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

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.

[binarylarry]

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

We just need a number of really good ones.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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: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.

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

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 :( ).

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