Valve porting Steam to Linux

Jamoe · July 17, 2012, 01:29:27 PM

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/

I say we need to stop this menace, I rely on the fact I'm lazy and can't be bothered to boot into windows. There goes my productivity

TE_owner · July 17, 2012, 05:27:26 PM

Judging by the way Microsoft are developing Win 8 this is a very good thing.

Liberator · July 18, 2012, 12:00:20 AM

Excellent news, I doubt we'll see many of the older 3rd party main publisher games being converted, but it should give a welcome boost to the indie developers that do produce for all three OS's.

Steam on Linux should also mean some of the upcoming games will get looked at as well. My Linux servers are on my older and smaller systems, might be time to fire up a dual boot on my main system, to experiment when they release it.

Tutonic · July 18, 2012, 06:52:09 PM

OpenGL is the business when it's used properly (old iD games used to run ridiculously well on it). Anything that encourages game devs to move away from DirectX is a good thing in my book.

Jamoe · December 20, 2012, 10:06:35 AM

http://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1747660173332716773

QuoteThe Steam for Linux beta program is now open to the public!...

Might give this a whirl over the break

smilodon · December 20, 2012, 09:10:58 PM

I'm down to a single desktop machine after my Linux box and laptop both died of old age. On the Windows machine I need to run Adobe Products and World of Warcraft so I'll probably not get to see the benefit of a Linux gaming experience, which is ironic as I've run Linux as my main OS for about a decade. Dual boot is an option and I wonder if I can have games from one Steam account on two machines (or partitions)?

Blunt · December 20, 2012, 11:16:29 PM

Quote from: smilodon;363647I'm down to a single desktop machine after my Linux box and laptop both died of old age. On the Windows machine I need to run Adobe Products and World of Warcraft so I'll probably not get to see the benefit of a Linux gaming experience, which is ironic as I've run Linux as my main OS for about a decade. Dual boot is an option and I wonder if I can have games from one Steam account on two machines (or partitions)?

I would imagine that's possible.
What is the rule for steam? single machine or single IP?
Anyone?

Just re-read the post.
Yes you can have your games on more than 1 machine, that is one of the beauties of Steam

I was initially reading it as "can I have 2 machines on my network running the same steam account at the same time?"

Tutonic · December 21, 2012, 01:05:34 PM

Your games are tied to your account, not your machine - but I believe you can only log into your account on one machine at a time.

smilodon · December 21, 2012, 01:32:53 PM

I'm just a bit loathed to mess with this PC as it's also my work machine for photography. If i kill it with a wonky dual boot set up I'll be in trouble. i might wait for the rumored Linux based Steam console

BrotherTobious · January 02, 2013, 04:01:39 PM

Well as a complete novice with Linux and with help from Smilo I have a vm of LINUXmint and steam running it. Also got Minecraft running. The install of steam was very very easy!!!

The Games that I own that can be played are Defcon, Frozen Synape, Psychonauts, TF2. That is if this was a non vm:)

But I am enjoying Linux so far. Trying to use it for most of my day to day so I can get use it. But keeping my Win7 box going

Tutonic · January 02, 2013, 04:32:25 PM

Once you get your head around the 'everything is a folder' concept, Linux becomes less of a mystery.

The Ubuntu (which I believe Mint is based on) forums are always worth a look if you get stuck.

T-Bag · January 02, 2013, 05:19:13 PM

I've got hundreds of games on Steam, considering that a list of less than 40 total are listed as on Steam for linux they've got a long way to go. Even if all the games on the list were ones I owned (which they're not) I'd still lose 90% of my games in the switch.

Having said that, if they do manage to convert everything (or at least everything important to me) and there's no downside to switching I can't see the harm in having a dedicated gaming PC running linux, performance certainly doesn't appear to be an issue. I'm not the biggest fan of Linux in general since for everything that it makes ridiculously easy (programming languages/latex etc) something else seems to be needlessly complicated (mounting network drives on boot) and I'm obviously more used to Windows. The one way to change that though is to get loads of general people using it, and games are a big part of that. A slick streamlined steam linux distro would be a great idea and I'd certainly consider a "console" if the price were right and it could be used for all my media needs.

BrotherTobious · January 02, 2013, 05:30:01 PM

Agreed it is very far off where it needs to be but they have started. But with the Traviasity that is Win8 and lots of time off I thought I would try something productive.

DrunkenZombiee · January 03, 2013, 01:29:13 PM

I have to say I do like fiddling with LINUX but to do things like software RAID it can be very complicated.

As tut says, its based on folders rather than a registry which actually is a simplification and good in my view. They still need to work on getting UI's for a lot of tools to simplfy things. For dabbling with on a VM its pretty easy but for a gaming rig with advanced features its a PITA to configure. Development (well non .net anyway) is a breeze though as they have some really nice all in one packages these days.

DZ