graphics drivers when this happens without the need for rebooting.

For the most part, it's worth reading posts that you reply to; nobody said anything about bringing the whole system down.
BTW, that handy feature where the video card drivers restart after they crash? The drivers do that, not Windows Vista and higher. It worked on XP too.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. You're using the bleeding edge Ubuntu, which is Debian with a lot of "secret sauce" thrown in, and will only be stable for a few years. If you want a vaguely stable Ubuntu or Debian, use the "LTS" release, which would be "12.04 LTS".

It's not stable to always have the most recent version of everything, you *WILL* trip over bugs that couldn't be tested before the other components were published.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm. It's written for 12.04. They don't recommend 12.10 yet.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I get sick of people who don't quite seem to understand what a "beta" is.

There seems to be this expectation developing, that a "beta" is actually the same thing as production-ready but just hasn't been released, or something like that.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what you download as a binary package runs problem free. The whole concept of binaries just bombing out hasn't been an issue in Windows for a decade.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. All programs crash due to factors outside their control right? Can't be Valve's fault, no sirry. Let me just loosen your lips from Gabe's member.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Skapare]

Why do you think it is Linux's fault that the program had a segmentation fault?

Let's get the perspective right. The programmers at game companies are simply not experienced enough at writing good code to make sure it is reliable on a "new to them" platform. If it bugs out on Windows, they are used to that. But they are NOT writing proper portable code. So they have to write a bunch of NEW code just to go on Linux, given the bad way they have everything structured. Then they don't know what to do to debug it.

It's not Linux's fault these guys are not experienced with Linux.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[jargonburn]

Ubuntu 12.10 system

Ah! Ubuntu! There's your problem. Sounds like you could use a fresh new MINTy flavor of Linux.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[LordNightwalker]

Similar thing happened to me after the disk had filled up during the game downloads. After that, it would segfault every time I restarted it. What fixed it for me was a

rm ~/.local/share/Steam/ClientRegistry.blob

Try it and see if this works for you; if not, run your segfault message through Google or seek help on the forums.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Microlith]

Saying that "this is why Linux fails on the desktop" and pointing at a problem on Valve's end... is blaming Linux for factors outside the distro's control until proven otherwise.

Fuck you morons are insufferable. And illiterate.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[hduff]

12.04 LTS is the supported version.

But 12.04 LTS is not "Linux", just one Linux distro of many. So why is the story promoting "Steam for Linux" when it is not accurate?

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[VGPowerlord]

BTW, that handy feature where the video card drivers restart after they crash? The drivers do that, not Windows Vista and higher. It worked on XP too.

Under XP, the video driver had to be programmed specifically to do that if the graphics hardware stopped responding.

Under Vista and newer, the OS itself will do it if the graphics hardware or graphics driver stop responding. The reason for this?

According to the crash analysis data collected during the Windows XP timeframe, display drivers are responsible for up to 20 percent of all blue screens.

(WDDM Spec)

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[BitZtream]

And this is why Steam is going to have a fuckton of issues on Linux. Users who decide to go do things themselves instead of using the built in features.

You really should tell Steam to clear its local files, not randomly decide which files to delete yourself.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, that handy feature where the video card drivers restart after they crash? The drivers do that, not Windows Vista and higher. It worked on XP too.

Incorrect.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[LordNightwalker]

Kind of hard to do when it crashes at startup. That's why it's a beta: to identify these issues and fix them before the less tech-savvy people get on it.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong. WVDDM was a new feature introduced in Windows Vista.

Drivers could detect certain internal problems, and sometimes restart/recover in limited ways. Maybe, sometimes. Sort of.

Under Vista (and higher), this is handled in the graphics stack, by the OS. You can swap drivers completely without rebooting. You can uninstall your nVidia/ATI drivers, reinstall new ones, you can even have multiple versions of your drivers and switch between them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#Enhanced_fault-tolerance

Don't worry though, you are hardly the only slashdot poster who knows jack shit about what he's talking about.

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Smauler]

I'm quite a long time user of Steam on Windows. There are a few games I've had difficulty with (less than 2-3% I'd guess). Most of those, one of the troubleshooting tips was to delete ClientRegistry.blob manually (never fixed anything for me). This Steam support page tells you how to do it on Windows and Mac, saying that it may resolve certain Steam issues.

It's one of the things I quite like about steam - it doesn't worry too much about you fucking it up, because it just checks and reloads what it needs. Also, copying game directories from one computer to another works, different user or not; no need to download that 30gb game again.

mod, Ldown

[Anonymous Coward]

implementAtion to 'doing someThing'

Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

Now we'll have TWO OSes giving us the choice to accept whatever shit Valve wants to shove down our throats, or lose access to every game we've 'bought.'

What a wonderful advancement for the Linux platform!

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

So tired of this crap. Valve wants to have things go well. Why? Because they want you to buy more. The terms of service have updated once in 7 years. They let me install and play on any machine I want with little hassle. And if they suddenly pulled the plug don't you think a "patch" from the gaming community wouldn't just fix that anyways? They aren't perfect, but I haven't seen valve push any draconian crap down my throat?

To be fair I will probably still dual boot, but Linux and Linux games partitions and bye bye windows.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

Even if there were some way to guarantee that they wouldnt die or pull anything 'draconian' they are still requiring you to install a rootkit to access the software you bought. I wouldnt even install it on my windows box, and I wont give another penny to a company that already ripped me off in the past.

Re:Oh boy!

[AaronLS]

No one is shoving it down your throat. You know what Steam is. Don't buy games from it if you don't like risks involved and it leads you to fits of cussing and rage.

I don't like some aspects of the system, but I take the good with the bad. I think they'd be just as successful without the DRM. I buy games through steam just because it's alot simpler than going to the store+having to swap discs everytime I want to play a game. I love being able to sit down and very quickly get into a game without hassle.

Re:Oh boy!

[Dynedain]

Now we'll have TWO OSes giving us the choice to accept whatever shit Valve wants to shove down our throats

Don't you mean, as a Linux user you now have access to digital game distributions that were previously only available for the two bigger OSes?

Re:Oh boy!

[flimflammer]

What a wonderful advancement for the Linux platform!

It is. You would be an absolute fool to think it isn't, regardless of your views of Valve or their business practices.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

Nope, there's no evidence of that yet. This just gets us the DRM on linux, none of the games have followed yet.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

The terms of service have updated once in 7 years

And it was a doozy. And an irony, since it was just a few days before that that I finally said "I've been holding out for years, and they haven't done anything like it yet. Maybe I'm being paranoid" and bought my first few Steam games.

Two days later, I don't own the games anymore. Just like when Facebook/Instagram says "We don't intend to sell your photos, even if the TOS says we can," Valve (and its knights) says "We won't fuck you over with more unacceptable terms, even though we know the contract says we can, and we know you'll bend over for it so you can keep your library."

Rule #0 applies to Valve just as much as to Facebook.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

No one is shoving it down your throat. You know what Steam is. Don't buy games from it if you don't like risks involved and it leads you to fits of cussing and rage.

And two years ago, this would have been good advice. Now, it's pretty much "Don't buy games," full stop, since even boxed games off retail shelves require this malware to be installed these days[0]. They've managed to get themselves injected as a third-party into transactions that used to be a way to avoid them.

[0]Skyrim, Deus Ex, Darksiders 2, Borderlands 2 to name the ones I've, personally, passed on despite wanting to buy, because of this.

Re:Oh boy!

[Gaygirlie]

Maybe you should realize that you're barking at the middle-man? It's the publishers who insist on using DRM and therefore buying a modern game entails the very thing you said: you lose access to it sooner or later anyways, whether or not you use Steam or something else. All Ubisoft-games, for example, insist on using UPlay these days and when UPlay goes down... well, a quick google tells you everything you need: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=uplay+down

With the above in mind I actively choose to support Steam. Atleast Valve tries to do well by its community, their DRM-measures are very benign and they offer features in Steam that are actually useful to me. If I avoided any game whatsoever with no DRM I'd be left with out-of-date games or Indie crap, neither of which I want to touch.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think that adding DRM to games was utterly without benefit, but if it keeps people like you out of the gaming community it has at least one advantage.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

Oh, it has nothing to do with the DRM. The "gaming community" itself is more than sufficient incentive to stay away from it.

Re:Oh boy!

[bigstrat2003]

You either have absolutely no concept of what a rootkit is, or absolutely no concept of how to accurately present information. Pick one.

I'd be willing to respect your opinion if you said that using Steam to access software you purchased is an unacceptably large amount of DRM, or somesuch argument. I'd be willing to respect your opinion if you said that it was too much power to put in any company's hands, or even Valve's in particular. But when you start calling Steam a rootkit, you veer off into pure bullshit land. It's just ridiculous.

Re:Oh boy!

[bigstrat2003]

malware

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Seriously, stop that bullshit. There are legitimate arguments to be made against the use or acceptance of Steam. I personally feel it is worth the drawbacks and/or risks, but I have no problem with those who feel otherwise. But slinging about terms like "malware" is complete bullshit, and does the community a great disservice.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

1. Interferes with the execution of legitimately purchased software
2. Monitors activities on the machine, even those not related to games tied to it
3. Sends private data to a third party
4. Consumes PC resources and negatively impacts performance
5. Provides no benefit to the owner of the PC (subjective)

From here, it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

Re:Oh boy!

[geminidomino]

Not at all. I'm barking at the company who told me that, because I didn't agree with a change to their TOS that I considered abusive, I had no choice but to forfeit access to the games I'd purchased from them.

Yes, other companies added similar clauses to their TOS, but Amazon does not come to my house and repossess everything I've bought from them when I decide not to do business with them anymore (I don't buy digital goods from them).

Valve did. Their TOS maintained that providing a stand-alone copy of my games was *their option* (a clause since removed), and the elected NOT to exercise it. This particular case is entirely on Valve, not on the publishers. Valve were the ones who screwed me here.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

you were the sucker who agreed to the terms that said that they could change the terms unilaterally

Re:Oh boy!

[Ost99]

1. Interferes with the execution of legitimately purchased software
2. Monitors activities on the machine, even those not related to games tied to it
3. Sends private data to a third party
4. Consumes PC resources and negatively impacts performance
5. Provides no benefit to the owner of the PC (subjective)

From here, it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

Citation please for points 1-3.

I call bullshit on your fourth point, Steam doesn't consume any meaningful amount of system resources. Since my last reboot steam has consumed 0.03% of available cpu resources and presently consumes 0.37% of available RAM.

Your fifth point ... lol

Re:Oh boy!

[Ost99]

I count 36 games.
While not a lot, it's not none.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

I have probably been removing malware from PCs since you were a baby. You are not insightful you are clueless. I damn well know what a rootkit is.

There is no technical distinction between a malicious rootkit and a 'normal' one - a 'legit av' uses the same techniques the rogues do. If you intentionally install an antivirus (for example) that uses rootkit techniques then it's a rootkit, it just might not be a malicious one. For some values of malicious. Deep subject there.

If an antivirus program tricks you into installing it and 'doesnt support uninstallation' it goes from 'legit' to 'rogue' but the only difference is that removal techniques were made more limited. Whether it 'doesnt support uninstallation' on install, or lost that ability due to damage and brittleness, makes very little difference. Removing tdss and removing a damaged or incompatible installation of $big_av or cleaning that Sony crap off is all pretty much the same thing.

Personally I wont install that sort of AV on my machines either.

Don't assume that just because you posted the feel-good crap that people want to read and got moderated accordingly that you actually know what you are talking about. And get the fsck off my lawn.

Re:Oh boy!

[NemosomeN]

Then I'll go with option c, "slow learner." "Rootkit" has a specific meaning, and it's not "thing I don't like."

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

Hrmm. First definition google offers:

"A rootkit is software that enables continued privileged access to a computer, while actively hiding its presence"

So your comments appear more apt as self-commentary. Yes, it has a specific meaning, and yes, it fits, and no, there isnt an exception for things YOU like.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

Seriously, you stop the bullshit. It is what it is. If you so desperately crave the privilege of paying them good money to take over your computer and maybe let you play some games, if you pay for them and for as long as they feel like it (or until the next time they change the deal) that you dont mind to install this crap on your computer that's fine, your computer, install away. But quit trying to shout down the voices of those with better sense, thank you.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, because so many people don't know they have Steam!

Re:Oh boy!

[Ash Vince]

And two years ago, this would have been good advice. Now, it's pretty much "Don't buy games," full stop, since even boxed games off retail shelves require this malware to be installed these days[0]. They've managed to get themselves injected as a third-party into transactions that used to be a way to avoid them.

[0]Skyrim, Deus Ex, Darksiders 2, Borderlands 2 to name the ones I've, personally, passed on despite wanting to buy, because of this.

The problem here is not Steam. The problem is that the companies that produce those games refuse to make them available without some form of DRM as they do not trust people not to pirate them. If Steam did not exist then chances are the games on that list would be console only or would simply have some form of custom DRM included to limit the number of installs you could do or prevent you playing without being online or something instead.

Like it or not the people who produce most games were all set abandon the PC in favour of consoles a few years ago because they hate the idea of losing a single sale to piracy. They think we would go out and buy a console just to play their game on the platform they chose to develop it for, and it the case of the vast majority of their customers they are right.

People who care about open source or PCs or DRM are a minority as many games with shit DRM still sell by the bucketload. GTA4 used Games for windows for christ sake and people still bought it by the millions. Most people simply don't take the principle stance that you do so the companies just accept losing your business as a cost of making it harder for kids to pirate so making them pester their parents more for a legitimate copy.

God knows it this works or not, but I get the impression that the companies publishing games are wedded to DRM even if it nevers prevents a single piece of piracy or gains them a single sale. I also think that most people will never adopt the principled approach you take so you are fighting a losing battle.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

How many of those were already ported to linux without this? All 36 you say? That's what I thought.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, Steam doesn't hide its presence. So by your own definition, you're an idiot.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

It doesnt hide the fact it's installed. Neither does Reverton. That's not the point.

It hides what it is doing. Why do you think it has to have constant super-user status? It abuses that status to mess with things that dont belong to it and to obfuscate and hide what it is doing from the system. Just like every other rootkit out there.

And you can tell me it isnt doing anything bad and should be trusted all you want, it's hot air. You cannot demonstrate that this thing is safe. It's not just a binary it's a deliberately obfuscated binary. *If* the source code were available and *thoroughly* audited then perhaps the argument would have some merit, but as is anyone making it is a fool. Unless you work for valve and have access to the source yourself, very free access so you can spend many hours auditing it in detail, and unless you have the expertise to do so, and have in fact done so, you dont know anything. Any guesses you make are just that - blind guesses. And even if you were in that position, you would be appealing to evidence you arent allowed to share, so why would you expect anyone to believe you?

Re:Oh boy!

[VGPowerlord]

It hides what it is doing. Why do you think it has to have constant super-user status? It abuses that status to mess with things that dont belong to it and to obfuscate and hide what it is doing from the system. Just like every other rootkit out there.

It... doesn't?

I'll admit, I haven't run it on Linux, but on Windows it certainly doesn't require superuser access to run it. Mainly because it's smart enough to change the directory permissions for its own directory structure when you install it. That and Windows locking down the Program Files directory is why installing it requires superuser privileges.

Re:Oh boy!

[bigstrat2003]

You really are an idiot, and have no idea what the fuck a rootkit is (or perhaps no idea what the fuck Steam is, it's hard to say). Steam does not trick you into installing it. It does not hide the things it does. You may not agree with its activities (and as I have already said, one can reasonably do so), but it is quite up front about what it does and what its purposes are. That singlehandedly disqualifies it from being a rootkit.

Re:Oh boy!

[bigstrat2003]

"Sense" has nothing to do with anything you or him are saying. You're using very specific terms with very specific meanings in wholly inappropriate ways. It's the equivalent of someone who uses "Nazi" or a similar negative label as a synonym for "someone I don't like". It's the most laughable thing I've ever heard. I would have had no problem if you both simply said that you didn't feel Steam was an acceptable thing to have on your PC, because as I said - one can make legitimate arguments to that effect. But no, you had to go off into fantasy land and start calling things "rootkits" and "malware" which are legitimate software, and then try to defend your "arguments" (such as they are) with factually incorrect statements. It's one hell of a joke, and I have never seen anybody quite so woefully ignorant before.

Re:Oh boy!

[BitZtream]

Legit AV doesn't use rootkit techniques. You may have been doing it for years, but that doesn't mean you're good at it or know what you're talking about.

No legit AV software doesn't support uninstalling it. Again, you don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Oh boy!

[TheNinjaroach]

Steam for Linux doesn't include any kernel modules nor does it alter the way the kernel works. It doesn't replace any existing system libraries.

So no, it's not a rootkit.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

I am not talking about the main executable. Look closer.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, you knew that you were potentially gambling when you initially accepted the agreement. Their EULA has always contained the standard clause "we reserve the right to change this agreement at any time, and you get to deal with it." If you weren't willing to gamble with the idea that the terms of service may eventually not be to your liking, then you shouldn't have initially agreed and made those purchases.

I do understand that a change in terms of service can result in your opinion of a service changing, but any online-only service will always carry that inherent risk. The decisions users have to make is whether they can live with that compromise.

I'm not adversely affected by Steam's terms of service in any measurable way I can identify, and the benefits they provide (games at good prices, various matchmaking and friend features, etc.) far outweigh any potential negatives that as of my 7 years of using Steam have not manifested in any meaningful way.

Re:Oh boy!

[Arker]

The only thing you are even partially right on is that it doesnt trick you into installing it. However fanboys like you sure try to. What the company actually tried to do was *coerce* me into installing it by holding products I already purchased from them hostage (technically just degrading them to the point where they were worthless,) which is similar but different.

Just because people to some degree "know" they are installing it doesnt disqualify it from being effectively a rootkit. I can install a rootkit on my own computer for testing that doesnt make it any less a rootkit just because I know what I am doing. In this case there appears to be some trickery and social engineering going on here as well - in the form of a rabid pack of fanbois resorting to name-calling and mod-swarming to try and silence anyone that criticises your beloved steam.

Re:Oh boy!

[drinkypoo]

The problem here is not Steam. The problem is that the companies that produce those games refuse to make them available without some form of DRM as they do not trust people not to pirate them

FALSE! There are other forms of DRM less odious than Steam. They don't prevent unauthorized copying, but neither does Steam.

Re:Oh boy!

[drinkypoo]

To be fair, you knew that you were potentially gambling when you initially accepted the agreement

To be fair, you're too cowardly to log in and put your name to the bullshit you're spewing. How's that job at Valve? Or are you a third-party bullshitter?

Re:Oh boy!

[Ost99]

TF2? No
Spaz? No
Uplink? Yes

The rest? Dunno, but I'm guessing not all.

Re:Oh boy!

[ScriptedReplay]

And you can tell me it isnt doing anything bad and should be trusted all you want, it's hot air. You cannot demonstrate that this thing is safe.

What's stopping you to make a special locked-down profile for it in selinux, apparmor or whatever favorite RBAC system you have and then check for access violations? THEN you'll know if it messes up with the system.[*] Or are you trying to argue that the client is bidding its time now, playing it safe and will do the nasty things only when Skynet becomes operational?

[*] Of course, 'demonstrate' is not what this would be doing. One can't demonstrate absolute safety on a system that can update itself any more than one can predict the future. However, one can obtain a reasonable system lockdown with judicious use of RBAC and if that is not enough for you then maybe you shouldn't be contemplating gaming on such a high-security-requirements machine in the first place.

Re:Oh boy!

[VGPowerlord]

The problem here is not Steam. The problem is that the companies that produce those games refuse to make them available without some form of DRM as they do not trust people not to pirate them

FALSE! There are other forms of DRM less odious than Steam. They don't prevent unauthorized copying, but neither does Steam.

It's possible to get "less odious" than Choose game from my Library to install it (or go purchase it from the Steam store, which then asks if I want to install it) and then once it's done installing, choose its icon from my desktop environment or Steam Library to run it?

For that matter, most Steam games on Windows can be moved out of the Steam directory structure and *poof* the Steam dependency disappears... although that doesn't work with SteamWorks games like Half-Life 2, Civilization 5, or Skyrim. Turns out most games use the same executable for their non-Steam versions and just check if they're in the steamapps directory when running.

Re:Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't chimed in yet but would ABSOLUTELY classify Adobe and Apple PCware as malware for the default-checked or other software that tags along (and, yes, I do "fix" PCs when users didn't uncheck that).

I can't speak to Steam, but my use of the term "malware" is expansive to include many items not necessarily classified as a virus or spyware or rootkit.

Re:Oh boy!

[drinkypoo]

It's possible to get "less odious" than Choose game from my Library to install it (or go purchase it from the Steam store, which then asks if I want to install it) and then once it's done installing, choose its icon from my desktop environment or Steam Library to run it?

You are being disingenuous, which is a fancy way of saying you're a liar. It's possible to get less odious than completely shitting on First Sale law.

For that matter, most Steam games on Windows can be moved out of the Steam directory structure and *poof* the Steam dependency disappears... although that doesn't work with SteamWorks games like Half-Life 2, Civilization 5, or Skyrim

IOW, it doesn't work with any game that actually requires steam, which means it does not address objections at all. You are a playboy for Valve. Step one, take dick out of mouth. Step two, post comment.

Re:Oh boy!

[NemosomeN]

Manage your paranoia.

The only Question worth Answering..

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam on linux blah blah - who cares - can it play dota 2?

Re:WorksForMe

[Anonymous Coward]

WorksForMe(TM)

crazy idea.. buy AMD/ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD is tanking. Valve should buy them up and really get into the hardware business...

Re:crazy idea.. buy AMD/ATI

[O('_')O_Bush]

Since AMD is worth about twice what Valve is and has 60x the employees, I think it'd be the other way around.

Re:crazy idea.. buy AMD/ATI

[VGPowerlord]

Since AMD is worth about twice what Valve is and has 60x the employees, I think it'd be the other way around.

Valve is a privately held company, making it virtually impossible to tell how much they're worth.

64 bit?

[Black Parrot]

\subject

Client for FreeBSD may avoid a GPL law suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is GPL encumbered. If you develop closed source applications for Linux have to be extra careful. Developing a client for a commercial friendly OS such as FreeBSD is always safe and can fully concentrate on development rather fear of GPL violations.

Re:Client for FreeBSD may avoid a GPL law suit

[Black Parrot]

Linux is GPL encumbered. If you develop closed source applications for Linux have to be extra careful. Developing a client for a commercial friendly OS such as FreeBSD is always safe and can fully concentrate on development rather fear of GPL violations.

That would have been a good troll, 15 years ago.

Re:Client for FreeBSD may avoid a GPL law suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be modded funny.

Re:Client for FreeBSD may avoid a GPL law suit

[Tough Love]

Linux is GPL encumbered. If you develop closed source applications for Linux have to be extra careful. Developing a client for a commercial friendly OS such as FreeBSD is always safe and can fully concentrate on development rather fear of GPL violations.

That would have been a good troll, 15 years ago.

Ten years ago even.

Re:Client for FreeBSD may avoid a GPL law suit

[Tough Love]

Linux is GPL encumbered. If you develop closed source applications for Linux have to be extra careful. Developing a client for a commercial friendly OS such as FreeBSD is always safe and can fully concentrate on development rather fear of GPL violations.

That would have been a good troll, 15 years ago.

Ten years ago even.

Well looky here, morally bankrupt Microsofties had mod points today.

excited day!

[blackC0pter]

Nice! I'll gladly be a testing ground for their soon to be released linux console. if that means more games eventually come to linux it is a win / win. However, i really hope when the console is released that they still support both platforms and don't make titles linux console only. If you use the community to build a product, at least let us buy guys for that platform outside of your walled garden. Thanks!

Re:64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use dpkg --force-architecture

You'll need ia32 libs

SWEET!!!

[future assassin]

Just got my HTPC built and running STEAM on WINE but its a bit slow to start up. Now the kids can fuck right off when I hear "Can you load up windows on our computers so we can play games" With my Winows 8 experience http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3321547&cid=42315901 this is just another nail in the coffin.

Re:SWEET!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

great, now your kids wont know a single thing about how to operate a computer in the real world

Re:SWEET!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Steam pretty much just a package manager for games? It doesn't mean all the games available through Steam on Windows will now be available for Linux, does it?

Re:SWEET!!!

[Gaygirlie]

Isn't Steam pretty much just a package manager for games? It doesn't mean all the games available through Steam on Windows will now be available for Linux, does it?

Correct, only the games that specifically support Linux will be available. That means almost no already-released games will be supported, and it still remains to be seen how many of the not-yet-released ones will support it.

Re:SWEET!!!

[iggymanz]

you don't have to buy Windows 8, you can still buy win 7 online. Microsoft sure made the major brick and mortar retailers pull it from the shelves quickly though

Re:SWEET!!!

[sourcerror]

I'm sure a lot of older games will be packaged with Wine and sold through Steam Linux.

Re:SWEET!!!

[Osgeld]

why not just run steam on wine in the first place then?

Re:SWEET!!!

[EmperorArthur]

Couple of reasons.
First, native means less things are likely to go wrong with Steam itself. (hopefully)
Second, if Steam is managing the wine stuff, then you have some guarantee of quality.

I love Wine, but it isn't perfect. If the packagers on Steam's end are working with it, they're much more likely to make sure either the game or Wine are fixed if a bug is found. I don't have the time or the in depth knowledge to fix a Wine bug, but these people would. They'd be paid to do it.

Re:SWEET!!!

[bored_engineer]

Bullshit. My oldest went from Fedora 17 with libreoffice to windows 7 & libreoffice with nary a hiccup. He's also quite comfortable using Word and Excel. I also move back and forth between Windows and Linux and don't think I've noticed any frustrations.

Re:SWEET!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So Steam can give you the option to runs games natively (which is the whole point), duh..

Re:SWEET!!!

[smash]

I'm not so sure. It hasn't happened for OS X (and yes, I'm a Windows and OS X steam user).

Re:SWEET!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the reason you're pissed the kids want to have Windows is because of the price tag otherwise you're just another douche parent.

Ask yourself how much you liked when your parents decided your life based on their beliefs.

Some people should not have kids.

Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

Just had to do this:

$ sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i steam_latest.deb
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ steam

System I tried it on:

$ uname -a
Linux XXX 2.6.35-32-generic #67-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 5 19:39:49 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:____LinuxMint
Description: _____Linux Mint 10 Julia
Release:________10
Codename:______julia

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

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.

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Your virginity is secure once again!

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[LordLucless]

Failed on mine:

  steam : Depends: libjpeg-turbo8 but it is not installable
                  Depends: libpixman-1-0 (>= 0.24.4-1) but 0.22.2-1 is installed
                  Depends: multiarch-support (>= 2.15-0ubuntu10.2) but 2.13-20ubuntu5.3 is installed
                  Depends: zenity (>= 3.4.0-0ubuntu4)
                  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.13-20ubuntu5.3 is installed
                  Depends: libx11-6 (>= 2:1.4.99.1) but 2:1.4.4-2ubuntu1 is installed

Linux 3.0.0-26-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 5 08:37:56 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

LSB Version: core-2.0-ia32:core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-ia32:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-ia32:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-ia32:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-ia32:core-4.0-noarch
Distributor ID: LinuxMint
Description: Linux Mint 12 KDE
Release: 12
Codename: lisa

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

No system application removal will delete contents from your $HOME directory, durrrr! Try thinking about what you are bitching about before spounting garbage.

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

A package manager should never ever touch a user's home directory. Otherwise, it would be the recipe for disaster!

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant trolling, 10/10

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

"Configuration files residing in ~ are not usually affected by this command."
Source

So you're right for the most part. Since these truly are config files (and files that take up ~1GB), I think Steam should purge them when I use the purge command (for remove, it should keep them). For instance, these files aren't equivalent to the files in ~/.wine. The files equivalent to that would be ~/.steam, ~/.steampath, and ~/.steampid. I would compare ~/.local/share/Steam with /etc/myprogram.

I wouldn't complain if it didn't take up so much data, and this was a machine with not much space, so I wanted to completely wipe it. I just wanted to test Steam on it.

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

Try the below and then updating again:
$ sudo apt-get -f install

Or look at this discussion. It seems to be a common issue currently. I bet you can get around it though.

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[shutdown -p now]

Which user accounts should it purge them from?

Anyway, doesn't purge only removes configs that are installed with the app (i.e. part of its package)?

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

That's a good question. These files are the ones through Steam's update mechanism, so they are *pseudo-part of the package. Usually updates occur through the package manager and not through the program so that you don't have this problem. Perhaps steam could add a "steam --purge" or something?

*If you change specific user settings and/or game settings, I think those are all stored in ~/.steam. The Steam in ~/.local/share just has logos, binary files, etc. that are all apart of just running steam from what I saw. That's why I say it's pseudo-part of the package. I'm not sure why they do this? I haven't looked thoroughly into it. If I'm right, this means each user will have to have a ~1GB Steam folder which will all be identical. I think they're making this with a Windows mentality, which is not the best way.

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

Also, if this is the case and you're on a multi-user machine, I'd just make a soft link to a folder that all users have access to:

$ sudo mkdir /etc/mysteam
$ sudo chmod a+rwx /etc/mysteam/
$ mv -n ~/.local/share/Steam/* /etc/mysteam
$ rmdir ~/.local/share/Steam

Then do this for each user:

$ ln -s /etc/mysteam/ ~/.local/share/Steam

Re:Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[0100010001010011]

Fails on LMDE.

Out of town for the night

[Anonymous Coward]

And the linux beta of Steam is FINALLY open!!!
Arrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh!

This laptop runs linux, but an older distro and nowhere close to ubuntu 12 as far as code, so it isn't going to work.

Home tomorrow, so I'll be running then.
(Not Ubuntu at home either, but a spinoff that is 99.9% compatible and I KNOW the beta client runs on it.)

Re:64 bit?

[Bill Currie]

Or install and enable multiarch. After a bit of futzing with the package, it works on 64bit debian sid, though you'll probably want to run xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr after running steam (already a bug reported for that one:#2).

Two minor warnings

[Psicopatico]

1) The client is currently shipped in .deb format.
If you use an .rpm based distribution, the Alien script will do the conversion so you can install it (hint: alien.pl -r steam_latest.deb --scripts ).
2) The client requires GlibC 2.12 or later. So if by any chance your distribution was released prior to may 2010, you're out of luck (example: my OpenSuse 11.4, released on march 2010 :( ).

Re:Two minor warnings

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't tried the scripts myself, but I do note that there are several uses of dpkg and apt-get. You might not get very far with just alien.

I just extracted relevant tarballs, filled in the i686 libraries that were missing (checked with ldd), then added the final directory to ld's search path temporarily. Steam is running fine for me on Fedora 17. Now to wait for the TF2 download...

Re:Two minor warnings

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless somethings changed it needs 2.15. Wheezy doesn't include this, so you can either pull 2.16 from experimental, or add the lib for steam only manually.

Re:Two minor warnings

[Psicopatico]

Replying to myself to answer the other posters.

In my case alien did its job. The resulting .rpm installed without a single complain.
OTOH, the following are the relevant snippets from trying to run the client:

me@linux:~/Downloads> /usr/bin/steam
Setting up Steam content in ~/.local/share/Steam
~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam: /lib/libpthread.so.0: version `GLIBC_2.12' not found (required by ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam)
~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam: /lib/libpthread.so.0: version `GLIBC_2.12' not found (required by ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam)

me@linux:~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam> ldd steam
./steam: /lib/libpthread.so.0: version `GLIBC_2.12' not found (required by ./steam)
[...cut...]

linux:~ # rpm -qa|grep -i glibc
glibc-devel-2.11.3-12.59.1.i686
glibc-2.11.3-12.59.1.i686

Those led me reporting about the version of GlibC. I'm no expert coder so I hardly can go further than this.
Anyway, latest distro release is downloading now and upgrade is scheduled soon. :-)

Re:Two minor warnings

[Anonymous Coward]

Some package developers repackage it for other distros. If you use Archlinux, you can get it from AUR, with frequent updates.

Re:Two minor warnings

[MotorMachineMercenar]

1) The client is currently shipped in .deb format.

If you use an .rpm based distribution, the Alien script will do the conversion so you can install it (hint: alien.pl -r steam_latest.deb --scripts ).

2) The client requires GlibC 2.12 or later. So if by any chance your distribution was released prior to may 2010, you're out of luck (example: my OpenSuse 11.4, released on march 2010 :( ).

See, above is exactly why Linux is a marginal platform, and will continue to be until UI is fixed. I used Ubuntu exclusively for over a year in the past and I have no idea WTF all that means.

I do realize it's a beta, and things get better.

Re:WorksForMe

[iggymanz]

if it Works for Most(tm), then one must consider the possibility, however remote, that one may in fact be a dumb-ass who has no business using a GNU/Linux system, and should instead buy That Which Panders to Morons(tm)

Re:64 bit?

[deek]

I'm running Steam on a 64-bit Debian system. I had to enable multi-architecture for i386, and manually install the 32 bit version of the glx libraries for the driver I'm using. Other 32 bit drivers needed were automatically installed with a simple "dpkg -i steam.deb" / "apt-get -f install" combo. Also, specifically for debian, I had to modify the steam package and rename a few dependencies by hand.

All good and running TF2 beta beautifully. Also, Cogs was another game that worked. Many other games on the "Linux" list aren't installable just yet. I believe that Valve have to properly link them in their system first.

Direct X

[asmkm22]

How are they handling Direct X? I assume it's not simply a WINE port.

Re:Direct X

[smash]

My bet is they're not supported DirectX at all.. GOG use Wine on OS X to support the Witcher, Dragon Age 2 on OS X uses Wine also.

On OS X, the steam library is fairly limited - not all games work, and games will only work once an OS X (or Linux in this case) version has been ported.

I use Steam on both OS X and Windows...

Re:Direct X

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has done a fantastic job at pushing DirectX over the years, but it's time that developers move on from it. Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) does the same job, but is cross-platform. If you use the right tools in the first place, multi-platform support becomes a minor task.

Re:Direct X

[Anonymous Coward]

They made a DirectX wrapper script that translates the calls into OpenGL

Re:Direct X

[Gaygirlie]

They made a DirectX wrapper script that translates the calls into OpenGL

No, they didn't.

Re:Direct X

[Gaygirlie]

How are they handling Direct X? I assume it's not simply a WINE port.

There is no DirectX under Linux, so obviously Steam cannot support DirectX at all. If you want to play a game the game itself must use OpenGL and support Linux natively. And no, Steam for Linux does not use Wine in any way or form.

Re:Direct X

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't handle it at all. Steam leaves it up to each developer to find their own solution to this "problem", which could be by using winelib, cedega's solution or even by just delivering a game with a native OpenGL renderer. That means that you cannot play games on Linux that haven't been explicitly ported to it, I don't know if they even allow you to run Windows games on Wine, but I guess they don't.

It looks for GLIBC_2.15, not 2.12

[Anonymous Coward]

/lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found

Where do run Steam?

[Crass Spektakel]

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.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam sort of just works on the 64bit ubuntus(12.04 on one, 12.10 on the other) on my two computers, one an i3 based laptop running KDE with compositing on integrated graphics that can run TF2, the other a quad core phenom@3.2ghz with gtx260 using gnome3 in classic mode, on each machine installing steam was just a case of gdebi(since it's nice to have dependencies resolved) steam.deb.

Obviously i wouldn't touch unity(the desktop) with a barge pole, but even if i did, i can't imagine it would cause me many more problems than KDE's composited desktop has, i.e none, I guess i'm very lucky.

The fact that we need this ridiculous native client at all is frustrating, steam is, by and large, a website, not allowing users to simply download installers for their games from said website, without first installing some superfluous download manager and chat client is inconvenient to say the least, but at least it gives valve total control... Really, why couldn't steam just be an add-on for firefox or other browsers, it would be so much simpler that way and i'm sure they'd still be able to do their DRM through it.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[armanox]

I've only tested it thus far on one computer. Steam and TF2 run fine on that system

Specs:
AMD Phenom II x2 555 BE (unlocked to x3)
8GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia Quadro 600
Fedora Linux 17 w/ KDE

Soon as I get around to it I'll try it on my main desktop (AMD FX-8120, 24GB DDR3, nVidia Geforce GTX 460), but I broke my Linux install on there.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems you've made staggeringly poor hardware choices for a linux user.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[VGPowerlord]

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.

The Steam Client was updated about 14-16 hours ago and one of the fixes listed was that it fixes a bug where it was taking far too much processing power on Linux.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[drinkypoo]

My Phenom II X6 with 240GT fired right up, but the public beta showed that none of my games are yet installable on Linux. All I have is HL2 and Garry's Mod and the THQ bundle, so the only thing that's surprising about is HL2. So not a very interesting experience. It also took basically forever to log into my Steam account, so that's just like Windows anyway.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[CompMD]

I was part of the restricted beta, and identified why TF2 fails with older cards. nVidia G71 based cards and older do not support the OpenGL extensions required to run TF2. That's why your 6800 doesn't work.

I run a Dual Xeon X5472 box with a Quadro FX 3500 and Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, and it runs the Steam client just fine and Red Orchestra 2 mostly fine.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could use the steam-session package. You can login into steam directly bypassing Unity. It uses xfwm4.

Re:Where do run Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a distribution that does not use Unity...

so...

[smash]

How does the Linux game library available on steam compare to even the OS X library (which is rather pitiful compared to the Windows library - and I say that as Windows/OS X steam user)?

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's comparatively small as you'd expect, though the future looks promising:

- Valve made the client and ported their engine, so you know all their games are eventually going to work.

- Unity3d-engine has been ported to Linux, guess what game-companies are going to do if it can make them an extra buck.

- OpenGL is significantly better performance-wise (though DirectX is easier atm.).

- Kickstarter-game-projects usually make a point out of supporting Linux in order to gather more support-moneys.

- Android is rocking on, and game-developers who dabble in mobile-apps are already dancing the cross-platform tango, making them more likely to choose cross-platform solutions.

All in all a promising future, and already a pretty decent selection considering how recent this thing kicked off. No, you're not going to have a 1:1 game-library in Linux compared to Windows anytime soon, but if you got time to play all games on Steam then you are filthy rich and should be ashamed of it ;)

Re:so...

[cheesybagel]

They could also easily port over any old DOS games which use DOSBox or ScummVM to run. If they bothered doing it at least.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every one of those points applies to OSX as well.

Re:so...

[VGPowerlord]

They could also easily port over any old DOS games which use DOSBox or ScummVM to run. If they bothered doing it at least.

It's the devs/publishers that would have to do that.

For instance, the copies of older iD games (Doom, Doom 2, etc...) use DOSBox, but Zenimax would have to update them to work with it.

No idea how this would affect the copies of Doom and Doom 2 included in Doom 3: BFG Edition. Those may actually be running under Windows itself.

Valve's console .... related?

[SethJohnson]

if Valve can get enough traction behind Linux gaming I can finally cut out Microsoft. It will take years for that to potentially happen but Steam on Linux it can only serve to help Linux in general.

Valve is openly discussing their forthcoming console. That sucker isn't going to include a Microsoft OS tax, so you better expect that Valve is going to set up strong incentives for developers to release on Linux. That's what their console is going to be built on top of.

Seth

Re:Valve's console .... related?

[BitZtream]

No, if they want to develop for the SteamBox it will include a Valve tax, just like they already have on Steam.

Why the fuck do you have this retarded idea that Valve would do a bunch of work and then not take a cut?

Re:Valve's console .... related?

[drinkypoo]

No, if they want to develop for the SteamBox it will include a Valve tax, just like they already have on Steam.

What does that mean? I probably won't participate because I believe in resale, but often the Steam game is cheaper. The problem with Valve isn't cost, but features.

Why the fuck do you have this retarded idea that Valve would do a bunch of work and then not take a cut?

They might well sell the box at or near cost, and plan to make profit on game and accessory sales, like everyone else. I'm sure they're smart enough not to sell it at a loss, though. Lots of people will use it for alternative purposes if they can hack it, and I think most people will be pissed if they can't hack it, or at least more than other consoles. If you can only use it for Steam, then why not just keep using your PC?

they've got a console to get out the door...

[SethJohnson]

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

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, the ONE thing tying most Linx users to gaming is here. And all you can do is bitch and whine about how bad it's going to be. Seriously, if you can't get excited for this, what CAN you get excited for? "Hey sexy, how's it going?" 'Eh, she's probably got a disease or something. And she probably sucks in bed. And can't cook. Better not talk to her."

Knowing Valve, bet they try their best to fix all the issues, Console related or not. They are, in general, a good company.

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Steam Box doesn't do pretty much everything a computer does it is a fail. Multiple monitor support is at the top of that list.

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[Anonymous Coward]

failure*

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[SethJohnson]

Multiple monitors are connected to a computer. A single HDTV is connected to a console, and it's located in the living room. Very few families have multiple HDTVs installed next to one another in the living room.

Seth

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[gumpish]

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.

Steambox won't support the oculus rift? Has netcraft confirmed this?

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[chadruva]

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.

Which is ironic as this was a complain (dual monitor support) that was addressed on the latest update, I was surprised that they did some effort on that, many games my not work well on dual monitor setup, but steam and valve games have been updated for that.

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - it'd be a cool feature to support ~3 screens on a console, for multi player(co-op FPS?), FPS/Mechwarrior, Flight sims. Though, valve would probably focus only one piece of hardware were they to support multi-screen.

Re:they've got a console to get out the door...

[mikesart]

Hogwash. I've got a multimon Linux system and am currently working on fixing the tf2 multimon bugs.

I'd just like to interject for a moment...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're referring to as “FreeBSD”, is in fact, GNU/FreeBSD, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus FreeBSD. FreeBSD is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “FreeBSD”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a FreeBSD, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. FreeBSD is the FreeBSD: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The FreeBSD is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. FreeBSD is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with FreeBSD added, or GNU/FreeBSD. All the so-called “FreeBSD” distributions are really distributions of GNU/FreeBSD.

Steam AGAIN ??

[xyourfacekillerx]

Is Slashdot the official Valve PR outlet or what is going on here? Get a new topic already...

Re:64 bit?

[akanouras]

Many mouse cursor themes (eg. the Oxygen ones) are missing the "arrow" pointer.
When Steam starts up, for some retarded reason it sets the session pointer to that, which, if missing in the current theme will be substituted to that ugly cursor in GTK+ applications.

Until the cursor packages are fixed, you can run
for i in /usr/share/icons/*/cursors; do arrow="$i/arrow"; test -e "$arrow" || ln -sv left_ptr "$arrow"; done
as root once as a workaround. (You may need to rerun it after upgrading/installing a new mouse cursor theme).

Re:64 bit?

[akanouras]

Forgot to mention, if you've installed cursor themes in your home directory, you'll want to run
for i in ~/.local/share/icons/*/cursors; do arrow="$i/arrow"; test -e "$arrow" || ln -sv left_ptr "$arrow"; done
as well.

lintian warnings

[GPLHost-Thomas]

There's few issues in this package. First, it seems to be i386 only. Then, it's setting-up a repository in /etc/apt/source.list.d without warning the users... Then, it's full of lintian warnings:

# lintian -Ii -E --pedantic steam.deb
W: steam: debian-changelog-line-too-long line 3
N:
N: The given line of the latest changelog entry is over 80 columns. Such changelog entries may look poor in terminal windows and mail messages and be annoying to read. Please wrap changelog entries at 80 columns or less where possible.
N:
N: Severity: normal, Certainty: certain
N:
N: Check: changelog-file, Type: binary
N:
W: steam: debian-changelog-line-too-long line 4
W: steam: copyright-without-copyright-notice
N:
N: The copyright file for this package does not appear to contain a copyright notice. You should copy the copyright notice from the upstream
N: source (or add one of your own for a native package). A copyright notice must consist of Copyright, Copr., or the Unicode symbol of C in a circle followed by the years and the copyright holder. A copyright notice is not required for a work to be copyrighted, but Debian requires the copyright file include the authors and years of copyright, and including a valid copyright notice is the best way to do that. Examples:
N:
N: Copyright YYYY Firstname Lastname
N: Copr. YYYY-YYYY Firstname Lastname
N: © YYYY,YYYY Firstname Lastname
N:
N: If the package is in the public domain rather than copyrighted, be sure to mention "public domain" in the copyright file. Please be aware that this is very rare and not the same as a DFSG-free license. True public domain software is generally limited to such special cases as a work product of a United States government agency.
N:
N: Refer to http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html for details.
N:
N: Severity: normal, Certainty: certain
N:
N: Check: copyright-file, Type: binary
N:
E: steam: malformed-deb-archive found 4 members instead of 3
N:
N: The binary package is not a correctly constructed archive. A binary Debian package must be an ar archive with exactly three members: debian-binary, control.tar.gz, and one of data.tar.gz, data.tar.bz2 or data.tar.xz in exactly that order. The debian-binary member must start with a single line containing the version number, with a major revision of 2.
N:
N: Refer to the deb(5) manual page for details.
N:
N: Severity: serious, Certainty: certain
N:
N: Check: deb-format, Type: binary, udeb
N:
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
N:
N: One or more lines in the extended part of the "Description:" field have been found to contain more than 80 characters. For the benefit of users of 80x25 terminals, it is recommended that the lines do not exceed 80 characters.
N:
N: Refer to Debian Policy Manual section 3.4.1 (The single line synopsis)
N: for details.
N:
N: Severity: normal, Certainty: certain
N:
N: Check: description, Type: binary, udeb
N:
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
E: steam: description-contains-tabs
N:
N: The package "Description:" must not contain tab characters.
N:
N: Refer to Debian Policy Manual section 5.6.13 (Description) for details.
N:
N: Severity: important, Certainty: certain
N:
N: Check: description, Type: binary, udeb
N:
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-too-long
W: steam: extended-description-line-to

Re:lintian warnings

[Ash Vince]

Time to do some Q/A ? :)

Or get rid of that stupid pedantic flag and tell us if it works?

Re:lintian warnings

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Except that removing the pedantic flag doesn't remove the warnings, and that on my Debian Wheezy laptop, it doesn't work...

Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it run on Debian testing?

Re:Debian

[Tubal-Cain]

Yes, with tweaking. I got it working by following this post:

Just got in the beta, and decided to try it out. Debian Wheezy, 64-bit. Like many people here, I had hell, but instead of using some lxc for steam or bringing in ubuntu packages, I went for the native approach.

Yes. It's possible and working. I'm studying for finals, so I'll include the short and sweet version.

1) Enable multiarch, add i386
2) Install dependencies, substituting libjpeg8 for libjpeg-turbo8. Do not worry about versions for now. Don't forget to specify arch ( :i386 )
3) Add experimental repo if not done already; update package list
4) Update libc6 to 1.16, which is in experimental. This will break many things since apt won't initially follow dependencies into experimental, and without doing pinning you'll have to manually resolve them. I used aptitude for this step
5) At this point steam can be installed with dpkg --force-depends -i steam.deb
EDIT: Make you installed all dependencies. the --force-depends is to ignore the misnamed libjpeg library and libpulse0 version mismatch.
5a) You will have broken depends now, I just temp fixed it by editing /var/lib/dpkg/status and changing the dependencies for 'steam' to the correct name for libjpeg8 and edited the version for libpulse0 (remove the leading 1:)

This part may be nvidia specific; I don't have an ATi card to test with

Now, steam will fail to launch citing it can't find steamui.so. Doing some debug work shows it can't find libgl.so; for you 64-bit users thats because you need the 32-bit opengl libs. Attempting to install the 32bit version of the libgl1-nvidia-glx package will break due to a dependency not being multiarch enabled. There is a patch submitted but currently not accepted due to the Wheezy release freeze.
6) Download both amd64 and i386 versions of the patched deb from http://twolife.be/debian/todo/xvmc/
7) install them with dpkg -i
8) install libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386

I think that's it. I didn't start this journey expecting so much pain so I may have missed a step or two. I'm busy with finals for the next week so no, I probably can't help you if you don't understand what I wrote above. Use google, or maybe someone else here can help.

Hope this helps someone.

Let's hope it's better than the MacOS X client.

[Per Wigren]

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.

Re:Let's hope it's better than the MacOS X client.

[armanox]

Right now the Linux client has a Linux only tab added under Library that just shows the available Linux titles. Otherwise I'd have that complaint about it.

Re:Let's hope it's better than the MacOS X client.

[laffer1]

That's the least of the OS X client's problems. It also crashes frequently and most games run 10-15% slower than their windows counterparts. The latter might be apple's fault, but the former is not.

Re:Let's hope it's better than the MacOS X client.

[Sigg3.net]

I'm running it (and L4D2) in Wine, so every cool game I want to play makes me whine.

Re:Let's hope it's better than the MacOS X client.

[Anonymous Coward]

The mac client has a mac tab too. However, isn't it kinda silly you can't even dig into some hidden option and check you only want games available for your platform? The mac steam client is designed like crap, it still requires me flash for videos despite every other random web page serving mp4 video without problems. Also, why does the steam mac client perform worse (ui responsiveness/scrolling) than their web pages showing the same content? Do they have a thread with an infinite loop just to burn CPU or something? I hope they do a better job on linux.

Installed the deb, updating steam now

[drinkypoo]

First impression: so far they seem to have feature-parity with Windows; You run Steam and it launches into a download-without-resume upgrade immediately, from a window that you cannot select from the task selector (you have to uncover it by minimizing other apps) and which has no icon.

Re:Installed the deb, updating steam now

[VGPowerlord]

First impression: so far they seem to have feature-parity with Windows; You run Steam and it launches into a download-without-resume upgrade immediately, from a window that you cannot select from the task selector (you have to uncover it by minimizing other apps) and which has no icon.

I'm assuming you filed a bug report about that? I don't recall the Steam client upgrade window as not having an icon on the Windows task bar, so I assume it's not intended to be like that.

Do not want

[Arker]

I cannot understand how you cannot understand. Would you celebrate if someone ported Reveton as well? How could anyone that has gone to the considerable effort to get and learn to use a free operating system then turn around and install this on it? Why bother? If you want someone else to control your computer you can get that result much more quickly and easily with Windows.

Re:Do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

>>How could anyone that has gone to the considerable effort to get and learn to use a free operating system then turn around and install this on it?

I hear you saying Linux is difficult to get, install and learn.

>> Would you celebrate if someone ported Reveton as well?

If you're trolling, that was awful. Brand NEW virii will be designed for use with Linux.

If you're serious, well, then that's just sad.

Re:Do not want

[Arker]

A new OS is difficult to get, install, and learn for the average user, whether it's Slackware 14 or Windows 8.

Re:Do not want

[Tarlus]

Not everybody who uses Linux does it just to say they're running FOSS. I run it on my work PC because it's a great environment for web development. I run it on my home server because it's a reliable server OS. I run it on my laptop because, quite frankly, the hardware support is better than XP. So if I'm building a new gaming PC and see that I could install Linux and still play games, that is an appealing option for two reasons: consistency, and some cash saved by not purchasing a Windows license.

Granted, Steam for Linux has a long way to go before its availability of games would be enough to consider Linux as a gaming OS, but you have to think of it this way: I'm likely going to buy closed-source games regardless of what OS I run.

My point in all of this? Different people use Linux for different reasons and not all of us are caught up in the RMS philosophy of 100% freedom.

YAAAAY!!

[GameboyRMH]

Now I can get a big heaping helping of DRM on my Linux box too! Woohoo, just what I always wanted!

Re:YAAAAY!!

[shutdown -p now]

You don't have to opt into this. You can always keep playing TuxRacer and 0verkill if you prefer.

Citation for 1: STEAM activation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since running the game is a right DRM manages and Steam will assess whether you are allowed to run the game, it is DRM.

You steamers.

Lol.

That shark was jumped long ago

[dbIII]

Evil stuff such as "flexlm" was ported to linux long ago.

Re:That shark was jumped long ago

[drinkypoo]

Evil stuff such as "flexlm" was ported to linux long ago.

s/Evil/useless/

I mean, there's more defeats for flexlm than you can shake a stick of RAM at...

Re:That shark was jumped long ago

[dbIII]

As the quote goes (which can be applied to stuff like flexlm) "sheesh, evil AND a jerk". That horrible bit of DRM is there to punish the honest. I've still got a machine that comes up as "Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)" just to be able to run one version of that utter POS flexlm and hand out licences.

better off running Steam under Wine

[decora]

as far as i can tell, Wine can run quite a few windows games just fine, including when run under Steam (which greatly simplifies some of the installing/patching routines one typically has to do in Windows games)

except that it doesnt.

[decora]

SDL does not do the same job as DirectX. In fact SDL is built on top of DirectX on it's Windows port. Cross platform 3d graphics is not a "minor task". Ask the Vendetta people, ask Sam Lantinga, ask anyone who has ever actually written 3d cross platform code.

Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[dbIII]

It's very funny to see "removing malware from PCs since you were a baby" as a proud statement instead of an admission of lazyness and not having good enough backups. Once somebody has "0wned" the machine it's naive to think that they were well behaved and only did what the removal tools can detect and not something else. I know it's now a very common view deep in the MS malware swamp that you just wave the magic malware cleaner at the compromised machine and you can trust it forever more, but it's still a bit grating to see someone that appears to be proud of such an attitude.

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[Arker]

It's very funny to see you make the ridiculous assumption that I am removing malware from my own machines. My own machines havent been infected in decades, outside of deliberate testing. I clean machines for employers and paying customers. If I relied on scanners to do my job I would be unemployed tomorrow - scanners only work on old threats and my paycheck depends on handling new ones quickly and efficiently. You dont have the first clue what you are talking about.

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[dbIII]

Where did you get the idea I was assuming it was your own machine? That makes it worse IMHO if it's for paying customers unless you've let them know first that you are applying a bandaid solution, no matter how complex the bandaid is, and just hoping for the best. Once somebody has trampled all over a machine how do you know what can be trusted apart from a few OS files you can compare with others?

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[Arker]

Hello? There is no way you can be sure of that even before it was trampled since we are not talking about Free systems anyway. In the real world you make your money on what people use. People use windows and mac. They get em hosed. They need them fixed, they usually have a ton of data and no backup. Even with good backups they want to avoid the lengthy restore process if at all possible and they are a lot more concerned about that than taking the absolutely sure route in most cases. If they arent they can get a format and restore instead. Very very few takers on that.

And, gee, guess what? If the system isnt too badly hosed to get the appropriate tools working (NOT scanners much simpler things) then yes, you can find and remove just about infestation manually a lot quicker than you can reformat the hard drive (let alone trying to backup any data.)

Well, maybe not you specifically, but someone that actually knows what he is talking about on this subject can.

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[dbIII]

Yes but if it wasn't owned by braindead script kiddies or a known virus on autopilot you can't be sure in the "real world" what was actually done to the thing. Do you think a bank would take the same bandaid attitude with a compromised commerce web server or even mail server that you take with those PCs?
It's sometimes the best of a set of bad choices (eg. someone else's PC with no backups and missing install media/pirated software is something where the bandaid may be better than a wipe - if you are lucky and get it all), but proudly presenting it as a good choice? That's the issue I have, and see it as depressing that the malware swamp is so deep that just treading water and releasing systems with God knows what unknown new malware back into the wild is seen as not only good enough but something to be proud of?

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[Arker]

It's a good choice for a lot of cases. Trying to pretend you have an 'issue' with this rather than simply trying to smear me because I dared to comment on Steam negatively is just... silly.

The fact is that malware is prevalent on windows systems by design. I dont tell anyone to buy windows. I dont tell anyone they can run it without having a clue and then an antivirus will keep them safe. Microsoft and other companies do that. And I dont even work for any of those companies. I'm just the guy that cleans it up after it gets borked to put bread on the table. You got a problem with that it's your problem.

Re:Fdisk it from orbit, only way to be sure

[dbIII]

No, I was just amazed that you seemed to show some sort of pride in it when you were trying to shoot somebody down over something else above.
There's malware/attacks on *nix at times as well, but that's where nuke and reinstall is seen as the only way to go. I poked around a disk taken from a rooted linux system a few years ago, and while it looked like the script kiddies involved left tracks ten miles wide I'm sure I missed a few things. There was no real reason to keep it as evidence (decided before I started poking around on it) and the disk had a small capacity so the platter is now a coaster and other portions are fridge magnets.

yeah but i felt like i should post it anyways

[decora]

posting things that are basically 100% false is sort of a hobby of mine.

other fun facts:

The linux kernel uses Windows DLLs

FreeBSD is based off of Mac OSX

Steve Jobs wrote the Mach Microkernel in his garage with Steve Wozniak

Re:64 bit?

[deek]

Oh, I forgot to mention, another annoyance with installing Steam under Debian, is that it requires libc6 >= 2.15 . Debian testing and unstable only have 2.13. Experimental has libc6 2.16 though, so you can either install that, or download the ubuntu libc6 and copy the lib files to where steam keeps its library binaries. I ended up doing the latter.

You know wine is not perfect right?

[decora]

Just install windows dual boot or help them a console system. And stop yelling at your kids.

Also dont forget GNU/Clang

[decora]

Many people refer to the 'clang compiler', but what they are really referring to is Richard Milhaus Stallman's Extended Lower Intestine, Which He Used To Invent C Programming.

it's almost like you are Lech Walesa

[decora]

i mean, he was fighting a brutal dictatorship that consistently beat, imprisoned, and tortured its political opponents, and you are fighting a brutal video game distribution system that consistently ... doesnt allow you to .. hm... ... well im not sure exactly what Valve did to you but im sure its just as bad. after all

you never would say something like "shove down our throats" unless it was very serious.

meanwhile in ethiopia 10,000 ppl starved to death

[decora]

but hey, at least you are fighting the good fight here in America against true evil.

Trying it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been running the Steam beta for a while now and it is terrible. It's slow, it locks up, there is only one demo/free game (TF2) and it doesn't run. Steam has a long way to go before it is ready to run on Linux platforms.

"Your fifth point ... lol" ????

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, what's lol worthy about it? Are you saying that the owner has no subjective view of what benefits them?

And what, really, does Steam give you that benefits you?

Online community? Pop along to Amazon. You'll find people there arranging steam meet-ups, talking about steam deals or steam problems. Obviously, steam is neither unique in giving that nor sufficient.

Downloads? Well, we have downloads from GoG or Humble. And TPB of course. But we still have these things calld "CDs" and "DVDs". They work really well and don't rely on an internet connection.

Alternative to DRM? No, Steam games come with Steam DRM AND whatever DRM the publisher demands.

Saved game backup? No, I've had backup for decades.

Multiplayer support? We had that before Steam. Steam now adds offline online support (single player games now require an internet connection to run if Steam wants to check you're still a purchaser of the game you purchased and proved last time)

Voice over Internet? Falcon4 had that. So did Falcon3 IIRC.

Online cheat protection? Well Gamespy.

So what benefit does Steam give to the user that makes up for a second load of DRM and system requirements (Half Live runs under Win95 but Steam won't run under Win95 and so therefore you can't play Half Life steam version any more under Win95/98)?

Nothing unique to Steam.

And not anything many people or games need.

So what is lolworthy of statement five? That YOU, *one single datapoint* do not agree therefore no people agree? What arrogance!

Re:64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the year of the desktop linux!

Wine!

[chrish]

Now Linux users can experience the joys of Wine Wrapper and Cider gaming without having to borrow someone's Mac!

I suppose the Linux drivers for nVidia chips are probably in better shape than the ones for my MacBook Pro though, so maybe Wine'd games will be more stable there. I'll certainly be checking it out at some point.

Why Not A Distro Agnostic Steam?

[hduff]

Debian/Ubuntu are not "Linux", they are several of many distributions of Linux.

Steam will not run on all current major distributions of Lunux, so how can they claim to be "Steam for Linux"?

Are the devs at Steam not skilled enough to develop a distro-agnostic version of their software?

Re:Why Not A Distro Agnostic Steam?

[Jicehix]

This is a binary release, with most components statically-linked. Well, there are some system-level dependencies involving video drivers, and OpenGL support in X, but nothing specific to Debian. I suppose that with some tweaking you could use it on any x86-based linux distro. As I told below : it works well on Gentoo, and others have already reported it working on Arch, Mint (maybe Debian itself ?)

Can't see why Suse and Fedora couldn't run this.

Re:Why Not A Distro Agnostic Steam?

[hduff]

This is a binary release, with most components statically-linked. Well, there are some system-level dependencies involving video drivers, and OpenGL support in X, but nothing specific to Debian. I suppose that with some tweaking you could use it on any x86-based linux distro. As I told below : it works well on Gentoo, and others have already reported it working on Arch, Mint (maybe Debian itself ?)
Can't see why Suse and Fedora couldn't run this.

Then it would be simple for the devs to release it as a distro-agnostic package and it would not require "tweaking" for anyone. I wonder why they have not done that and still continue to release for Debian/Ubuntu only?

I can't run it on Mageia2 because it doesn't have a current-enough version of glibc. 8(

Also works on Gentoo

[Jicehix]

I was about to whine about this release being "Steam for Ubuntu" and not "Steam for Linux", but Google told me about this helpful wiki :

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Steam

The client I did install from the overlay works quite well, and Team Fortress too, despite very slow disk access (don't know if anybody experienced this on other distros...). Too bad I only can play one game from my 40+ library.

Commercial game support

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news and step in the right direction!

Lack of "easy to install" commercial game support on linux ..IMO is the biggest blocker for linux to be THE OS of choice for all people.

Now if I can get a native WOW and guild wars 2 client!

./ers are never happy

[Lashat]

Instead of a tip of the hat to Valve for making this effort most posts here are just sarcastic assholes trying to be ironic, but failing.

I have fairly large Steam library and all of the games I have purchased for Windows, that have Linux versions are available to install on my Ubuntu system.

FYI - I have a fantastic gaming rig that dual boots into Win7 and Ubuntu. I am installing some of the games now and looking forward to comparing the performance.

Good new

[jpenguin]

But not many games available yet. Most of my steam games are from humble indie bundles, hence have linux versions. Only a few of those games have made their linux versions available through steam. BTW-- steam runs well on my Kubuntu 12.10 x8-86_64. I have a GTX 650 TI

Flamebait?

[drinkypoo]

Telling people about Windows backwards incompatibility is flamebait now? I wish I could get paid to be a Linux mod troll :(

steam for linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the outcome of your false advertising lawsuit.

No joy with Linux Mint 13

[DaveJ45]

The Beta doesn't work on Linux Mint 13, due to all sorts of issues with needing a specific version of Flash, or messages about vendor drivers.

And then there's the fubar that clicking the Steam launcher that was put on my desktop by the beta opens in Chrome, and Steam only seems to want to work properly with Firefox, which is installed on my system, but was not selected by the installer.

If you get past all of those hurdles, and get steam running under Firefox, you quickly discover that almost all "Free" games (for trying out Steam Beta on LInux) are "not available for your platform".

Did get one Free game to agree to install, but Steam indicated there would be a download time of over 3-1/2 hours for the installation (on cable internet mind you!)

Uhhhhh... No thanks....

Maybe a few more betas later this will be a workable platform.

First Impressions? Not ready for even sub-prime time...

Re:64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why linux desktop is going to have issues.

Re:64 bit?

[deek]

Meh. It's not an issue. The package was designed for Ubuntu, not Debian.

When Valve release a Debian version of their client, installing it will be a matter of click on link and select the install option.

Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Ill never buy a spamming resource hog frontend game ever.
ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew

As a cheap dev platform

[DrYak]

Why anyone on /. can seriously believe that Valve intends to maintain their Linux port one moment beyond the announcement of the "SteamBox" baffles me

Because (according to several sources of information, including Phoronix whose Micheal has interviewed Gabe at Valve) Valve is interested in keeping "Steam-on-*any*-Linux" in addition to "Steam-on-the-specific-Ubuntu-fork-running-on-Steambox", because that will be a nice dev platform for indie and other small studios. Currently alternatives from the other big players is still expensive for indie and amateurs.

Also, Valve has expressed interests in not locking down too much this future console, but keeping it hacker/mod friendly for those still interested.

And from a practical point of view, once you have a Steam running nicely on a linux-powered machine, having Steam run on any random linux distro (or even other unix-like OSes) doesn't require much more efforts, and the Linux community has already highly motivated people to put a huge part of the efforts (packaging, testing, patching bugs in system libraries, collaborating with valve to fix steam or source, etc - for example as soon as the Ubuntu DEBs were released in closed beta, several other distros got their own steam package with all the necessary libraries) so it's not like "maintaining their Linux port" is going to cost any more resources.

I think the goal

[rsilvergun]

is to survive Microsoft moving in on their territory. The Windows 8 App store is a scary thing...