Beta news directly from the Valve Linux blog.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/beta-late-than-never-3/

Interesting.

To be honest, I already have most of the available stuff on Ubuntu and Steam in DRM-free form already. Apart from Valve, who will likely now port all of their games to Linux, I wouldn't expect too much support from major developers or publishers in terms of triple-A games. You might see ports of the earlier iD shooters, but that's about it. If anything happens in terms of porting triple-A titles, you can guarantee that Ryan Gordon will be involved, but the work will be slow.

When it goes into public beta, I'll certainly give it a try, but I doubt it's really going to rock the boat for me personally. 99% of the stuff that will be coming out for Linux via Steam is available DRM-free, and in that regard I have little use for Steam under Ubuntu.

Obviously the situation will be a little different for those who do not use Windows in any shape or form, but the proportion of Linux users who are also PC gamers that do not have Windows installed is very small. I personally know around 40 people who use Linux regularly (plus myself), and only one uses Linux exclusively. And he takes the Stallman stance of refusing to use proprietary software or play proprietary games, so Steam is going to be a no-no for him.

The blog mentioned "Ubuntu 12.04 or newer". So is this Ubuntu/Unity only? Too bad if so, but then Linux appears a bit messy in that regard, with its various distros, desktops etc. Maybe they can support only distros that don't cling to only open software (drivers)?

Not sure about Unity only, but it is Ubuntu only for the time being (for the record, I can't stand Unity - it feels just like the unholy mess that the Windows 7 taskbar is). And 12.04 is astoundingly stable. I had more problems with 11.10 than any other Ubuntu version in the past six years, so it doesn't surprise me that Valve is opting to support an LTS version for the time being.

I don't think it's about an "only open software" attitude, rather a decision to support only certain distros one by one to avoid distro incompatibility issues.

Correctly speaking, Linux distros are different OSs based on the same core technologies, not different flavours of the same OS. What works under Ubuntu may fail under SuSE or Mandriva and probably will fail under Slackware or Gentoo.

Sorry, when you say "messy", I hear "flexible".

Windows has a whole bunch of versions, with arbitrary limits, where (I believe) some features "move up" a version between versions (for example, I think "Dynamic Disks" was in XP Home, but not Vista Home).

Meanwhile, on Linux, I shall continue my plan to Xdmx 16 displays across 16 computers (Raspberry Pi's) which is likely to require me writing my own custom "desktop" (window manager) so I can join/separate the monitors into "screens" of various monitor widths and heights as required. Which, funnily enough, I will be able to run on any Linux distro I decide to run :)

If the users "desktop of choice" is an issue to your non-specific application (which Steam is), you've done it wrong. Really wrong :P

Well, yeah, but try explaining that to the average user. I honestly don't think Linux is ready for those, and I don't believe it ever will be. The immense flexibility is both a blessing and a curse.

I really don't know quite what Valve imagine they're going to achieve here.

I disagree. They don't know which edition they have, sure, but they do at least know if they're on XP, Vista or 7. The Linux world is infinitely more complicated than that.

You yourself say the average user Linux is "e.g." Mint, not "i.e." Mint.

You'd be surprised. Nearly every single "average user" I've asked "What Windows do you have?" they um and err and don't know. The difference between XP and Vista/7 is a obvious to them. Vista to 7? Not so much. Because I'm not an average user, I don't know what distro would be best for them. Mint is "to my knowledge", hence for example and not in other words :)

If I recall correctly, Gabe has been making rounds and doing closed door meetings with publishers to port their stuff on Linux and thereby supplementing the Linux portfolio of Steam. How many Linux games will we get? Good question.

There's very few distros that make it that hard to install non-free stuff if you want to. It's a bit bizarre to support Ubuntu without supporting Debian since it's upstream, they'd get a lot more work for free by supporting upstream, but whatever, I wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole unless they were supporting 90% or more of my games. I see no reason to maintain extra machines and rebooting just to play a game in Linux when the Windows version works fine too, and I'm already in Windows for that other game, is batshit insane.

I think they probably looked at the install base and failed to notice all the people leaving Ubuntu for Mint and other distros.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about this, I'm guessing the games I have are less likely to be ported than new games. And I'm in a cycle where I'm not interested in buying any new games on Steam.

Indeed. The Ubuntu Project/Canonical really shot themselves in the foot with Unity, among other things, and the whole thing seems to have lost the plot over the past couple of years.

I've been very tempted to give Mageia and Mint a try, but sheer laziness and the fact that I have stuff in the Ubuntu Software Centre have been holding me back.

I haven't tried Mageia, but next time I install Linux it's going to probably be Linux Mint Debian Edition. Just completely circumvent Ubuntu.

Even before Unity the distro was having issues with fixing bugs and keeping them fixed. I remember I couldn't use my bluetooth keyboard because you can't log in using a Bluetooth keyboard. And there wasn't any particular reason given for that.

Good point. But if I've understood it correctly, Ubuntu is much more lax about non-open software drivers(?) and such than many other distros, which might make it more lucrative from support point of view? And also maybe they feel Ubuntu still is the "Windows Home Edition" of all Linux distros.

Too bad though that Unity.. is Unity. I presume one can learn to live with it, just like with Win8.

I also don't know what Valve is trying to achieve with this Linux endeavour, but at least they are trying... something. Maybe nothing comes out of it, so what, one more to the trash pile. At least they are showing pioneering pro-activism (or whatever it is called).