News Valve Steam, Source clients heading to Linux

Valve's Steam and Source clients are coming to Linux, with Gabe Newell overseeing development personally.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/04/26/valve-steam-source-linux/1

 

The first rock has been launched!

 

If this happens, I can see it as a shot in the arm to open gl cl too!

 

Personally I've got to applaud this notion. Gaming has been pretty limited to computers running Windows only. Hopefully more developers will follow suit over the next few years and we'll be able to have more choice when it comes to what OS we use on our gaming PCs.

 

This is on the second page of the article: "By the time that my "annual pilgrimage" rolls around for 2012, those not in the land of beer and wonderful Bayerischen Frauen and delicious food, will hopefully have something new to be entertained by instead on their Linux desktop... But again, this is Valve time."

October seems to be the target date.

 

This is fantastic news. If Epic would only port the current and future Unreal engines to linux there would actually be a decent collection of games playable on linux. The death of DirectX would be nice too.

Valve have the potential to have the same effect Apple has had on the portable computing market, forcing lazy companies to up their standards or be left behind.

 

Amazing. This is exactly what I've been waiting years for, and what the open source community needs! I can't wait. I may finally be able to ditch the one last windows box I have.

I hereby volunteer myself as a beta tester. Any linux distro, any number of reinstalls... I don't care. Lets go!

And although smileys are often overused,

 

Have some rep, just for your sheer enthusiasm.

 

Ubuntu needs this. Have you ever tried to install WOT on Ubuntu? It's a pain in the A$$! Ubuntu needs mainstream games

 

Finally, lack of games has held linux adoption back for a long time

 

there is more to linux than just ubuntu, and according to winehq.org, WoT has guides on how to make it work. in fact ubuntu wasn't even in the test results for the international version.


anyways nitpicking aside, as people from the phoronix forums have mentioned, i think one of the motives of valve in making this move is so they can customize their own linux distro, allowing them to create a steam-based console, kinda like what was mentioned here on BT a couple months ago with that alienware hardware. the great thing about using linux for a console is you can relatively effortlessly customize it to work however you want - you won't need all those services that don't affect gaming (which is most of the services windows 7 has), the system can potentially boot up within a few seconds, you won't NEED a mouse and keyboard, and valve can package anything they want with it and make it do what they want without extra features they'd probably rather discourage such as internet explorer. sony did this with ps3 - that runs a highly modified linux distribution (gentoo if i'm not mistaken). something like this could also operate with much lower hardware specs.

 

Steam is one of the main distribution systems for the PC. By porting it, and the Source game franchise, Valve has literally thrown open the doors to Linux into the gaming world. Then other companies will start to think - Hey, Valve is making money off those Linux guys, lets do the same. In fact, lets just use cross-platform stuff so we can make money off of EVERYONE! And ultimately, this means that gaming will spread to more and more platforms, some free, some costly. An OS will not be about market dominance (aka, DirectX), it will be about which OS offers the best features.

Windows will have certainly lost one customer (me) when Steam does get ported, and many more may follow suit when they realise just how good open-source operating systems are. Who needs Metro? We have Gnome or KDE. And if you don't like it, well then go and change it for whichever one you prefer, be it XFCE, Enlightenment, or the plethora of other windowing managers!

Let's bring freedom back to the gamer.

 

*Double post*

 

I wouldn't get too excited -- while the selection of games that use the source engine are in the most part pretty good it obviously doesn't cover everything.

Engines will need to be ported, which means dev time. How many mainstream developers are going to pay for dev time for porting to an OS that is used by a minority of desktop users? I'd bet not many.

Don't get me wrong, it'd be gaming nirvana and after being a *nix advocate for years I'd probably jump ship as well, but I just don't see it. Having the client is all well and good, but not as sweet if there aren't any games for it to serve.

 

A genius move, on a myriad of levels. I may despise so-called Valve Time, but there is no question they know what they're doing.

Linux is an open frontier for gaming, and Valve posting their virtual "First!" pretty much makes them the only game in town - overwhelming goodwill and market share snagged in one fell swoop. I also agree with the other folks, this may very well become first shot across the bow of the U.S.S. Microsoft: both Windows (licensing fees, etc.) and Direct X are major obstacles to any kind of standardized PC platform that could compete with the console market; while Steam 4 Linux doesn't solve these issues it does represent a significant step in the right direction that oh by the way will make moneys for them too.

A bloody masterstroke...

 

A few indie companies have been doing cross-platform for a while.

I for one am looking forward to being rid of windows. This was literally the last reason I had to keep any copies about

 

This is brilliant news, and here comes my blue-sky thinking! Five years from now....

'PC' Gaming has Linux as a top tier supported platform. The big distros are all on board, and there's several specific distributions for gaming and there's even some retail 'appliance' type devices that run steam games without you having to deal with the underlying OS. Because they are based around PC class hardware (mini-itx) you can choose you're own config and upgrade, repair them as you need.

The market share of traditional windows PCs is falling faster than ever. As gamers don't need to run Windows 11 to play their favourite games they're buying Android, iOS and Ubuntu-touch tablets... while lusting after the nVidia chipped tablet Valve are rumoured to be working on internally (To coincide with the launch of HL2 Ep 3)

I'll continue to extrapolate the changes that will also occur in the next five years...

Windows PCs are still bought in huge numbers by stick-in-the-muds, corporations and windows developers. Among everyone else... well some of them buy windows, some buy Macs and some buy their tablet of choice and be done with it. After an initial healthy holiday period of sales, nobody is now buying Google Glasses... not since Jedward were seen sporting matching pairs in their Christmas video that stayed at number 1 for 39 weeks.

The patent wars have escalated to the point where "Mega IP corp" owns what is known as the "root software patent" (Method of running software on a computer) allowing it to demand a 30% cut of all profit from anything and everyone that is done on a computer.

It's well known that "Mega IP corp" is owned in whole by North Korea, but after they nuked Papua New Guinea (Aimed for Seoul but overshot) everyone just pays the 30% and keeps their heads down!

In the UK the conservatives are still in power in a three way coalition with UKIP and the monster raving loony party. An 'AI' simulation of "Screaming" Lord Sutch is deputy PM and is infamous for interrupting PM questions with Max Headroom impressions.

The top selling smart phone is a "Samsung Galaxy+ Pamela Super Ribbon XM Nexoid Wunder 5G II LTE+ R2D2 Supreme Boobies" It's 0.5 mm thick with a 8" 2048 x 8192 screen resolution (4 : 1 ratio). It was released with Android 3.2 but rumoured to be getting an update to the "Deep fried Mars bar" release of Android soon (Currently only available on Googles own Phillips manufactured "Nexus Belt" the worlds first smart phone with a daylight viewable 21 : 1 ratio rollable screen (4" wide, 84" tall)

 

I'll rep you for that.

Mmmm... deep fried mars bar...

 

Is that any different from our current political situation?

 

I is interested!