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Valve Starts Promoting Steam For Linux To Windows Users
An anonymous reader writes "Steam is now being used by thousands of gamers running a Linux OS, and Valve has got to the point where they are happy to start urging Windows users to make the switch. Proof of that comes from a 'Join the Beta' promotion on the homepage of Steam suggesting you try Steam for Linux. There's even a download link to get Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which removes yet another barrier to entry. With Gabe Newell's clear hatred of Windows 8, this shouldn't be a surprising move. We aren't going to see another version of Windows appear for a few years, so in Valve's eyes pushing Linux to gamers makes a lot of sense."
It is worth pointing out that Microsoft has promised a more regular windows release so the comment of a few years wait for next Windows isn't correct. (or maybe not, maybe Microsoft will not deliver on its "promise").
As soon as the games I already own and play work on Linux I will switch in a heartbeat.
Where can I download it, I can only find Steam.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Well, for one, if you build your own PC's and don't want to pirate software, then Linux is free. Saving the cost of an OS is big for me. You also have a system that is FAR less likely to be affected by malware.
Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows. I use a 2nd computer on a KVM switch that runs Windows for playing games, but that's literally the only thing I do on that system - I genuinely dislike using Windows beyond that. If the games were available for Linux then I'd have little reason to keep a Windows machine/install at all.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Run Metro in a Window! Best Windows 8 improvement I've heard of, so far.
Now if only I could make those awful mandatory Windows Updates run in a window, too!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Windows 9 or 8.1 / 8SE may hear sooner then you think and adding the back the old desktop and go a long way and be done easy.
That's right, all of those things may be true, like North Korea may open itself up to the internet.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
ARCH already has it in AUR. So you can drop that off your list. I am also fairly confident I read something about rpms being made for fedora or instructions to do it yourself.
Maybe if installing packages for another distro is too hard for you, you should just stick to the supported one.
Hopefully a new era of game dev is upon us. This is not only great for linux, but great for people like myself who only use windows for games. Hopefully the video card makers will beef up their effort writing drivers and software for compatibility.
It's common to keep two generations of console connected to one TV. As I understand it, it's far less common to keep two different PCs connected to one monitor. I wonder how much of that is because a standard PC tower takes up far more physical space than even an XBOX HUEG console.
The other solution is dual-booting. I don't know how easy that still is, whether Windows 8 gets in the way of shortening a partition. But rebooting into another operating system will interrupt your music, web browsing, and messaging session, let alone those of other household members logged into their accounts, and booting some operating systems takes a lot longer than, say, the time for a console to boot up.
Steam is on the PC team, as opposed to the console team. Especially with Big Picture and the ability to filter for controller-friendly games, Valve seems to have taken a shot at encouraging people to set up a living-room PC instead of a major console.
But I really can't see this being a successful venture.
I'm not trying to troll, just calling it as I see it.
Why would people bother with this when they can just play practically all of (if not actually all of) the same games on the windows PC that they already have?
Their Linux console certainly isn't priced any more economically than a PC, so I'm not sure I see the advantgage as far as the end-user is concerned.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe, maybe not.
Windows is still trying to be backwards-compatible with an API and end-user experience that was designed around single-user systems, whereas the UNIXy legacy is from large university systems where users were expected to be hostile (and, frequently, were).
Security on Windows has been getting a lot better over the last decade and a half, and it's going to continue to get better as Microsoft stops supporting legacy APIs and continues to modify workflows to adjust user expectations, but I'm still not much inclined to accept the assertion that there's no remaining difference that isn't directly and exclusively caused by the delta in marketshare.
How about doing it with a Steam download that runs on _any_ modern Linux?
Last I checked (Saturday), the current build is confirmed to be working on Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, Debian Squeeze, and the latest Arch distro.
.deb on Fedora, but this is unconfirmed by me.
:(
Some folks have had luck installing the
Side note - There are, of course, some driver issues, mostly in the graphics department; I can't run TF2 on my old Dell laptop, as there is apparently no current nor intended support for older Intel GM45 series video cards
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Hopefully a new era of game dev is upon us
As a developer of an unusual forthcoming FPS (i.e. FPS gameplay very far from CoDfield 6 & co.), I will be doing my bit. Linux and the BSDs are first-class citizens here.
Hopefully the proportion of game developers giving Linux that treatment will keep growing at an accelerating rate.
Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows.
This would be a valuable observation if you had first spent 18 months at the Windows command line. Of course, very few people are going to be willing to spend 18 months to get up to speed with using an OS.
For the expert, the command line is hard to beat for speed and efficiency. For anyone who isn't an expert, the command line is a major hindrance. They do far better with the point and click graphical interface. So I'm not sure better efficiency after 18 months of training is really a big selling point to most people.
> How about doing it with a Steam download that runs on _any_ modern Linux?
Use alien to turn the deb package into a simple tarball.
Then use ldd to see what libraries you are missing.
There's no magic in this sort of thing: Lay down some files. Then lay down some more files to make sure the first set works. Perhaps throw up some advertising and a progress bar.
Chances are that "modern" Linuxen are already going to have what Steam needs since Linuxen are all ultimately the same upstream projects repackaged.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, even ubuntu.
Are you kidding? What is so challenging about booting to a cd, and then clicking "install"?????
Come play our 3 games supported!
A single indie developer got all these bundles working on Linux, by my count the cream of indie gaming...you seriously think steam isn't going to add to this.
Humble Indie Bundle
Humble Indie Bundle 2
Humble Indie Bundle 3
Humble Indie Bundle 4
Humble Indie Bundle V
Humble Indie Bundle 6
Humble Indie Bundle 7
Humble Frozenbyte Bundle
Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
Humble Voxatron Debut
Humble Introversion Bundle
Humble Botanicula Debut
Humble Bundle for Android
Humble Bundle for Android 2
Humble Bundle for Android 3
Humble Bundle for Android 4
This would be a valuable observation if you had first spent 18 months at the Windows command line.
Window's command line is garbage, so that's not a fair comparison at all.
For the expert, the command line is hard to beat for speed and efficiency. For anyone who isn't an expert, the command line is a major hindrance.
For the expert, the written word is hard to beat for precision and expressivness. For anyone who isn't an expert, the written word is a major hinderance. And yet, here we all are communicating with the written word.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
PowerShell has kind of rendered the CLI argument obsolete; sure, you can argue it's just a clone of Bash et al, but it's a damn good clone and I really struggle to manage without it these days.
I happen to agree - I just thought someone should say it out loud.
You may not be alone... but do you seriously think that there are actually enough people like you to make this a successful venture?
...because the existing demographic(sic) has nothing to do with the future of computing. Android is set to overtake Windows this year as the dominant OS. Right now coding a Windows[Direct X] only game shuts out half of your potential audience, and Windows market share is set to decline further. The future is cross platform and steam is already there? The fact that one market is smaller than another is irrelevant when portability is not an afterthought...if it is Windows is likely to lose out not Linux.
not really - do try to keep up.
One thing Microsoft has done with Windows is to pinch all the great ideas in Linux, so today you have package managers and partition tools and all the other fancy things that a few years ago were Linux only.
One of the ideas they stole is the powerful command line, only they made it slightly less like an inbuilt scripting language and made it into a full-blown scripting language. Then they relented and made it into a full-blown scripting language built into a command line. Its called Powershell and you might like to check it out. Of course there's still a few bits of crap floating in the clear waters, like the abysmal implementation of WMI and the fact its mainly VB (but I suppose VB is a good language for easy accessibility) accessing a load of badly integrated .NET objects, but hey - you can't have everything.
Really!?! I've had plenty of linux systems break when using the built in update tools... At least some of the software I was using... and, ironically enough, it's happened to me far more than my osx or windows systems. As for preserving configs, for a while the default user config locations changed from ~/.appname (file) to ~/appname/file to ~/.config/appname/ and different apps doing it differently.. not *that* easy. There are a *LOT* of reasons to choose Linux over windows what you are talking about isn't it.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Fedora has a RPM for it now (from http://spot.fedorapeople.org/steam/). There is also a package (built from this one) on OpenSUSE's build service. I can confirm the package works on Fedora 17 and 18 (with the nvidia blob from nvidia, tested TF2 on a Quadro 600 and GTX 460).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
>How about doing it with a Steam download that runs on _any_ modern Linux?
I totally agree. At a minimum, a Fedora rpm should be added and that would likely be useful in Fedora, Mandriva, and Mageia.
It is not just the packaging, it has to do with libraries included and which versions, but it really should not be difficult for them to use LSB for the major stuff and a slightly-older-than-bleeding-edge requirement for the necessary libraries and then offer a tar.gz. Anything really odd COULD just be included in their release or even just compiled in, static. This has been done for many years.
Want an example? I can jump right on ftp.mozilla.org and download a 32 bit or 64 bit .tar.gz of the latest Firefox and run it just fine on any distro from "just came out this morning" to one even almost three years old.
Despite what some people seem to think on Slashdot, although Ubuntu might be popular, it doesn't equal the userbase of the next several most popular Linux distros when combined.
Since when does 3D work well in a VM?
vmware player 4 or later, XP32 guest, Linux host 32 or 64 with virtualization hardware and nVidia graphics. Works pretty well, and if you were doing a little special-casing (and Microsoft is doing a lot now, or at least had to in order to get where they are now) it could work very well. Today I think it would be possible for vmware and Microsoft to collaborate on an emulator that would run 100% of Xbox titles, but there's no money in it and vmware is a Microsoft competitor in some ways so it's not happening.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The resurgence of PC gaming started a couple of years ago and has only been picking up steam (see what I did there?). 2012 brought us some PC-centric games that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, when we believed PC gaming was dying.
The moves Valve is making will only be wind at the back of PC gaming, and by the time the ultra-expensive next gen consoles come out, the landscape is going to look plenty different.
The future of gaming is not handheld. It's not console and it's not behind a walled garden. From AAA to the rawest indie title, PC gaming's future has not looked this bright in a long time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
go to www.steampowered.com in firefox.
click 'install steam'.
click 'install steam now'
choose 'open with' from the firefox popup
Error: Cannot install 'libcurl3-gnutls:i386'.
Typical linux. Good luck to Valve - they'll need it.
But the true power of the Linux command line is that it is not something just invented. It is Unix/Bourne/Shell, something that has been used by professionals and taught in schools for many decades on dozens of various Unix/Linux variants. It is even mostly the same on MacOS. There are hundreds of good books and it has a lot of mind share... probably many times that what "Powershell" will be able to obtain under MS-Windows.
When did I mention Windows?
Did I miss something I thought your point was out of Desktop Os Linux has a relatively small [but growing] market share...my point is out of total OS's Linux has the majority market share.
The whole point is post the dominant computer gaming platform used to be on your Desktop, now its more likely to phone or tablet.
The reality is the future [now] is cross platform, and Microsoft is simply not getting it.
More than one mouse button confuses me. That's why I only use Mac.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
They don't get more profit from Linux vs. MS-Windows. But by having a platform that Microsoft can't corrupt or control, it means that Valve can remain relevant and for much longer. That has a great value to Valve.
It also means Valve can develop a console/set-top using free Linux and pay nothing to MS or any other company to do so. That has a great value to Valve.
[Real] Linux compatibility could also be a great step to an entry into Android Linux for Valve... the #1 mobile platform in the world. That has a great value to Valve.
> How about doing it with a Steam download that runs on _any_ modern Linux?
Use alien to turn the deb package into a simple tarball.
Then use ldd to see what libraries you are missing.
There's no magic in this sort of thing: Lay down some files. Then lay down some more files to make sure the first set works. Perhaps throw up some advertising and a progress bar.
Chances are that "modern" Linuxen are already going to have what Steam needs since Linuxen are all ultimately the same upstream projects repackaged.
I can't run in on Mageia2 because it insists on glibc_2.15 and all Mageia provides is libc_2.14. Mageia 3 will provide libc_2.17 at least, so that won't be an issue and I've run it in the Mageia beta, so that again is not an issue. I suppose I could compile glibc_2.15 for Mageia2, but what magic does 2.15 provide that 2.14 does not that is needed by Steam? And needing complicated, user-unfriendly methods of running Steam on any modern Linux is not the way to make it a breakthrough product. This is also not about my "Linux skills". http://socuteurl.com/buzzycuddlefrog
My complaint is not that it can't be _made_ to run on other distros (it obviously can), but it shouldn't _need_ to be if they want to call it "Steam for Linux". Their internal debate is about their problem of supporting so many different packaging systems and making the distro install all the required-by-Steam versions of libraries. They resist providing their own libraries because of some assumed fear of "bloatware", but that approach would give them more control and better performance. I suspect it's more of an understandable desire to push some of the library support issues onto the distro itself. And I understand why they cannot statically compile proprietary software with FOSS libraries. They need to divorce themselves from any reliance on _any_distro if they want to call it "Steam for Linux". Because otherwise, it's not and it's not the breakthrough they claim it to be.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I see that you are being sincere here, so I won't make another sarcastic reply. I just think that stronger arguments than that will be needed to convince people to switch over. The command line is a non starter for most people who have no special interest in information technologies. As for the cost of the OS, it is rather immaterial right now, because few people buy it at retail, so they never see the bill. Finally, I think the gaming crowd is not the best one to cater to for an alternate OS, because
1. there are not that many games on Linux;
2. the small community makes it difficult to get support when it doesn't work, for instance sound issues are pretty frequent, at least in my experience;
3. I have seen some performance issues, but that was a few years ago and the situation may have improved;
4. Gaming rigs can be expensive, so again, OS price is less of a factor.
I would expand on these points, but I have to go now. Please accept my apologies, for I will not be able to answer any reply you make to this post in less than several hours, perhaps even until tomorrow.
Doubtful. Apache is more popular than IIS and still people target IIS for malware.
It's not that much less popular that it wouldn't be a lucrative target. It's what, somewhere around 15% vs Apache's 60%? That's still millions of servers.
Curiously enough, when I went to look up the stats on Secunia a couple years ago, IIS 6+ actually had less known vulnerabilities than the corresponding versions of Apache (i.e. covering the same time period). Don't know if that is still the case, though.
In the last year or so support for 3d acceleration inside a vm has been possible.
Virtual box states that it has opengl and dirext3d 8/9 support in it's release notes.
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-video
I have not needed to use it so I am not sure how it performs.
ubuntu usually uses a standard VGA driver in that case, and does display a desktop (or it did before unity, I haven't been in that situation since) it then ask you if you want to download the proprietary nvidia or amd driver.
null
Your the only one everyone else is moving to Libreoffice and Google Docs,.
No, no they're not. If your clients, boss, or coworkers are sending you Excel spreadsheets or heavily formatted Word documents for you to work on and return and you insist on using LibreOffice you will find yourself without clients, boss, or coworkers. You don't get to tell them to format their files as Office 2003 and hand them a list of formatting, drawing, template, and macro features they will have to stop using. MS owns you, or at least they own me. Heck, I tried to set up LibreOffice for my Mom but everyone else at the nonprofit she volunteers for uses MS Word/Excel, so that fell through too.
seriously though http://www.libreoffice.org/ is great.
Not if MS can help it.
When Windows was a dominant platform? You're joking, right? You aren't actually trying to suggest that mobile exclusives are a problem for Windows?
To be frank, not many PC users appreciate mobile ports when they happen anyway, given that they generally cost $1 on the mobile device, and $6-15 on PC as a straight port. Most people just don't see the value, and for good reason... Save for very few games, very few successfully make the transition to PC and do well.
The loads and loads of identical casual games might be good time wasters on phones, but that sort of casual gameplay doesn't often translate well to a PC release. The market just isn't all that interested in them. Trying to use android games to suggest that Linux is really picking up is downright silly and disingenuous to what everyone else means when we talk about gaming on Linux.
Don't expect steam for Linux to turn Linux into a gaming powerhouse. It has been around for Macs for a while now and the list of games available is extremely paltry in comparison to the Windows counterpart. Gaming on Windows isn't going anywhere, and it's certainly not going to be replaced by Linux anytime soon regardless of what you've read into the situation Valve is in.
Any time they can't do something on Linux, they say it isn't something you should want to do, or something you should do with your computer.
"You want to play games? Sure Linux is GREAT for games we have Tux racers, Battle of Westnoth, Nethack, all kinds of shit! Oh you want to play a new AAA game? You shouldn't want to do that, you should only want to play free games. AAA titles are stupid."
I get the same shit when I talk about audio production and video editing, which is something I do with my system. I've asked in all seriousness of self proclaimed Linux experts if there are programs I can get to do this kind of thing and go in to the particulars of what is needed. Predictably I get an initial list of software that was just gotten from a web search, with no consideration of actual use (which I've tried and found woefully problematic and inadequate). After some more back and forth often I get told that I "Shouldn't do that on my primary desktop," I should have something dedicated for A/V production.
The reason is a way to try and pass the buck, to make it not a problem with going to Linux, but reframe it as me doing something wrong. Because of course if you take away A/V production, games, media playback, and hardware compatibility, well then Linux can do everything I need! ... since at that point we are pretty much left with web, e-mail, and remote systems administration. They just declare what you are doing as not the right thing, until you only do things Linux does well.
Any word on having the Half Life / Portal / Left 4 Dead games working on Linux? These are part of my "must have installed" games, that I go back to from time to time, so I'll need them working on Linux as well, thank you :)
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
I used to use Linux regularly. I stopped because I couldn't find a way to do a task (I was trying to back up a large filesystem to live CDs, and everything I could find choked on directories with a ' in the name.)
It 'just worked' in Windows 2000, so that's what I switched to.
I've tinkered with assorted free *nixes over the years. Last year I decided 'It's been a while, I'll give Linux another go.' So I downloaded a current Ubuntu release. (I don't recall which version - it was the latest stable release at the time.)
I installed it. That went okay. I booted it up. That went okay. I thought the desktop was kinda ugly, but whatever. It prompted me to install the proprietary drivers for my video card. That went okay. Then it said I should check for updates. Okay. I let it do that. It downloaded a bunch and installed them, reported no errors. It warned some of the updates wouldn't be active till after a reboot.
I rebooted.
I had no network any more. The system couldn't see my ethernet port at all.
And so I went 'Well, if running a system update breaks something that hard, I'm not going to bother.' and went back to Windows.
So at least for me, it didn't 'just work'. I'm getting old. I don't like having to screw around with my desktop just to get it to work. If I want to screw around with a computer just for the sake of screwing around with a computer, I have oddball hobbyist machines.
It is already happening. For example the Catalyst 13.1 Linux release notes mention "[366820] Performance of Valve Linux games" as one of the improvements.
It's both.
If software you want to be backwards-compatible with assumes that it's going to have the rights to write to the area of disk where its executables are stored? That's a security issue. (End users are accustomed to granting business software written with the above assumptions escalated privileges on a regular basis? The end-user training to evade security that provides is definitely a security issue).
If you have a large selection of 3rd-party drivers written to an API which assumes that they run with kernel-level privileges (rather than keeping them sandboxed in userland, as with a decent microkernel)? That's also a security issue.
This is where I've said that Microsoft is changing (for at least one of these examples, has changed) its API and user expectations to allow them to fix longstanding, large security holes -- but for someone with as much to lose by breaking compatibility as they have, it's a slow process.
I have not needed to use it so I am not sure how it performs.
I have tried about six different sub-versions of virtualbox on several versions of Ubuntu with a variety of nVidia drivers (usually the specified ones) and I have never had it work. I use XP as the guest. It just explodes every time I try, sometimes taking virtualbox with it. I've tried with new programs and old, with or without Unity, at low resolutions and high, near and far, to and fro, hither and tither, and it always explodes.
This is purely anecdotal bullshit evidence, but for my part it doesn't work at all.
vmware's d3d support is a mixed bag but it usually works and it has shown continuous improvement. For example I run Civ IV in XP32 under Ubuntu with nVidia 240GT which is now quite dated (nice fill rate though) and there are little pulsing lighting effects which follow characters around, those were nonexistent and then they were bad and then they were too bright and now they work great, as experienced through several upgrades of vmplayer. The performance ain't what you'd like it to be, but the compatibility is sometimes better. For example Simcity 4 will run either in Wine or vmware, but the accuracy of the graphics are far better on vmware, and in Wine it has been very cruel to them by exposing their frequent and numerous regressions. I had it working pretty well and then like a fool I went and updated Wine and the graphics were so poor as to make the game unplayable. I suppose playonlinux is supposed to fix this, but I try it every year or so and it never works.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For the love of god, Make the SOURCE ENGINE games available under linux.
I'd be happy to play through HL2 etc again while waiting for newer titles.
The Source engine is constantly evolving. Valve's own games fall across 8 different versions. There used to be more, but HL2 and its episodes were updated to a newer engine when ported to OSX in 2010.
The engines are:
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011