Valve's Steam & Games Coming To Linux

[Arch_Angel]

An anonymous reader writes
"Valve's Steam and Source Engine-based games are coming to Linux. Michael from well known site Phoronix.com has been invited to Valve's office and was able to spend a day with the developers and Gabe Newell himself. He is confirming the rumors about Linux ports from Valve, and has been able to play the games and work the developers himself. Attached in the article are pictures from Valve's offices with games running on Linux."

Source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/0...oming-to-linux

More reading: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...pfnudeln&num=1

Good to see more games heading to Linux.

[Gillion]

Yyyeeessssssssssss !!!

[carey]

Are you kidding me? There has to be pessimism to keep a balance (As said from a character from one of my favourite Korean Drama: "As much as I want to agree with the King, he hired me to oppose, and no matter how right he may be I must say no.")

This is not good news. DRM is coming to Linux big time. I see GNU and FSF dropping Linux soon. Too much binary blobs that do things we have no control over. I don't like the idea of not being able to copy something I bought to share with someone else.

Besides, open source and indie games programming is at a level now where any big house would want to put a leash on it. This is just as the indie gamers are finally finding their niche. Where they got finally get a little dough in the pocket. Now the big names are set to invade. There is nowhere left to go. Zero AD is almost ready.

I don't know about you. I left Windows for 1 main reason: I can't afford it. Why don't the Windows users stick with their affordable Windows and leave the budget items to the borked guy? Are you telling me that I will soon have to pay some subscription soon to enjoy quality gaming? Something akin to Fluendo?

[crisis]

I left Windows for 1 main reason: I can't afford it.

like seriously? daaang..... kudos to ppl like you. I'm sorry but piracy in my blood...

[Gillion]

like seriously? daaang..... kudos to ppl like you. I'm sorry but piracy in my blood...

I left windows world in 1996 because of the same thing.

I could not afford it... (fresh out of high school) nor could I afford the programming tools to experiment with robotics and parallel port interfacing.

Back then piracy was not as easy as it is now since copying 20 - 30 floppy disks or even copying a CD (which was brand new tech ) was hard and expensive.

A duplicate set of windows 3.0 or visual c++ or visual basic was a huge monetary investment fin floppies or someone with just enough money to buy a second had motherboard and cpu let alot a 3rd hand CRT monitor

I don't even remember if people could burn CD's back then... and even if they could a 1X cd burner was ridiculously expensive.

The fastest internet connection I got (UWI was my ISP) was 9600 - 14000 kbps and that was through a proxy server.

Linux provided all I needed... ugly interface or non at all .... but it had all the compilers and libs I needed.

(mail order floppy disk sets were the bomb !)

Only recently after I bought a new laptop did I keep windows on it... and then MS began "giving away" their development software

But Linux saved a lot of us.

Piracy ?

Wait till you write your first marketable software and have people steal it... and tell me how it feels.

[Skillachi]

I get what you are saying Carey but theres also the other side of the equation.

If major developers like Valve come over to linux and show that there is money to be made, then there will be more devs moving over to linux.

More devs moving to linux means that more linux experts will need to be hired > More Linux experts being hired means that there is a good chance that they will gain more knowledge from their working with the devs > They can pass this knowledge on to the community > which in the end means better free gnu software for us the end user.

Also if more major devs follow valve then theres a higher chance that more people pay attention to linux which is also good for our wavering community.

I for one welcome valve and Steam. Tired of having to switch to windows just to play a decent game.

[Gillion]

Back in the day we use to play Doom on some old IBM PS1 units at Wolmers... alot of gymnastics had to be done to get those machines running properly, including people bringing RAM from home to plug in... but Linux wasn't even off the ground yet... and around 97 Doom came to Linux and it still looked as it looked on the PS1 (3DFX voodoo cards was the card to have back then) ... we thought that Linux would get major games as a result... but that dream went to hell very quickly when it became clear that Open GL was not going to fight off Direct X

This new effort is a welcomed one to an old fossil like me.

[Skillachi]

like seriously? daaang..... kudos to ppl like you. I'm sorry but piracy in my blood...

I also switched for the same reason, owning windows software is too damn expensive.

I've been a power user since about 98, and for the experimental stage of my life (learning to code, learning to make beats, learning to photoshop, learning to make videos etc), it would've been hella expensive to purchase all the software I needed for that so I did the next best thing and pirated like you... However after a while I grew tired of having to find ways to crack this, get a security key for this, go around this security feature, watch for certain updates because then you'll have to start over etc etc.

Its too time consuming. I love the fact that literally everything I need to use is free in tux.

While my friends trial version of office, norton, nero, etc runs out and they have to crack it or get a key and do whatever (which puts their computer at great risk I should add).

I know that LibreOffice will always work. I dont need an antivirus (mostly due to my knowledge), and if I do there are free ones. I have free burning software. I have free video and picture editing software, everything is free.

edit: Never know Gillion was a Wolmer's man... when I reached Wolmers it was Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike which were the games of choice. And we used to take parts from home to install in the computers at school too lol. There were like 10 computers who's specs far surpassed the rest of the lab.

[crisis]

Wait till you write your first marketable software and have people steal it... and tell me how it feels.

I'm into apps development and it wouldnt bother me maybe because of the nature of my personality, but thats just me. I support developers through prayer.

[carey]

Wow similar experience here. But mine started much later than all yours. It was while the schools just transitioning from Win 3.x jump over 95 and went straight 98 then shortly after we see a green SE added to that 98. Back then we didn't know what windows 3.x was. Either I missed the classes where he introduced the OS to use or it was hidden from us.

We had to use Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheet and watching most of my senpai using copy con and some such commands was confusing because we used c:\>EDIT for documents, save to hard drive then copy to floppy drive. That was in grade 9.

Tronyx was one of those senpai. He can tell you how those days were. My mom bought our first computer in 1999, right after high school because IT was becoming requisite. My group in high school hadn't done IT so that training skipped us. We were unqualified in that area. My real training came from HEART/Trust. They made me what I am today.

All that time it was Windows on someone else system. Windows on my home system was fun until my first infections because of inserting other persons' promiscuous floppies into my PC. Files got crippled.My search for an alternative started with that handicapped OS. A copy of Win98SE was about $4500, and that was the pirated version. I found BeOS, loved it, but only graphics and audio worked properly. Dialup was beyond me with the softmodem.

Then after a series of fortunate events -- coming across something about Linux in a Suzanne Dodd article(I loved this woman's work), finding an old Caldera distro at a former workplace(a library) and somehow linking up with David Bain and Donavan Campbell -- I was launched headfirst into the Linux sea with Mandrake 7.x.

So, I have been using Windows since 1996 and nothing but expenses and thrift follow that path. In 2001 I switched to open source solutions and have stuck with them from ever since. Linux, NetBSD, BeOS. They were all easy to get and all enlightening.

Now, being the alternativist that I am, I am searching for some other option to Linux now. So far I can always go back to NetBSD, but I am also eyeing ReactOS, Haiku and Plan9. Plan 9 is amazing to read about.