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General discussion (archive)Valve is working on steam for linux(88 posts)(88 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 26, 2012
Clearly Gabe sees Microsoft monopoly against his own growing Monopoly. I don't think the possibilities that i mentioned above will happen. Every side trying to enforce its own monopoly. But Valve **maybe** create some helps to Linux community as a side effect. But i don't have high hopes. Let's watch and see.
Posted April 26, 2012
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Pheace: Well, Gabe surely isn't alone in his dislike for Windows 8. That seems to be the general opinion at the moment. I doubt I'll make the switch unless something forces me.

But yeah, he has more reason to dislike it when a competitor (lol... well. somewhat...) gets worked into windows like that.
Gabes only worry is that people won't want to install steam while EA moves completely to origin and since windows8 has an app store.
So Valve is turning to the only game in town that doesn't have a locked down app store (app repos don't count as they don't sell stuff)
Posted April 26, 2012
I'm happy that Linux gets more Support, but I still won't use Steam. I'm here for a reason, and thats DRM free gaming (oh, and I don't need a client to run my Games, I like them pure). Though a port of the Source games does sound intriguing, I guess Valve won't ever release Steam-free versions...

This kinda puts pressure on GOG to finally start adding Linux Versions, doesn't it?
Posted April 26, 2012
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA5MjQ

More info.
here's a very quick and basic video just showing Left 4 Dead 2 from the Ubuntu 11.10 workstation I was checking out from within Valve's Bellevue offices on Tuesday.
They really seem to be going for it...
Post edited April 26, 2012 by Pheace
Posted April 26, 2012
Wonderful, Valve is porting their Source games to Linux and every other developer that doesn't use Source won't give a shit and continue working with DirectX engines for the PC.

Congratulations, penguins, you're finally getting all the new hats at the same time as the rest of the gaming world!
Posted April 26, 2012
About time... It worked good if you installed it via wine.. but only a little annoying problem with closing steam windows... "they wouldn't open again!"
Posted April 26, 2012
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jamyskis: Once again, you're a fine one to talk about trolling.
Only if not being rabidly anti-Steam is trolling.
Posted April 26, 2012
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/127475-valve-confirms-steam-and-source-for-linux-signals-low-confidence-for-windows-8
Posted April 26, 2012
you know, i've noticed that recently MAC OS and Linux have been getting more and more attention, that's great because hopefully it will give an incentive for MS to work harder on 8
Posted April 26, 2012
I emailed Gabe and asked him if Linux games on Steam will be Steamplay.

He actually replied.

He said yes.

I've tried pushing my luck a little and I've asked him when he thinks Steam on Linux will be available. Maybe I might get a second reply. I probably won't.
Posted April 26, 2012
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Miaghstir: Not too many existing games have been ported to the Mac since Steam:Mac was released either, have they? Valve's source games, sure, some indies, and a handful others through Cedega/Wine. I'd wager the Linux ports will be pretty much the same ones.
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dirtyharry50: No, the Mac does get some native releases such as Civilization V, Two Worlds II, King's Bounty, Torchlight, GTA games and others and outside the world of Steam a couple noteworthy ones I can think of include Company of Heroes, World of Warcraft and the upcoming Diablo III. Also, there is nothing wrong with getting something like The Witcher bundled up with WINE as a commercial release. Who cares how it is ported as long as it works well? Mac is ahead of Linux in getting native versions of games like the ones just mentioned. But Linux may be growing enough now to start getting more attention as well like we're seeing here with Valve jumping in.
During the early days of WINE-based porting of games to OS X, there were some truly horrible releases. X3: Terran Conflict was the prime example of this; the fact that the game was naturally horribly buggy to begin with didn't help matters. C&C3 was stable (at least), but poorly optimized. The only exception was HoMMV, which was actually tuned to perform better on lower-end hardware.

With WINE having matured a lot in the past few years now, that's essentially a non-issue, as a lot of games work great on WINE/CrossOver on OS X. Frankly, I don't care how a game is ported over to Linux/OS X, as long as it performs well and has feature parity with the native Windows version. Native ports would be preferable, in theory, but unless a game is cross platform by design porting takes a huge amount of time and resources.

It'll be interesting to see the general reaction of the Linux community as a whole to have Steam (and potentially all SteamPlay titles) on Linux; the most popular DRM-based computer game digital distribution platform on the planet, on an OS whose platform was based and is centered around a philosophy that is fundamentally against DRM...it's going to be interesting to watch what will happen.
Posted April 26, 2012
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TheJoe: Nope. You only release your software under GPL if it includes code from other GPL software. It's perfectly fine for me to create an IDE that uses GCC as an external compiler and lock my IDE up under a hurtful and dangerous proprietary license.
I think you confuse GPL and LGPL, GPL is a lot stricter. Only linking a GPL library, no matter if it's statically or dynamically, forces your to release your application with the GPL license.

The only way to avoid it would be to keep the GCC compiler as a totally separate executable, but like Pidgeot mention in its post it wouldn't be practical for Visual Studio some features like the debugger or the "Edit and Continue" feature requires the IDE and its compiler to be closely tied together.
Posted April 26, 2012
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rampancy: Native ports would be preferable, in theory, but unless a game is cross platform by design porting takes a huge amount of time and resources.
Native ports of Steam games on Mac OS won't happen very often, particularly because of devs like Feral Interactive gobbling up porting rights and charging stupid amounts of money for these games.
Posted April 26, 2012
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rampancy: Native ports would be preferable, in theory, but unless a game is cross platform by design porting takes a huge amount of time and resources.
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Foxhack: Native ports of Steam games on Mac OS won't happen very often, particularly because of devs like Feral Interactive gobbling up porting rights and charging stupid amounts of money for these games.
Feral's actually done very well with their ports, for the most part, and they've been a very well respected native Mac porting house for quite some time. The original OS X PPC port of XIII that they did was superb, with the in-game comic panels at a higher-res than in the Windows release, and the XBox/PS2 only multiplayer modes included as well. They even tossed in some nice desktops too. The prices they charge (as expensive as they are) are fair, given that what they do are completely native ports to OS X, which isn't trivial even if you take PPC-x86 code conversion out of the equation. The higher price of ports is an issue that Linux ports suffered from too, IIRC.

They've also had an excellent level of support, in my experience, and they even try to go back to support some of their older releases (like their beta patch of Oni for OS X).

If you want a porting house to hate on, hate on Aspyr for their almost non-existent support (let alone legacy support) and their use of an asinine DD service with some of the worst DRM I've ever encountered.
Post edited April 26, 2012 by rampancy
Posted April 26, 2012
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rampancy: With WINE having matured a lot in the past few years now, that's essentially a non-issue, as a lot of games work great on WINE/CrossOver on OS X. Frankly, I don't care how a game is ported over to Linux/OS X, as long as it performs well and has feature parity with the native Windows version. Native ports would be preferable, in theory, but unless a game is cross platform by design porting takes a huge amount of time and resources.

It'll be interesting to see the general reaction of the Linux community as a whole to have Steam (and potentially all SteamPlay titles) on Linux; the most popular DRM-based computer game digital distribution platform on the planet, on an OS whose platform was based and is centered around a philosophy that is fundamentally against DRM...it's going to be interesting to watch what will happen.
I would prefer new games to have proper native versions over using wine as a substitute or "easy" port. Wine is better kept to being an avenue for legacy support of older titles than as an avenue for new games to get to market on Mac and Linux.

If a company makes a few decisions early on to not use platform dependent resources then its not too hard to create a cross platform solution for PC flavors. Especially if the developer is building on top of a licensed engine that has already done much of the unavoidable dirty work. With time and more emphasis on making cross platform tools that could get much better too.

As for rolling steam in to a platform that is ideologically opposed to the steam value system, I know its a struggle on my part to welcome it. But part of that is the ideology of the original core user. If Linux becomes a more main stream option for people then we have to expect more mainstream people will start to use it (I keep hearing more average joes making the switch all the time) If/when that happens I have to expect that they will want their values and interests catered to, and many of those people want/need/love Steam.

If this says much of anything its that Linux may not be the refuge for the anti-corporate/ anti-MS ubber geek crowd forever. IF that happens then I suspect such people will bail on linux and all go find some new OS to hangout in.
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General discussion (archive)Valve is working on steam for linux(88 posts)(88 posts)
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