Valve finally confirms Steam for Linux

Huw the Poo · July 17, 2012, 12:39:53 AM

Source

That link is a blog by Valve's own Linux team. Their mission? "To strengthen the gaming scene on Linux, both for players and developers. This includes Linux ports of Steam and Valve games, as well as partner games. We are also investigating open source initiatives that could benefit the community and game developers."

I'm no big fan of Valve's, but this can only be good news for we Linux warriors. :)

Staggerwing · July 17, 2012, 05:22:05 AM

Sounds like they are setting up the foundation for the Steambox. Linux ports of existing games- don't most consoles run on some form of Linux?

junk2drive · July 17, 2012, 08:29:54 AM

I don't know about consoles but android is linux.

ubuntu is probably the most user friendly of all the linux versions. I currently dual boot with this and Windows XP.

Unity has announced that the next version will have linux support.

If we could get wargames to work I would ditch Windows. With the current version of Wine I have Battle Academy and JT Campaign Series working. I need .Net to work for some others but not yet.

Rekim · July 17, 2012, 09:51:23 AM

Quote from: junk2drive on July 17, 2012, 08:29:54 AM
If we could get wargames to work I would ditch Windows. With the current version of Wine I have Battle Academy and JT Campaign Series working. I need .Net to work for some others but not yet.

How do these titles perform under wine compared to windoze? Much tinkering required to get them working? Do you encountered many glitches when playing?

I'm dying for a reason to start using Linux at home. Lack of support for my game collection has prevented me from adding it to the mix thus far. If I knew that I could get a few of my favorite titles running smoothly under Linux (a Matrix game or two would suffice) I wouldn't wait long to start experimenting.

Exciting to hear this news from Steam.

Huw the Poo · July 17, 2012, 12:52:36 PM

Rekim, for titles that work (or not, as the case may be) with WINE try checking out the WINE database. Each title has its own entry that lists people's results when getting them to run.

As for a reason to use Linux at home...why not dual boot? I boot into Windows when I want to play games, but all other times I'm on Linux. Gaming on Linux hasn't yet got to the point where you can do away with Windows altogether, but this initiative of Valve's will bear lots of fruit in the years to come, methinks. I might...might....start hating them a little bit less. :D

junk2drive · July 17, 2012, 03:02:58 PM

The two games I mentioned, work fine. I installed them with PlayOnLinux, a GUI frontend for Wine. When I reported the success to the WineDB, I received an email stating they don't accept reports using 3rd party software. That tells me that some number of games work, but they are not listed in the DB.

Here is a website for linux native games. A lot of them are free

http://www.lgdb.org/

The latest version of ubuntu will be stable for 5 years. It looks Mac like and works very well for me.

Rekim · July 17, 2012, 03:16:34 PM

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Wow. That is one LONG list of games on the WineHQ website. I managed to find one Matrix title on it. It was rated 'garbage' :o

Will do some more searching to see if I can find a compelling reason or two to try this out. Will be interesting to see if the science experiment with Steam gains any traction.

Huw the Poo · July 17, 2012, 04:03:01 PM

Quote from: Rekim on July 17, 2012, 03:16:34 PM
Wow. That is one LONG list of games on the WineHQ website. I managed to find one Matrix title on it. It was rated 'garbage' :o

Heh. Just in case you don't realise, that means the latest report is that it runs like garbage via WINE. It's not a comment on the game's quality. :)

junk2drive · July 17, 2012, 07:57:04 PM

Wine is evolving all the time. Tomorrow a game might work that was "garbage" yesterday.

As I said, I have JTCS from Matrix running fine but it is rated garbage with an old report and an old build of wine.

I have XP Home 32 bit. That limits me to 3.2g of ram even though I have 4g. linux does not have that limit.

ubuntu is FREE. It is a full feature operating system. It does just about everything that windows does and faster. And FREE.

I'm hoping that I can get .Net 4 working in wine and then try Conflict of Heroes and Panzer Command.

junk2drive · August 02, 2012, 09:29:11 AM

L4D2 faster on linux

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2036590

Huw the Poo · August 02, 2012, 01:00:39 PM

No surprise here. All games I have that can be played on Windows and Linux perform better on Linux.

Staggerwing · August 02, 2012, 01:02:28 PM

I'm just installing and updating Ubuntu on the little Shuttle comp that I have hooked up to the TV. Ubuntu is looking more and more like OSX with every upgrade...

junk2drive · August 02, 2012, 03:06:11 PM

You can move the launcher to the bottom and animate it to look like Macs that have that too.

Nothing wrong with looking like a Mac. As long as it doesn't look like Metro in W8.

Staggerwing · August 02, 2012, 03:13:37 PM

^No, not at all. I like Macs, I own several older ones.

Rekim · August 03, 2012, 01:34:19 AM

Quote from: junk2drive on August 02, 2012, 09:29:11 AM
L4D2 faster on linux

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2036590

discovered that most my video support related Q's are addressed via the above link