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:2, Interesting)
Re:Kerosene (Jet fuel) warning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
At this time, there's only ~100 titles available for Linux
And a couple of weeks ago there were only 40. If they keep going at this rate things are looking promising!
Will this run from a Ubuntu on a USB stick (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok I wasn't sure I decided if how I felt about steam on Linux...more I suspect that the too negative header to this discussion, when down the side I spotted "Try Linux - Grab Ubuntu Desktop; Ubuntu is our favorite version of Linux. Interested in giving it a whirl? You can install and run Ubuntu from a Live CD or USB stick, or install it to run alongside Windows."
Is that "holy shit I can carry all my steam games around on my USB stick" take it around to my friends...or even work, play a few rounds of team fortress, without any changes to the machine...because if that is true, that is bigger news to me than Steam on Linux, this is Quake Arena/Doom again, only with a raft of cheap choices. I can finally play people I know. [and share an experience with], and socialise with, rather than anonymous strangers on-line [I would rather play off-line than that].
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sick of the (general) Linux community's extremely condescending attitude towards anyone who thinks Linux has flaws and dares to raise them as something that should be addressed, or that perhaps some things work better in Windows and that using Windows because it works better for particular use cases is perfectly reasonable. But no, everyone has to get emotional for some reason.
Sounds like the current crop of DEs in Linux. If you are told you have "choice" and can use something else, you apparently can choose DEs like MATE (which are OK but based on dead code), XFCE (which are a bit too simple and lacking in functionality) or Cinnamon (which is OK but still too new). Everything sucks in their own way, and moving to Linux can often just result in transferring the suck from one form to another.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I think some old games were already ported and as they are vetted as working with Linux Steam they are being announced.
Linux Steam is the best chance Linux gaming is ever going to have, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a huge batch of games.
Vale is not the only game developer. They may be the first major one embracing Linux (read: ensuring their future against MS's craziness), but they are not the only one, nor are they necessarily our "best chance" consumers and game developers have -- The "best chance" is available to everyone already, and cross platform gaming is a force that can not easily be held back any longer. The writing is on the wall for Windows-only PC gaming now, as it was for console exclusive games in the past, and Arcade cabinet exclusive games before that.
As a developer you'd be a damned fool (or need a very expensive reason) to not select or build an engine that's got the (o) Cross Platform bullet point. It costs next to nothing to gain Mac and Linux in addition to Windows if you simply start with a cross platform tool chain. Porting old games can be a pain, but for any new games it's a no-brainer: "Use #1 that's windows only, or pick #2 that's x-platform and will bring in more revenue". Since this has become a selling point engines will compete over: It won't be long before every new major game engine is cross platform -- Valve is just a bit ahead of the curve here (unless you consider Ogre3D and other free x-plat engines).
It's not only that old game engines (and thus the games they support) are being ported to cross platform toolchains, but also new engines are adopting this development model (hell, even application dev is going this way). Microsoft knows this is coming, that's why they want to do some re-engineering of their development model: Their App Store programs are in C# which is a VM language -- I bet they make some changes to the language / API so that new code for their platform is artificially harder to make compatible with Mono, while older C# programs (being byte-code already) can be easily supported going forward; Might even have something to do with XNA getting the can. You see, right now I can easily use OpenGL with C/C++ to make games that run on Mac/Win/Linux ("git pull && make" and I'm done "porting" changes between platforms) -- Microsoft hates that.
If you're doing engine development (like I am), you write an abstraction layer for the native platform interfaces anyway, especially if the game will be on PC + consoles (or even just more than one console). That initial cost to support all the major PC platforms (creating an SDL/freeglut replacement) took me one week of evenings, and now every game I make will be cross platform with no additionally dev cost -- Had I not needed a better multi-threaded event system than these provided it would have taken only a few hours to support all the major PC platforms. Existing engines like Cube(2) and Ogre3D make cross platform development dead simple (if you're using polygonal graphics). Everything is done in shaders nowdays anyway, so even the DirectX vs OpenGL "battle" is a moot point -- whatever shader platform is cross platform -- Why throw away free additional money for the same efforts? With the advent of engine scripting and meta programming languages that compile down into Java / C# / C++, C / ObjC, etc, the cross platform future of games is even stronger. For lighter weight mobile games I can already compile a single source tree into platform specific code for Android, iOS, Win, Mac, Linux, Xbox, PS3, Wii, and DS.
Anyone who doubts the future of gaming on Linux will be bright need look no further than the console market. Publishers like money, it cost more to make separate games for each platform, and