Linux News: Valve kicks off Steam on Linux beta test at UDS

[RickJ]

At a talk given this morning at the Ubuntu Development Summit (UDS) which is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Drew Bliss from Valve Software has announced the beginning of Valve's beta test of its Steam client for Linux. As Canonical employees have reported on Google+, Valve has also given developers attending the summit access to the beta program. Other Linux users may fill out a hardware survey on the company's site to be considered for the program as well; a Steam account is required to fill out the survey.

To coincide with the beta, Valve has also opened a Steam community group for its Linux client. It is currently not known what titles will be supported by the beta but several games include hints to Linux support in their Content Description Record (CDR) which is included with software that is distributed via Steam. The CDRs for Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the Steam client itself explicitly mention a "Steam Linux UDS Beta", so it is likely that these two games will be included in the beta program.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Valve-kicks-off-Steam-on-Linux-beta-test-at-UDS-1738746.html

[RickJ]

Bump thread with some more news about Steam and Linux ...

Groklaw.net

Maybe it's because they expect to lose a lot of money from the build in Windows Store, but Valve has been moving a lot to help Linux gaming. Even if you don't game, you're getting the benefits from this, since they're putting pressure on the GPU manufacturers to get their drivers up to speed, and many Linux desktop environments are composited and use 3D acceleration (not sure about the lightweight ones, but KDE/GNOME/Unity are quite 3d heavy)

If Valve manages to make the big studios start releasing their games for Linux (and if they already release them for MacOSX, they should not have to do that much more work to get them working on Linux), Microsoft will start loosing revenue in a rapid fashion.

Desura will be the greatest looser here, because right now they are the only game in town for Linux gaming, but even they will benefit from more people using Linux to game, and from improved drivers.

By the way, the Unity 3d engine (not to be confused with the Unity desktop environment) already works under Linux, making porting to Linux much easier for those using it.

If Valve can make Linux the go to platform for high performance gaming (because the Linux kernel is superior when it comes to memory management, etc etc), then the Linux desktop will get a lot of new blood that will also use it for everyday tasks, thus reducing the monopoly hold on the younger generations. Linux has already won in embeded and server spaces. Once gaming falls our way (and I know more than one game that runs smoother on WinE than it does on Windows), <bright eyed wild hope>it will only be a matter of time until home desktop also goes that way. From there, Enterprise will eventually follow. After all, Enterprise already has all the tools it needs.</bright eyed wild hope>

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/10/valve-linux-more-viable-than-windows-8.html

[Revae]

If I remember correctly they also said they noticed their games ran better when ported to Linux.  Apparently OpenGL is faster than D3D by far.  A similar speed increase occurred when they used OpenGL on Windows as well.

Next time I format this machine it's getting dual booted with Linux.

[selmiak]

So do all these games and steam have open source code then?

[MurrayL]

So do all these games and steam have open source code then?

Not in the slightest. I'd be very surprised if Valve open-sourced any of their software.

[selmiak]

yeah, I would be very surpised too, but wasn't there something about everything has to be open source or GPL or so under linux?

[Revae]

yeah, I would be very surpised too, but wasn't there something about everything has to be open source or GPL or so under linux?

Just the operating system itself as far as I know.  There are a lot of games that aren't open source on Linux as is.

[RickJ]

... but wasn't there something about everything has to be open source or GPL or so under linux?

You are misinformed, below are a couple of links from Google.   

http://lin-app.com/
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxCommercialApplications.html
http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/05/10-commercial-apps-for-linux-that-i.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proprietary_software_for_Linux   

[selmiak]

you never stop learning new things