Valve Officially Launches Steam For Linux 313
sl4shd0rk writes "Valve has finally released Steam for Linux. Although some of the 57 games listed on the Linux Steam site are previously released from the Humble Bundles, there are others which should provide adequate entertainment for anyone bored with the HB games. Among the games listed, many at deep discounts of 50%-75% off, are HalfLife, CounterStrke Source and Serious Sam 3. Hopefully Valve will keep the ports coming as rumor has it that Left 4 Dead had been ported at least for developers."
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but remember that the OSX version was a contracted 3rd party port while the Linux version is a much better done in-house port that they are basing their future steambox hardware strategy on. Not exactly apples to apples.
No 64-bit? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No 64-bit? (Score:4, Informative)
The Valentines Bundle 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Just for information really with Serious Sam 3: BFE is available cheaper :) here
http://www.indieroyale.com/ [indieroyale.com]
Downloading serious sam now (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No 64-bit? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Skyrim (all DLC plus mods) works in wine currently. PlayOnLinux will even do all the work in setting up the wine environment for it to run in.
Re:Linux != Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I can see they've only released for Ubuntu.
Not true. Valve only _supports_ ubuntu. Other distros are welcome to add steam to their package managers. For instance, Gentoo has steam in their repo. It's a thin wrapper package. When you install it, it makes sure all dependencies are met and then downloads steam from valve's server and installs it. All this is automagic as far as the user is concerned.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will this run from a Ubuntu on a USB stick (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it can run on a USB stick. Step by step:
1) Install Ubuntu or some other distro on the stick (use http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ if you're on Windows). Remember to allow it to change the data on the stick so you can install games on it later! If you don't know what you're doing you might want the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, otherwise you'll have to install the lib32 stuff.
2) Boot into your stick
3) Install graphic drivers, etc (you'll probably want the closed-source packages). If using Ubuntu it'll automatically ask you if you want the proprietary stuff
4) Install Steam
5) Login, install games
6) Have fun with your new portable GNU/Linux OS
7) Buy a USB stick with more memory
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, what? I've never heard that the OS X version of Steam was a 3rd party port. In fact, I'm almost certain it wasn't since I was in the Mac Beta and on the email list with the developers (who all have valvesoftware.com email addresses)
Citation, please?
Wine and bugs (Score:5, Informative)
At one point, I was responsible for a good sized Windows application. Something along the lines of Photoshop. Tested it under Wine, and Wine choked in a few obvious ways. As we thought it'd be nice if it worked under linux, if indirectly, I reported the issues to them. They blithely informed me that if we wanted the bugs fixed, we'd have to pay. Needless to say, we shelved the whole idea.
Is that still the service model?
Re:What is Steam and why do we care? (Score:2, Informative)
Is it like iTunes for FPS games?
Pretty much, yes. Specifically games that people who are hard core into FPS consider to be "vintage" or "classic" - even though said games are many years younger than Wolfenstein, Doom, or even Quake. People who are big fans of it see it as a great gift to be able to buy Half-Life for $8 even though they bought it for $40 the first time, then bought the first special edition of it the year after for another $40, and the uber-mega-titanium-coated-diamond-edition of it the third year for another $60.
For the most part, it is a way for a company to extract a little more money from a large number of gamers who like to keep buying the same thing repeatedly.
And yes, I know I will be lucky to not be moderated down for this. Bombs away.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Alien can go from any of 'em to any of 'em....
Quoth the man page:
alien [--to-deb] [--to-rpm] [--to-tgz] [--to-slp] [options] file [...]
Re:Wine and bugs (Score:5, Informative)
"They" who?
The WINE project?
No. That's never been the model, actually, since there's no business model. It's an open source project. That said, like any free software project, it's easier to motivate people to fix the bugs that you care about if you show up with patches or donations -- but neither is necessary.
Now if you're referring to Codeweavers, then yes, actually, that is part of their business model.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:3, Informative)
True story: I once had to deal with Dioblo II in WINE repeatedly corrupting my MBR. No, really. I could hardly believe it myself until I saw other reports of the exact same thing on the WINE bug tracker.
Bullshit.
ORLY: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4672 [winehq.org]
Re:What is Steam and why do we care? (Score:2, Informative)
A couple of parts of that aren't quite right.
Steam doesn't actually require an "always on" net connection. The offline mode "just works" these days (I know this having been dependant on it for a couple of weeks when I moved house last year). Offline mode got a bad rep in Steam's early years, because back then it would usually either just plain "not work", or work for a day or two and then demand to see a connection. It's not like that any more.
There are a small number of games sold over Steam that contain "always on" third party DRM, because the game's publisher insisted on having DRM above and beyond that built into Steam. Any such requirement is identified on the game's info page alongside the system requirements. There aren't too many of these; Ubisoft, which was the main publisher behind this, has actually caved in and removed it from a good number of games.
A few of the "vintage" games sold through Steam, such as the old id titles are actually DRM free - you can copy the games out of your Steam folder and launch them without Steam running if you want.
Also, worth clarifying your point on Steam bans. There are two types of ban here. Simple "bad behaviour" such as being a complete cock to other players, trolling the forums, cheating in online multiplayer etc will not lose you access to your games. It may lose you the ability to access the online modes of certain games and in others you may be restricted to playing alongside people who have engaged in similar behaviours. I cannot see any problem with this; it's actually good for legitimate players to be protected from the arseholes.
The second and more draconian level of ban does lose you access to your games, but this is reserved for activities such as credit card fraud or scamming/phishing other Steam users. There are occasional false positives here (eg. if somebody has an unexpected problem with their credit card at the bank's end) and Valve has a reputation for being slow to act on these, so I'm not trying to absolve Valve from blame completely. But you will not lose access to your games (barring some multiplayer modes) for simple "lame behaviour".
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Developers use "game engines [wikipedia.org]" and add their own features, maps, rules and art to make their games quite often. A very popular one is "Source," which is made by Valve - who is putting together this Linux game sales platform. By porting their own games to Linux they are proving the Source engine's flexibility and capability and beating down an easy path for their Source Engine licensees to capture a new market early in its upswing. Quite often a game developer would not have that much extra work to do to put their game in Linux because 99% of the development isn't in the programming but in the collateral: the art, story, characters, rules, balance tuning and such that transform the game engine into the specific game. These non-programmatic portions of the game that constitute 99% of the game's development effort are by design of the game engine platform independent. Budding game developers really need that because the option to put their game on a console, iPhone or Android tablet has to stay open so that if they find the winning "fun" formula they can rake in the big bucks by selling it in every market without laying out the funds to build it again from scratch for each new platform. This is also developing good data for what hardware a Steambox console needs to have to be successful, as client hardware metrics are measured and reported in actual game play along with things like time of play, duration of engagement with the game and so on.
There are many engines that started on desktop Linux for ease and speed of development and migrated elsewhere for mass-marketability. The Doom engine is a classic example. Before there was Doom iD as a budding company had a Linux only game called "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" that was a popular Linux network game to prove the engine. This is why while you're playing Doom3 if you type SPISPOPD you can pass through walls. It's also the origin of the name of the band "Smashing Pumpkins". In SPISPOPD most of the monsters were pumpkins.
The trail of breadcrumbs: Game engine developers include game editors in their games to encourage fan spinoffs and identify promising young developers of the art for recruiting and also improve the value of the game engine with fan spinoff maps, arts, and other such things as well as to prove their game engine as a platform easily built upon - all the while adding value for the people who bought the game without spending extra money on development. Darwinian development rocks!