Gamer Rewrites Valve's Steam Installer For Debian

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Gamer Rewrites Valve's Steam Installer For Debian

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 4, 2013 @06:22AM from the check-it-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gaming on Linux is growing fast right now, and most of that is thanks to Steam. Initially, Steam committed only to the most popular desktop distribution, Ubuntu, but more recently has opened the door to others. So what do you do when you want to game in Linux and you're using something a little less popular — at least, on the desktop? If you're a programmer called GhostSquad57, you rewrite the installer for Debian. GhostSquad57 uploaded his efforts to Github yesterday, and has since reached out to the Linux community."

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big deal by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 06:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Seeing as Ubuntu is debian for those scared of terms.
1. Re:big deal by pecosdave · 2013-03-04 06:34 · Score: 1, Flamebait
  
  Ubuntu is Debian for people who actually want to use their systems. Debian used to be pretty nice, but once Ubuntu came along the developers sort of gave up on having a working Debian and decided to become framework guys for Ubuntu. Debian in its current state is nearly unusable as a desktop, at least with KDE.
  
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  The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
2. Re:big deal by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 06:37 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Seeing as Ubuntu is debian for those scared of terms.
  Even less of a big deal when you check out NEW.
3. Re:big deal by loufoque · 2013-03-04 06:42 · Score: 2
  
  Isn't it the other way around?
  Debian is what you use when you want to actually use the system, since, unlike Ubuntu, it actually has up-to-date and reliable packages.
  The only advantage of Ubuntu is packaging restricted drivers better. Ubuntu also packages some weird desktop experiences (such as Unity), if you're into that sort of thing.
4. Re:big deal by Minwee · 2013-03-04 06:45 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Try mixing Debian and Ubuntu repositories some time and see how big of a deal that is.
5. Re:big deal by larry+bagina · 2013-03-04 06:54 · Score: 2
  
  "up to date" isn't an apt description for debian stable. Unless you're a time traveller from 3 years ago. Reliable, I'll give that one to you, if you ignore how they fucked up ssh.
  
  --
  Do you even lift?
  These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
6. Re:big deal by phorm · 2013-03-04 07:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  And Mint is for people who want more packages but dislike the direction that Canonical has been taking with Gnome3 etc...
  (it also works with the stock Steam installer)
7. Re:big deal by Narcocide · 2013-03-04 07:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Well, actually they do. Debian, Mozilla and Apache are the ones run by shadowy not-for-profit legal foundations (aka "charities"), but Canonical, on the other hand is a a for-profit corporation is actually selling your demographic info to advertisers just like Facebook and Apple.
8. Re:big deal by iroll · 2013-03-04 07:42 · Score: 1
  
  Even here in the future, stable is fine for pretty much any normal home and office use. And if it isn't, the upgrade to unstable is almost trivial to perform and isn't likely to cause any problems.
  
  --
  Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
9. Re:big deal by spike+hay · 2013-03-04 07:47 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Debian Stable is certainly not up to date, and I've always had problems with lots of random bugs whose fixes haven't been backported. Sid is the only way to get modern packages, but it's an absolute clusterfuck. Ubuntu/Mint are nearly as bad, but they do clearly put work into making sure the desktop experience is relatively smooth.
  Arch linux on the other hand has bleeding edge STABLE packages. I almost never have any issues. Arch packaging are typically very vanilla. Heavy patching like Debian does introduces a lot of problems (ie in urxvt). Upstream generally knows best. They wrote it.
  
  --
  If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
10. Re:big deal by jgtg32a · 2013-03-04 08:03 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Ubuntu is an African word that means "I can't configure Debian"
11. Re:big deal by TheDarkener · 2013-03-04 08:05 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I've been using Debian 'testing' as a desktop (and a netbook for that matter) for many years now. I used Ubuntu for about 4 years at home and with my business clients (I'm a network engineer), roughly from v6.10 -> 10.04 but switched back because of the "will not fix" developer mentality to those who wanted functional packages from an LTS release. There was always something major that was broken, always with the carrot-on-a-stick, "Just upgrade to the latest release and use PPA from JoeSchmoe" answer when you just wanted to use your computer. It kept me for a while, but it got reeeeal tiring.
  Debian has always "just worked" on my desktop. It's also a great LTSP sever, serving my kitchen and livingroom thin clients. With all of the good stuff that the Ubuntu/Canonical folks do getting backported to Debian, I feel like Debian testing is "Ubuntu Stable".
  
  --
  It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
12. Re:big deal by kthreadd · 2013-03-04 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  Arch is fine on a single machine, but I've yet to see a site with 100+ machines running it as well as Debian stable, Ubuntu LTS or any of the RHEL clones.
13. Re:big deal by loufoque · 2013-03-04 08:17 · Score: 2
  
  You should always use testing on your desktop, laptop or workstation, especially if you work in IT.
  stable is for production environments.
14. Re:big deal by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 08:25 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Debian is a Klingon word that means "I'm scared of Slackware"
15. Re:big deal by Randle_Revar · 2013-03-04 09:11 · Score: 1
  
  Done that. Boring, next!
  
  --
  Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
16. Re:big deal by marcello_dl · 2013-03-04 09:11 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You should remember that there is also debian testing, which currently is debian wheezy. As stable becomes too old, testing become more of a viable alternative. I ran into more problems with kubuntu than sid, and testing is way better than sid for normal users, because upgrades are less radical.
  I also had a smooth experience with debian stable, if you want to run newer software too you could make a chroot with sid or testing, or consider the LD_LIBRARY_PATH option: at home I am running wheezy, plus the fglrx-legacy driver from experimental, using a closed source client with libraries gotten from ubuntu, and the resulting frankenstein has not had one hiccup.
  
  --
  ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
17. Re:big deal by TeknoHog · 2013-03-04 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  Slackware is ancient Sumerian for "Beware of He Who Must Not Be Named, also known as Gentoo".
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
18. Re:big deal by dargaud · 2013-03-04 09:33 · Score: 1
  
  Canonical, on the other hand is a a for-profit corporation is actually selling your demographic info to advertisers just like Facebook and Apple.
  "My demographics" ?!? Besides my IP for when I downloaded Ubuntu 6.4 and every time I run "aptitude full-upgrade", I really wonder what kind of "demographics" they have on me...
  
  --
  Non-Linux Penguins ?
19. Re:big deal by UltraZelda64 · 2013-03-04 09:43 · Score: 2
  
  Too bad the phrase doesn't hold up to time, because Debian has been getting incredibly easy to install, with pretty much everything except "non-free" drivers working at first boot... but yeah, it is a good phrase that historically has some truth to it.
20. Re:big deal by dcollins117 · 2013-03-04 09:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Ubuntu is an African word that means "I can't configure Debian"
  It's funny because it's true. As a windows user who wanted to learn how to use linux (15 years ago or so) I had the catch-22 issue of installing and configuring system I knew very little about. So it was crucial for me that the installation "just worked" to get a working machine to learn on. I tried Debian first and got no where, then tried Ubuntu and it "just worked".
  Ubunutu is far from perfect, but it works good enough for new users that they can learn what they need to in order to abandon it once they tire of Canonical's shenanigans.
21. Re:big deal by Narcocide · 2013-03-04 10:07 · Score: 2
  
  How about your search history?
22. Re:big deal by Dishevel · 2013-03-04 10:11 · Score: 1
  
  Mint is king.
  
  --
  Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
23. Re:big deal by jnork · 2013-03-04 11:18 · Score: 1
  
  Mmmm! Minty fresh!
  
  --
  Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
24. Re:big deal by spike+hay · 2013-03-04 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  It's really different use cases. In practice, Arch seems to give a smoother desktop experience with minimal screwing around. It's pretty rare to have any sort of breakages, as long as you keep an eye on the website for any big changes. Security fixes are available immediately from upstream as part of normal updates, of course. Perhaps it is just my experience, but I just see more rando bugs with Debian than most other distros.
  RHEL or Debian stable is probably better for an actual production environment. They are more stable in terms of API stability, but not necessarily so in terms of kernel panics, etc. Arch is bleeding edge, and things change a lot. That said, it gives you the newest stable packages that are current in terms of security and bug fixes. Sometimes this doesn't work out, as in KDE 4.0, but it's usually a good thing.
  
  --
  If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
25. Re:big deal by pecosdave · 2013-03-04 11:43 · Score: 1
  
  Debian has had constant driver issues for me, not just SSH. I'll be cruising along using stable not testing, not experimental, but stable, do a "security update" and all of the sudden have hardware that has worked for years quit working.
  Not just one system, not just one type of hardware, but random crap on every system I have at different times.
  I moved to Ubuntu because I got tired of having to constantly fight and troubleshoot to keep stable running. I might run a server on Debian, one that doesn't need the use of anything outside of the traditional base hardware, but never for a desktop again.
  
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  The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
26. Re:big deal by pecosdave · 2013-03-04 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Part of the reason I stuck with Debian as long as I did despite the "just break it" attitude from the developers, especially near a "going stable" cram is the fact it was easier to make my own choices and decisions. Over time it's gotten easier to do that with Kubuntu, though I will say part of the reason I avoided Kubuntu for so long was at one time in history it was a lot harder to chose what software you wanted to run on it. /don't know why I'm troll feeding.
  
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  The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
27. Re:big deal by pecosdave · 2013-03-04 13:08 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe on the main Ubuntu - those of us who aren't Gnome Boys or Unity Users don't seem to have that problem.
  
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  The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
28. Re:big deal by pecosdave · 2013-03-04 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  A little over a year ago I had plenty of people agreeing with me, I've even had actual Debian developers agree with me in the past.
  
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  The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
29. Re:big deal by HiThere · 2013-03-04 14:18 · Score: 1
  
  I use testing also, but I've heard that unstable is safer because testing doesn't get bug fixes applied the way that stable does, and is slower to get them applied than unstable.
  Not sure if that's true, of if it was true still current. And, as I said, I use testing myself. But I'd be careful about that "always".
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
30. Re:big deal by kermidge · 2013-03-04 14:21 · Score: 1
  
  Unless they're surreptitiously recording/sending my searches done via Firefox and Opera on google, duckduckgo, wikipedia, half-dozen others, or doing the same with local machine from the dash or from withing the file manager, after I set the privacy doodad, _what search history_, exactly?
31. Re:big deal by kermidge · 2013-03-04 14:26 · Score: 1
  
  first belly-laugh of the day
  thanks!
32. Re:big deal by HiThere · 2013-03-04 14:35 · Score: 1
  
  FWIW, every distro has its drawbacks Debian has a couple.
  1) Stable tends to be too stale. I always seem to need some feature that won't install with that set of libraries. (Well, not right after release time, but not long, either.)
  2) Testing usually breaks badly at least once during a development cycle.
  The way I deal with that is to have two different install partitions. Occasionally I'll swtich off of testing for a week while they sort out a bad problem.
  OTOH, many distros have too much magic smoke and mirrors for me. (I'll grant that even Debian has gone that way a bit, but not like, say, Mandrake or SUSE.) Some distros still use lilo. I may prefer grub to grub2, but lilo is a pain. Fedora locks partitions so if you boot from another system, you can't read them. (Actually, I suspect it could be configured to NOT to that, but since Red Hat dropped the "Professional Edition" without warning, I'm not willing to invest that much time in configuring them. I'm pretty sure it's intended as a "security feature", but it doesn't protect against the kinds of circumstances I encounter. It just barfs them up.) Most of the others I can't remember the exact reason I didn't stick with them. Frequently it was something I *could* have dealt with, but didn't choose to bother.
  Currently I have my wife on Mint+KDE. Up until a recent upgrade I had her on Ubuntu LTS, but when gnome2 went away, she wanted something else. (*Her* reason is to have the electric-sheep screensaver. Silly to me, but important to her.) KDE is a lot heavier than the desktop I would prefer to have on her laptop, gnome2 was better. But gnome3 was just rediculous *AND* didn't have her required feature.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
33. Re:big deal by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 15:21 · Score: 1
  
  Debian has had constant driver issues for me, not just SSH. I'll be cruising along using stable not testing, not experimental, but stable, do a "security update" and all of the sudden have hardware that has worked for years quit working.
  Not just one system, not just one type of hardware, but random crap on every system I have at different times.
  I moved to Ubuntu because I got tired of having to constantly fight and troubleshoot to keep stable running. I might run a server on Debian, one that doesn't need the use of anything outside of the traditional base hardware, but never for a desktop again.
  I don't know what you're doing to your systems to have these problems, but my experience has been the complete opposite. I've run Debian since 2000 or 2001, and that's never been my experience. I started on Stable, and later moved to Testing, which is what I currently run. I'm still using the same install, in fact, and it's still working great after migrating it across multiple motherboards, processors, and hard disks.
  I've had no random hardware compatibility issues, not even between upgrades. It didn't care when I swapped from a normal x86 kernel to one with PAE, though I did have a minor problem once when swapping out motherboards, because the new board used SATA instead of IDE. My fault, though: I didn't expect the drives to be sdX instead of hdX.
  On the Ubuntu side, I've had nothing but problems any time I've ever tried to use it on a system instead of Debian. Maybe I'm just hitting the wrong versions, but every time I've tried, it seems like there are odd bugs with the kernel version they used that never got fixed, or video, or some other half-baked change that wasn't fully completed or tested at all. Like this one time where their LTS release broke the intel graphics driver and I had to run X in vesa mode at 1024x768. Never got fixed, either, because apparently bug fixes take a back seat to pushing out a new release in six months. Long term support, my ass.
  Debian may be slower, but I'd rather have that than Ubuntu's "take Debian Unstable, add untested buggy upstream projects, stir together, cook six months, throw out regardless of bugs". Mixing a rigid release schedule with a tendency to throw in buggy and untested code is a recipe for disaster.
  If Ubuntu works for you, great, enjoy it while it does, because it'll eventually crash and burn. I might give it another shot when/if they switch to a rolling release model and give up on the insane release cycle they use.
34. Re:big deal by grantek · 2013-03-04 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  No no, it's the other way around. Debian is Ubuntu for people who don't want to go to the hassle of configuring privacy settings or uninstalling bloat.
35. Re:big deal by s.petry · 2013-03-04 16:05 · Score: 1
  
  Don't bother, Unity sucks ass no matter how much they try and tout it. I tried to install and run KDE on Ubuntu, that was a nightmare I don't want to repeat.
  
  --
  -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
36. Re:big deal by Monsuco · 2013-03-04 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  You do realize you can kill that little "feature" with one apt command right? Unlike most forms of adware, this one doesn't really fight you when you remove it.
  
  --
  The Gospel according to lolcat
37. Re:big deal by Monsuco · 2013-03-04 16:27 · Score: 1
  
  Too bad the phrase doesn't hold up to time, because Debian has been getting incredibly easy to install, with pretty much everything except "non-free" drivers working at first boot... but yeah, it is a good phrase that historically has some truth to it.
  Well, Debian's easy to install if you want it to be. If you're a masochist, you can still do network based installs and menu driven installs if you want to. There's also still the option of downloading 51 disc images if you want to.
  
  --
  The Gospel according to lolcat
38. Re:big deal by metrix007 · 2013-03-04 18:47 · Score: 1
  
  Oh Please. Gentoo is for children fascinated by the freedom and possibility of compiling everything where there is no need. Adults use Slackware or Arch.
  
  --
  If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
39. Re:big deal by dbIII · 2013-03-04 19:22 · Score: 1
  
  Example please.
  There has been a lot of mumbling of this type that is not tied to reality (such as the "worst interface ever" losers that pop up every time something on linux with a GUI is mentioned), and the above post is so vague it looks like it belongs with them.
40. Re:big deal by moronoxyd · 2013-03-04 20:18 · Score: 2
  
  As a windows user who wanted to learn how to use linux (15 years ago or so) I had the catch-22 issue of installing and configuring system I knew very little about. [...] I tried Debian first and got no where, then tried Ubuntu and it "just worked".
  Soooo.. you installed Ubuntu, which came out first in 2004, '15 years ago or so'?
  Can I have access to your time machine?
41. Re:big deal by Lotana · 2013-03-04 23:18 · Score: 2
  
  Of course we do. The problem is that this "feature" is forced down on us by default requiring effort (Even if fairly small) to get rid of. Especially since there are so many other great distributions to choose from where you don't have to worry about someone data mining for your usage information.
  This breaks good will of the distribution to the open source community. And that is why we are bitching.
42. Re:big deal by Ash+Vince · 2013-03-05 00:36 · Score: 1
  
  Mint is king.
  Mostly.
  Installing software using the GUI is still a little broken though as if you search for stuff it tries to reissue your search every time you type a character. That gets annoying if you type 3 or 4 chars, then change your mind and hit backspace 4 times, then type another 5 or so you have locked your machine up until it does 15 searches of the application repositories you have installed, some of which return a lot of results (ie, the ones where 0,1 or 2 chars were in the search box).
  
  --
  I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
43. Re:big deal by dcollins117 · 2013-03-05 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  You are correct sir, and I am a bad judge of time. I stand corrected.
Not GNU/Steam by ButchDeLoria · 2013-03-04 06:27 · Score: 5, Funny

Not free enough, 2/10 would not install.
Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Really. It's not. It hasn't been in a year or more, so can we stop this "Ubuntu it the big best Linux" crap already?
Ubuntu started to tank shortly after Shuttleworth sold his soul to the devil. The most popular distros are now Mint (by far), and probably also Mageia by now.
I personally don't see why Valve doesn't just aim for Debian support. If that works, Ubuntu, Mint and many more should be minimal effort.
1. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by SJHillman · 2013-03-04 06:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It depends on how you determine popularity. Because Linux distros typically don't phone home at any point during installation or operation, it's impossible to know how many installs of a given distro are out there. Mint may have the most pageviews or the most downloads in the last X months, but it doesn't mean it's the most widely installed.
  If a company with 1000 seats downloads Ubuntu once and uses that single download to install it on all 1000 PCs, while the business next door has all ten of its users download Mint to install on their own desktops then Mint appears to be ten times as popular as Ubuntu.
  I'm not saying this is the case, just that it's almost impossible to figure out the most popular Linux distro. It's also important to point out that Mint is to Ubuntu what Ubuntu is to Debian... if Debian stopped, Ubuntu would die and if Ubuntu stopped then Mint would die.
2. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by Arashi256 · 2013-03-04 06:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  That's a donation page, numbnuts.
3. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by SJHillman · 2013-03-04 06:58 · Score: 1
  
  You may want to try Ubuntu's official site next time.
  I had to scroll down quite a ways before Ubuntu's download page mentioned money... and that was only if I wanted it on DVD. CentOS's download link takes me to their sponsor page before I can proceed to their list of mirrors... and it's not shy about asking for donations before you click on the mirrors link.
4. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by CodeReign · 2013-03-04 07:01 · Score: 1
  
  That is the official site. When you click download it comes up with some sliders saying support for features etc. there is a click through at the bottom but it's not immediately obvious you don't have to pay.
5. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by BitZtream · 2013-03-04 07:15 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Because Linux distros typically don't phone home at any point during installation or operation,
  Bullshit excuse. They do request updates, don't they? Its not hard to tell who's using your Linux distro when they come to you for patches.
  
  If a company with 1000 seats downloads Ubuntu once and uses that single download to install it on all 1000 PCs, while the business next door has all ten of its users download Mint to install on their own desktops then Mint appears to be ten times as popular as Ubuntu.
  Yes, if you picked a particular 5 millisecond period and just used that as a basis for all of your extrapolation, but when you look at it on average, that sort of thing doesn't matter.
  
  --
  Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
6. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by crazyjj · 2013-03-04 07:16 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Hate to break it to you, but most downloads on Steam are going to ask you to pay for them too.
  
  --
  What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
7. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by DaTrueDave · 2013-03-04 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not a Linux nerd. I've messed around with Red Hat a long time ago, and Ubuntu recently, but I do not follow Linux trends at all.
  That said, all of the guys at work that try to talk me into using Linux are using Ubuntu and recommend Ubuntu. I've not heard anyone else anywhere claim that Ubuntu isn't the most popular flavor of Linux right now.
8. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by SJHillman · 2013-03-04 07:46 · Score: 1
  
  The company I work for has around 500 clients. We only have about a dozen servers that connect to Microsoft for updates, one of those servers is responsible for distributing the updates too all of the other clients.
  The truth is that the largest groupings of users are corporate, and the larger a corporate userbase is then the more likely they will just have a few servers that grab the updates and distribute them for everyone else.
9. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by SJHillman · 2013-03-04 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  They might have all of the sources, but they probably don't have enough developers. They might be able to afford enough developers to pick up the slack, but they might not be able to. Either way, development of Debian would be dead in the water for some period of time until someone (if anyone) stepped in to pick up the slack. It's also possible Ubuntu would shift to be based on some other distro or they find they can't adapt and die out.
10. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by jones_supa · 2013-03-04 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  I wanted to try Ubuntu at one point. The download page asked me to pay money to Canonical.
  You don't have to pay. But Ubuntu is like Wikipedia: if you would like to see something like that in the future, and help it become even more awesome, you can throw some coins in the guitar case.
11. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by westlake · 2013-03-04 09:34 · Score: 1
  
  If a company with 1000 seats downloads Ubuntu once and uses that single download to install it on all 1000 PCs...
  ....it is a locked down tight enterprise-wide distribution that doesn't include Steam, and, in that environment. more likely to be Red Hat than Ubuntu.
  It is not the user's choice and not a popularity contest either.
12. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by UltraZelda64 · 2013-03-04 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  I personally don't see why Valve doesn't just aim for Debian support. If that works, Ubuntu, Mint and many more should be minimal effort.
  Just a guess: Maybe they really think Ubuntu is better, they think with Ubuntu's popularity they'll have a better chance of succeeding (supporting everything would be a bad business decision and not feasible, plus they gotta start somewhere), or Canonical has a deal ($$$) with them. Never know... Ubuntu would be fine on a Steam/gaming-only machine, but I agree that it sucks these days for regular use.
13. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by shia84 · 2013-03-04 10:11 · Score: 1
  
  Mint is the most popular GNU/Linux distribution in the DistroWatch niche. And as with all vocal minorities, they try to claim that their anecdotal evidence is generisable.
  If asked to estimate, I'd say Ubuntu has roughly two orders of magnitude the install base of Mint. Similar to C vs Objective C, the latter is more popular ("hip", "in", ...) but will need a very long time to reach the amount of distribution of the former, if ever. There is no noticeable corporate pick up on Mint (if you go by the quite numerous Canonical press releases about Ubuntu contracts, coprorate deployment ranges in the hundreds of thousands... and probably a bit more we don't hear from). Educational institutions (in my country, we had a wide survey recently, but not recorded by Canonical as we don't use their support) are using Ubuntu first, Fedora/Red Hat second and then some few Debian and Suse. No mention of Mint.
  Yes, may early adopters and disgruntled techies are switching to Mint (among others), and I myself have moved to Debian for my private usage... so if this trend keeps up, this might be a good indicator what the "next Ubuntu" will be. BUT that doesn't mean that Mint is anywhere near Ubuntu right now, nor that they will catch up if Ubuntu really manages to pull of that "unified device experience for the masses" plan they are aiming for (which would net the much more newcomers than leaving folks).
14. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by Monsuco · 2013-03-04 16:44 · Score: 1
  
  Because Linux distros typically don't phone home at any point during installation or operation,
  Bullshit excuse. They do request updates, don't they? Its not hard to tell who's using your Linux distro when they come to you for patches.
  
  If a company with 1000 seats downloads Ubuntu once and uses that single download to install it on all 1000 PCs, while the business next door has all ten of its users download Mint to install on their own desktops then Mint appears to be ten times as popular as Ubuntu.
  Yes, if you picked a particular 5 millisecond period and just used that as a basis for all of your extrapolation, but when you look at it on average, that sort of thing doesn't matter.
  Not all of the companies log who's been using their apt or rpm update servers. Also, much like WSUS on Windows, a company using Linux desktops might very well decide to mirror its updates to save on bandwidth. That is, have one server check for updates, have the clients all download updates from said server.
  
  It's also worth noting ChromeOS is Linux based and considering the Chromebook has been a best seller on Amazon, I wonder if we count that as a Linux distro. Not to mention android.
  
  --
  The Gospel according to lolcat
15. Re:Ubuntu is NOT the most popular Linux OS. by Sigg3.net · 2013-03-04 23:35 · Score: 1
  
  Ubuntu has Canonical and a business plan.
  
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  Defining Statistics and Social Research
Wow Slashdot! by bennyp · 2013-03-04 06:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Check out this headline: Linux guy edits script to better suit his setup. Let's get this to the front page NOW!

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could it be?
1. Re:Wow Slashdot! by zigfreed · 2013-03-04 06:37 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  It's worse than that. This is a Slashdot discussion about a Reddit thread, with a third site intermediary.
2. Re:Wow Slashdot! by GigaBurglar · 2013-03-04 07:15 · Score: 2
  
  I was thinking the same thing. It's no more impressive than the build script in the Arch User Repository.
3. Re:Wow Slashdot! by RocketRabbit · 2013-03-04 07:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  But how else can "anonymous reader" engage Dice Holdings' genius marketing team to promote thepowerbase.com's awesome news aggregator?
  I think you are missing the point of these slashdot stories. They are pure SEO spam, designed to uprank whatever shitty site is giving us a synopsis of what is happening at another site.
  It's really too bad the internet took off and was noticed by business and advertising types. We need a modern day digital Jesus to upset the money changers' tables.
4. Re:Wow Slashdot! by Ambiguous+Coward · 2013-03-04 07:49 · Score: 2
  
  I don't even know what that means! We need laws outlawing this sort of thing, NOW.
  
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  Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
5. Re:Wow Slashdot! by Hal_Porter · 2013-03-04 12:14 · Score: 2
  
  To be fair to him the editor he was using was probably really hard to use. So he's lucky he didn't end up with an script file that was all fubar with ^H^H^H characters all over it.
  
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  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
6. Re:Wow Slashdot! by Rxke · 2013-03-04 23:05 · Score: 1
  
  We need a modern day digital Jesus
  We have Stallman... Errrr... wait nevermind...
Whoop-dee-do for Debian by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 06:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

# layman -a gamerlay # layman -S # emerge steam-meta
Done. Been working since the middle of the beta for Gentoo users, and that distro doesn't even use .deb files natively. So... um... congrats, Debian? Nice to see you're still old and slow to react? I guess?
1. Re:Whoop-dee-do for Debian by spxZA · 2013-03-04 20:35 · Score: 1
  
  Yup, and it works. Anonymous reader did not do their homework.
2. Re:Whoop-dee-do for Debian by Rich0 · 2013-03-04 23:30 · Score: 1
  
  In case that was actually serious - Gentoo does rolling updates. The install media is updated anywhere from weekly (when things are going well) to every few months (when things aren't). Gentoo doesn't really have releases, so it never really gets into the press. While it doesn't have quite as much activity as it did back in 2004, I'd say things are a whole lot more stable. I've never found anything I actually use to be out of date, though - if a little-known application isn't supported I just package it myself, but anything likely to be mentioned on SlashDot is in the main repository (often including applications that aren't in the main repositories for Ubuntu/etc, but which are instead in PPAs/etc).
Sounds like he's job hunting... by turp182 · 2013-03-04 06:39 · Score: 1

Good way to get noticed by Valve.

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BlameBillCosby.com
1. Re:Sounds like he's job hunting... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 07:44 · Score: 1
  
  I'm sure they really need kids who can trivially edit shell scripts!
Not Very Impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 06:43 · Score: 1

Since Ubuntu uses Debian's package manager, this isn't much of a change. And people have had it working on Arch for over a month, it's even in their official repos now.
1. Re:Not Very Impressive by kthreadd · 2013-03-04 08:12 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know what this installer does in particular, but there's a lot of things different between Debian and Ubuntu. They are not at all the same system just because they share the same package manager. Ubuntu is no longer Debian with a fancy installer. Most Ubuntu packages are just recompiled Debian packages, they don't even necessarily work on Ubuntu.
  For comparison, apt has been ported to Mac OS X as well. That doesn't mean that getting the Linux version of Steam to run on Mac OS X is easy just because apt can run on it.
What's the chance of a slackpkg installer? by mark-t · 2013-03-04 07:01 · Score: 1

[nt]

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
1. Re:What's the chance of a slackpkg installer? by StarTuxia · 2013-03-04 07:08 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It has been out for awhile, courtesy of Alien Bob: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/survey-results-for-linux-gaming-on-steam/#comments
fedora repo by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 07:03 · Score: 1

Someone has been maintaining a fedora people repo for #steam for @fedora but he never becom popular! :|
Re:bah by jedidiah · 2013-03-04 07:06 · Score: 2

> with the multitude of installers, and having to play around with antiquated X, and a retarded sound system.
The only thing antiquated and retarded her is your argument.
> Fresh install of Linux Mint, installed Steam, installed TF 2...bam.... software rendering
Perhaps Steam doesn't like your video driver. It tends to be really vocal about this sort of thing. Tends to pester you to get current.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How About an Uninstaller? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-04 07:08 · Score: 1

Removing DRM rather than adding it seems like the better way to go.
1. Re:How About an Uninstaller? by BumpyCarrot · 2013-03-04 07:43 · Score: 1
  
  Look out, grandad! Those darned kids are on your lawn again!
  
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  Do you see what I did there?
Typical Linux geek by sl4shd0rk · 2013-03-04 07:12 · Score: 5, Funny

would rather be hacking the game than playing it.

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Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
1. Re:Typical Linux geek by amiga3D · 2013-03-04 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  generally most games are more fun to hack than to play. My favorite games were always the ones with construction sets.
It's on Arch linux too by fa2k · 2013-03-04 07:29 · Score: 1

It's in the Arch Linux main repositories, I just checked
Don't know if I'm impressed or disappointed.. There's lots of other S/W in the user repositories that I would rather have in the main one before Steam. But great job, whoever did it
I thought Steam would be an Ubuntu-only thing, but I stand corrected, this is pretty good
Turns out that it crashes before the client even starts on my system, but my GPU driver is dodgy, so it's maybe not Steam's fault
1. Re:It's on Arch linux too by Rich0 · 2013-03-04 23:36 · Score: 1
  
  Works fine on Gentoo as well.
  Sometimes you need to remove a bundled library to get a few games to work right, but I doubt that you'll ever get around issues like that on linux when people distribute binary-only applications without shims.
Might Matter -IF- by hduff · 2013-03-04 08:26 · Score: 1

This might matter IF he had made it possible to install Steam on ANY major Linux distro. This just makea "Steam for Ubuntu" into "Steam for Debian", so . . .
meh

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"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by mescobal · 2013-03-04 08:56 · Score: 1

What happen to you guys? I'm no engineer, but i'm no newbie. I'm a doctor, I don't have time to tinker with everything in my PC. So when I installed steam on one of my Debian machines (I had Ubuntu but for ethical reasons returned to Debian) and it didn't work out I felt disappointed. I DON'T HAVE TIME to make the changes myself. So, when someone does it an shares it I'd say good for us all. And the one that said "...Ubuntu is an African word that means "I can't configure Debian"...": that's old, boring, false, trollish, etc. I CAN configure lots of things in all of my Debian machines. Debian could be the acronym of "I can't stand Unity" or "I don't sell myself to corporations". But, seriously, guys... that attitude is NOT what makes out OS a great one. So: F'You (quoting Linux). And thanks to the guy doing the real work.

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La culpa no es del chancho...
1. Re:News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by drinkypoo · 2013-03-04 09:41 · Score: 1
  
  It's really not about diminishing his accomplishment. It's about why is this on the Slashdot front page, there must be something nerdier and more interesting in the firehose. Not that I've looked, sometimes there ain't.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2. Re:News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by jedidiah · 2013-03-04 10:48 · Score: 1
  
  > I don't have time to tinker with everything in my PC.
  Then there's no problem.
  Clearly you have no times for games either.
  Steam is specifically meant to waste a lot of your time. That's what it was built for. If you don't have time to install it, then you don't have the time to use it either.
  So you see the situation solves itself.
  Spending hours and hours playing TF2 versus futzing with the installer for a bit. No comparison really.
  
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  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
3. Re:News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by mescobal · 2013-03-04 11:06 · Score: 1
  
  If you are > 40, you should now Time is relative. I have kids. Playing is something I share with them, tinkering (sadly) not. I didn't want to buy them a game console. I like to share with them other values.
  Steam doesn't "waste" my time. I decide to waste my time with Steam.
  That's the kind of reasoning that harms our community. I'll rephrase it to you (in my very primitive English):
  For lost of reasons I decide to waste my time playing instead of tinkering so I wellcome those who make this possible.
  If Debian community can't conceive this scenario, then perhaps it's time to move to another distro (or another OS).
  
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  La culpa no es del chancho...
4. Re:News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by jedidiah · 2013-03-05 04:53 · Score: 1
  
  You choose to be lazy and use the "my time is valuable" excuse.
  That is contradictory to the idea of running Steam even under the most ideal conditions.
  
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  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
5. Re:News!!! Make something and be bashed!!!! by mescobal · 2013-03-05 09:24 · Score: 1
  
  I know my English is bad, but your lack of understanding exceeds it.
  Do I need "excuses" and am I "lazy" because I don't want to write a script myself and choose to play a game ???????????
  Back to the original question: "what's wrong with you guys?"
  Answer: I don't know, but I feel something is very wrong from the community perspective. Everybody seems turning to the "dark side".
  
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  La culpa no es del chancho...
Playing on Fedora since public beta... no problem by PartyBoy!911 · 2013-03-04 09:06 · Score: 2

Valve put it out ther on their developer site since day one... https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux
1 Native Steam on Linux
1.1 Unpackaged
1.2 Arch Linux
1.3 Fedora
1.4 Gentoo
1.5 openSUSE / SUSE
1.6 Ubuntu
So big deal, it only took you 3 months more time then the other distro's
15:56, 16 December 2012 Hanno (Talk | contribs) (9,101 bytes) (Native Steam on Linux Beta Client)
Re:Playing on Fedora since public beta... no probl by egr · 2013-03-04 09:24 · Score: 1

Hey, thanks for the information! I didn't know that so many have already ported the package. To be honest I didn't follow the progress either.
Re:bah by X0563511 · 2013-03-04 09:26 · Score: 1

Hmm, Nvidia/AMD/ATI paid MS to include basic drivers.
Suprise suprise.

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Re:bah by jedidiah · 2013-03-04 10:43 · Score: 1

> It should just work. Do the same thing on a windows 7 system, ...and you will be lucky if it works.
As always, the propaganda about how well Windows works simply cannot be trusted. When you try this stuff out for yourself you realize that it really isn't all that it is cracked up to be.
Although sometimes Windows just breaks and doesn't tell you. So you don't realize that it's broken. It just acts unpredictably or your performance goes to sh*t.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is not news. by thatkid_2002 · 2013-03-04 12:17 · Score: 1

This Steam for Linux is working on multiple distributions that are far more removed from Ubuntu than Debian - this has been the case for months now. I have it right here on Fedora, and I know it's available for Arch Linux too. The license for Steam has even been altered to make it easier for it to be repackaged and even hosted in distribution repositories.