Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta

New submitter jotaass writes "In news that is guaranteed to make the Linux gaming community (in particular, but not exclusively) excited, Valve has just announced that the Steam for Linux client Beta is now open to the public. A .deb package is available here. Interesting as well, they are using an empty GitHub repository solely as an issue tracker, open for anyone to submit, edit and track bugs, with no actual code in the repo."

Re:Segmentation fault, core dumped

[Wizy]

It is still beta. This is one of the reasons its still beta.

I've been in the beta for about a month now, and it works great for me.

Re:Portal 2

[dririan]

Even some games that use un-managed code (such as games that use the Source, Unreal Engine, or id Tech engines) don't need much work to get Linux support. The current Humble Bundle contains the first Unreal Engine 3 game (Dungeon Defenders) ported to Linux, and apparently it was done by one person! It all depends on the engine's portability. If, as you say, they use a custom engine in C# with DirectX 12, it's going to take a bit of effort to get ported. Fortunately, Steam on OS X has increased the number of games on OS X quite a bit, and because both OS X and Linux are Unix-ish (hell, OS X is UNIX on x86) and only support OpenGL, it's not super hard to port from OS X to Linux. Granted, there still is work to be done, but not as much as is needed to port from Windows to OS X or Linux without proper engine support.

Surprisingly works on Linux Mint 10 64-bit

[RedHackTea]

Just had to do this:

$ sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i steam_latest.deb
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ steam

System I tried it on:

$ uname -a
Linux XXX 2.6.35-32-generic #67-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 5 19:39:49 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:____LinuxMint
Description: _____Linux Mint 10 Julia
Release:________10
Codename:______julia

Two minor warnings

[Psicopatico]

1) The client is currently shipped in .deb format.
If you use an .rpm based distribution, the Alien [joeyh.name] script will do the conversion so you can install it (hint: alien.pl -r steam_latest.deb --scripts ).
2) The client requires GlibC 2.12 or later. So if by any chance your distribution was released prior to may 2010, you're out of luck (example: my OpenSuse 11.4, released on march 2010 :( ).

Re:64 bit?

[deek]

I'm running Steam on a 64-bit Debian system. I had to enable multi-architecture for i386, and manually install the 32 bit version of the glx libraries for the driver I'm using. Other 32 bit drivers needed were automatically installed with a simple "dpkg -i steam.deb" / "apt-get -f install" combo. Also, specifically for debian, I had to modify the steam package and rename a few dependencies by hand.

All good and running TF2 beta beautifully. Also, Cogs was another game that worked. Many other games on the "Linux" list aren't installable just yet. I believe that Valve have to properly link them in their system first.

Re:Good for Linux.

[HerculesMO]

Windows 8 is based off the same basic architecture as Windows 7, with performance enhancements. Windows 7 drivers work in Windows 8.

The fact you're having crashing means you either have crappy hardware (or bad drivers), or you have something else going on. I game better in Windows 8 than I ever did in 7.

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

When somebody actually bothered to measure it, it turned out that Windows 8 was actually slower. AND it had compatibility problems. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-performance,3331-13.html [tomshardware.com]

Re:Good for Linux.

[Anubis IV]

No. You danced around the actual issue while missing it completely, and ended up blaming the wrong party as a result.

First off, Aspyr has no one by the balls. If anything, they're the one getting squeezed. None of these companies port to Mac through Aspyr. Rather, Aspyr (as well as Feral Interactive et al.) is licensing the rights for Mac versions of games from the original publisher. Historically, this was a gamble for the Mac publishers like Aspyr, since the Mac market was a lot smaller, purchasing those rights cost a lot of money, and even with porting AAA best-selling titles on Windows it wasn't a sure thing. Nowadays, however, the risk has decreased to the point that EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard-Activision, and the other big publishers are increasingly choosing to capitalize on the Mac market directly by offering their own ports, rather than only profiting indirectly via licensing fees. I'd say that only a fraction of Mac ports are actually done by third-party licensees these days, though admittedly they tend to be big-name AAA titles that attract a lot of attention.

But to get to the heart of things, the real reason a lot of Mac versions of games are missing from Steam is because all Steamplay (a.k.a. cross-platform) titles are packaged together as a single sale. That's not a problem when both versions have the same publisher (e.g. an in-house port), but it is a complete deal-breaker when the Mac version is created by a third-party Mac publisher, since only the original publisher gets paid. Without setting up a revenue sharing contract with the original publisher (which would be incredibly messy for reasons I'd be happy to elaborate if you can't think of them on your own), or else selling the rights to the Mac version back, they'd have no way to earn money from purchases on Steam. Thus, your grousing is entirely misplaced, since this is a problem with the way Steam is structured.

That's also why Aspyr, contrary to what you suggested, has no problems selling their games on other stores. For instance, Borderlands 2 was just ported to Mac by Aspyr about a month ago, and it's on the Mac App Store [apple.com] and GameFly [gamefly.com] (née Direct2Drive) in addition to their own store [gameagent.com]. All of those allow Aspyr to be paid specifically for the Mac version of the game, which is something that's not possible with Steam.

Now, none of this is to say that Steam should change in some way. Despite the fact that I think the blame for this issue lies with Steam's store model, I actually think it's better that all Steamplay titles are package deals, rather than allowing for stand-alone Mac purchases, that way you don't end up with a lot of Windows gamers accidentally purchasing Mac versions or other confusion of that sort. Just because I think they made the right decision does not mean they are blameless, however.

YAAAAY!!

[GameboyRMH]

Now I can get a big heaping helping of DRM on my Linux box too! Woohoo, just what I always wanted!