Steam Linux Plans

[Jul 16, 2012, 9:12 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Steam’d Penguins on the Valve Website has new details on Valve's progress in adding Linux support to Steam and their games. Here's word on their progress on a Linux Steam client and a Linux edition of Left 4 Dead 2:

The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. We’ve made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We’re still giving attention and effort to minor features but it’s a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.

Since the Steam client isn’t much without a game, we’re also porting L4D2 to Ubuntu. This tests the game-related features of the Steam client, in addition to L4D2 gameplay on Ubuntu. Over the last few months, excellent progress has been made on several fronts and it now runs natively on Ubuntu 12.04. We’re working hard to improve the performance and have made good progress (more on that in a future post). Our goal is to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows.

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Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 17, 2012, 00:26

Slashman

headkase wrote on Jul 16, 2012, 23:27: Good news for me. I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 as my only operating system. I also have a huge library of Steam games that I'm currently not using as per the previous sentence. Perhaps I missed something...but why would you have a huge library of Steam games and still be running only Linux?

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 17, 2012, 00:19

Kitkoan

headkase wrote on Jul 16, 2012, 23:53:
Kitkoan wrote on Jul 16, 2012, 23:36:
Have you tried using PlayOnLinx? Its pretty much an installer for Windows games with a preset Wine setup. So it will install your Windows game with the best working version of Wine for that program and the extras it needs.

Just installed it now, thanks. I remember trying it ages ago but at that time I already had a Crossover license so I didn't stick with it. This new version I just installed, after a few years, looks good - I'll have to kick the tires and see how good..

Works good for me. I remember when it first came out... wasn't good but glad to see it's improved.




automatically refuses to place horse heads in anyone's bed

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 23:53

headkase

Kitkoan wrote on Jul 16, 2012, 23:36: Have you tried using PlayOnLinx? Its pretty much an installer for Windows games with a preset Wine setup. So it will install your Windows game with the best working version of Wine for that program and the extras it needs. Just installed it now, thanks. I remember trying it ages ago but at that time I already had a Crossover license so I didn't stick with it. This new version I just installed, after a few years, looks good - I'll have to kick the tires and see how good..

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 23:36

Kitkoan

Have you tried using PlayOnLinx? Its pretty much an installer for Windows games with a preset Wine setup. So it will install your Windows game with the best working version of Wine for that program and the extras it needs.




automatically refuses to place horse heads in anyone's bed

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 23:27

headkase

Good news for me. I'm currently running Ubuntu 12.04 as my only operating system. I also have a huge library of Steam games that I'm currently not using as per the previous sentence. Running proprietary AMD drivers on my install and that will absolutely be a prerequisite for running any commercial game. L4D2 isn't my most favorite game but I do own it so it would be nice if I automatically received the Linux version. In future, with other Valve/Source titles it would be awesome if they were SteamPlay and I could purchase once and play on all supported platforms. And WINE? Yeah, it works a lot but then again it doesn't work a lot too. And sometimes you'll upgrade it and something that worked stops working too. So, native Linux versions would be much more desirable than leaning on WINE.

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 21:49

Kitkoan

xXBatmanXx wrote on Jul 16, 2012, 21:20:
Don't games have a HELL of a time working under Linux? Would they then make sure all their games worked? Seems pretty difficult to muster doesn't it? Or what? Have L4D2 work and that is it? pfft. Not worth the effort....

]

Not really, its just a different OS more then anything.

And they don't even make sure all their games work on Windows. Some of their older games don't work on modern machines running Windows 7. This is one of the reasons they are aiming for Ubuntu 12.04. This is their base point, just like how all their games used the most commonly used Windows at the time of their release. This doesn't mean it won't work on other versions of the same family of OS, but that it wasn't tested for those other versions.




automatically refuses to place horse heads in anyone's bed

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 21:27

Dev

Pretty sure its more a proof of concept than anything else. If they can port this source game, than the others should be portable too. Remember when they introduced games being able to have both mac and PC versions on steam? Remember how a lot of games followed after the first few concept ones by valve that had mac versions as well? I think it will be like that, but probably not quite as many ports since linux is a pretty small games market %, plus they can usually use wine. As a side note, I seem to recall some posts in the last steam linux thread saying that one website with the info (was it phronix?) was making things up about steam working on a linux version. Turns out it wasn't being made up. Edit: So yeah, when I RTFA, getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL porting additional Valve titles

Re: Steam Linux Plans

Jul 16, 2012, 21:20

xXBatmanXx

Don't games have a HELL of a time working under Linux? Would they then make sure all their games worked? Seems pretty difficult to muster doesn't it? Or what? Have L4D2 work and that is it? pfft. Not worth the effort....




In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. / Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder. Playing: RL

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