Phoronix Confirms GNU/Linux Steam and Source Engine Clients 324
nukem996 writes "After initially reporting in 2010 that Valve was working on a native GNU/Linux client, one has finally been confirmed. Michael Larabel recently visited Valve's Bellvue, WA based office and has been able to see it himself. Included in the article are screenshots of the client running and speculation of a release."
Valve has yet to officially comment, but you'd hope they wouldn't invite someone up to their offices and send them home to spew lies.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)
In any other arena I would agree with you, but in the arena of games I think they have a shot. In my experience, gamers (even Linux gamers) tend to be forgiving of closed-source software. To some extent, they're even forgiving of light-handed DRM (and as DRM goes, Valve's is about as light-handed as it gets). If even half a dozen A+ titles make it to Linux, I suspect a lot of people will purchase them just so that they can dump their dual-boot. I would.
Yes, there will still be the cries of the "DRM is evil, keep it out of our holy land" zealots, but I think those voices will pale compared to the game nerds (like me) who want to play nice looking video games without compatibility libs or dual-booting. For my own selfish reasons, I hope I'm right.
Here (Score:4, Interesting)
Thought this might be handy for those who wonder what else they might be able to get on Linux Steam:
http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?title=Native_Games [flibitijibibo.com]
Steam console? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if their rumored steamBoxStation console is a "PC" running linux?
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as Steam for linux is what it should be... a portal to purchase games and nothing but that I am all over it packaged in an unannoying executable that I run when and only when ** I ** want it to run on my machine, then I am all over it. If it departs from that, sends any data back home without my approval, tries to add or remove software from my machine, etc. Then I'll burn it with fire. People have a right to protect their software.. but their agreement is with ME, not my hardware. If they use my hardware or software against me they are out. That is the whole reason I am on linux. I control my machine, not someone else.
Spyware (Score:4, Interesting)
The rest of the comment was about one of the two major problems I have with Steam, and I happen to know more than a little about software development, so I'm going to speak up about that one point: The ability to collect runtime information is both very helpful for debugging and very invasive to the host system. Give the owner of the system the ability to enable it only if & when it is needed. Problem solved. Insisting on having it running at all times makes it spyware, which is rather telling about the publisher's intentions.