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Steam and Source Engine Coming to Linux
In the first-ever post on the Valve Linux Blog this morning, Valve announced that they’re currently working to bring Steam and the Source game engine over to the Linux operating system. In fact, they’ve actually been at it for just over a year now.
In the post, Valve detailed their goals for the Linux project, which involved the creation of a new team devoted to producing ports of their Steam client and Source game engine on Ubuntu-based Linux systems. While Ubuntu likely won’t be the only Linux platform that Steam sets up shop on, Valve has clarified that they prefer to work with a single distribution first to avoid burying themselves with multiple software iterations.
Their current focus is on completing the following:
- getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality
- optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL
- porting additional Valve titles
As detailed above, the team is working to bring Left 4 Dead 2 out on Linux when the new client arrives.
If you want to learn more about Valve’s plans for Linux support going forward, as well as their thoughts on “Steam’d Penguins”, check out the official blog post.
[via Valve]
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Heck yes!
At last, I won’t have to dual boot as much. Even though I suspect running windows is easier for them as that’s the system they’ve used their whole lives, but since ever since I’ve been using linux, I’ve been using my pc a lot more effectively. Even simple things like the user interface may seem alien to a windows user, but once you feel acquainted with it, most of the differences make sense and using it is a lot faster and easier. It’s not like MacOS, but it doesn’t need to be.
I truly hope this means that hardware vendors will start to pay more attention to linux, but that is naive. Truly naive.
The largest worry for software publishers is the lack of user-base for certain operating systems, that meaning that they don’t want to sell to the minority. As for hardware vendors, I don’t think it really matters all that much; operating systems work so similarly nowadays that hardware need not differ that much from market to market.
But, it’s moves like this from companies like Valve that are the new trend setters.
Well, not exactly.
I don’t want to overstate my expertise in the field, but I have been checking the drivers of videocards for example in the recent years, and the difference in quality between window’s and linux’s drivers is immense. Crucial things like hotplugging and switching of videocards isn’t officially supported by neither nvidia nor AMD/ATI. The only way to use two videocards like in a laptop. Granted, you can use two completely the same videocards in SLI/CFx in a desktop.
The same goes for printers, wi-fi cards, most of the manufacturer supplied drivers are at the quality of bull discharge. God forbid you want to use some exotic consumer audio card.
The best drivers for consumer hardware sans graphics are actually written by the community.
I mean, I didn’t investigate enough into the drivers of a certain network chipset and my whole project failed just because a certain RealTek network chipset loved to insert donkey genitals into it’s oral cavity, and in the end I could either give the pc away to a realtive or buy a different motherboard with a compilant network chipset. It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that I couldn’t use any other OS than linux for what I had intended then. The drivers suck, and it is rather surprising that the desktop end-user experience on linux is as good as it is now, given the problems stated above. On the server side of stuff, the story is completely different. Why ? Because most servers are run on linux, so it makes sense for the manufacturers to support it. The same goes for tablet and smartphone hardware. Since these devices are getting more complicated every 6 months or so, and a decent part of them run linux (android), some specific controllers which have similar counterparts in desktop PC’s, have excellent linux drivers.
So myah, the target market decides whether or not a device will be supported under a certain operating system, just like it is with games.
Whilst Valve is the first major developer to support linux, almost all of the Humble Indy Bundle games run either natively or are ported to linux. The bundle itself has shown that linux market share is just as big as MacOS’s.
Damn, I should just talk to real life people more often and not spam machinima’s news posts :D
How not to love this man?!
“Their current focus is on completing the following:”
” getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality”
” optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL”
” porting additional Valve titles”
MY current focus is on completing the following:
cleaning the dust in my linux laptop
wait until steam is out on linux
spend lots of money on steam when its out
hoping to pray a little and let the GOD Gabe Newell hear my prayers of thank you
Based Gaben! Now all we need is a Richard Stallman hat for TF2.