
Valve starts promoting Steam for Linux to Windows users - bconway
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/valve-starts-promoting-steam-for-linux-to-windows-users-20130121/
======
stinos
"start urging Windows users to make the switch" "Proof of that comes from the
screenshot you see above."

Really? This is at least slightly exaggerated. First thing I see is a big
green button with a download link to the Windows installer. Then a invite to
join a Beta program. That's not exactly _urging_ anything. More like letting
people now it's available.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Linux gamers are extremely sensitive to any news that isn't negative.

~~~
ori_b
There's a reason. There's very little news about Linux gaming, and even less
that's positive.

Let's just say that my standard response to "Hey, there's this awesome game
out, have you tried it" is "I use Linux".

------
swalsh
I have a strong desire to leave windows. Windows 8 seems to enrage me more
every day. Unfortunately, the majority of my experience is with C# :(

~~~
lloeki
Chiming in on the _"get on Mono"_ train: it's true, you should get aboard
ASAP.

I don't quite agree on the _'learn'_ part though, because it may sound
frightening when for most purposes it is a direct C#+.Net port, so there's
basically nothing to learn on the language/library front. It mostly revolves
around the tooling (MonoDevelop is different from VS, mcs is different from
the MS C# compiler, xbuild is different from msbuild, but source code is the
same, assemblies are the same, sln/csproj files are the same). You will mostly
lack WPF if you ever used it, and learn to use Path.Combine instead of
hardcoded string concats and backslashes in paths (i.e write portable code),
but you will benefit from having many Mono-only or Mono-bundled tools (csharp
REPL[1}, ) and libs[0].

Miguel de Icaza regularly (re)tweets and promotes various community activities
and achievements, so I recommend to follow him to get a feeling of what
happens.

If you're daring enough, you can get on board and use emacs, which seems to be
what the non-IDE Mono developer community revolves around, so emacs modes
should be quite good (apparently, F# support is coming up nicely[2])

[0]: <http://docs.go-mono.com>

[1]: <http://www.mono-project.com/CsharpRepl>

[2]: <https://twitter.com/simontcousins/status/293329223597297664>

~~~
snarfy
This.

Mono is awesome. I haven't used linux in years, but I managed to install
linuxmint and setup Mono + Nginx + ServiceStack over the weekend. It's a bit
difficult at first, but when it works it's nice. You can even build in visual
studio and copy the files over to your linux box.

~~~
crististm
Off topic.

What's with the comments that start with "This."? What is "This." suppose to
mean as an introduction?

~~~
Groxx
Sort of short-hand for "I agree with this". I think (? please correct me if
wrong, someone) it started on Reddit.

~~~
hayksaakian
I've heard it in real life far before that. Its a way of re-emphasizing
something that was just said.

------
metastew
How many Linux games they have so far: ~62

How many games I have in my steam library: 100+

How many games in my steam library that has already been ported to Linux (as
of yesterday): 6

I will make the switch when they have at least 1/3 of my steam library ported
over to Linux.

~~~
GFischer
62 games is an impressive number.

Sadly, there still are a few dealbreaker apps that prevent me to switching to
Linux.

There's also the massive back catalogue Windows has, my girlfriend loves
playing random PopCap games and other casual-friendly stuff that are not yet
click-and-play in Linux - was going to say "not available" but Google has an
installation guide for Wine, but not yet available to mainstream users.

~~~
StavrosK
62 games isn't impressive at all. Most of the games I bought (indie, mostly)
have Linux versions that work fine in Ubuntu, but they aren't on Steam!

I expect they'll probably arrive soon, since all the Humble Bundles have been
Linux-friendly for ages, but they don't have the games available now. They're
probably trying to get the client more stable, I guess.

~~~
GFischer
I really don't follow the Linux news, I'm comparing to 2007 which was the last
time I had a Linux desktop (SuSE with KDE), where the only available games
were Frozen Bubbles and some half-baked sim game clones.

Seeing mainstream support (Steam and others), and 62 titles shows Linux has
gone a long way, and of course the rise of web gaming is a huge boon.

~~~
jlgreco
In 2007 you also had all the old Quake1-3 mods, as well as UT99 and UT2003.
Also Doom 3.

Probably still the best games on Linux imho...

~~~
GFischer
You're right, I forgot.

I don't like First Person Shooters (even the original Wolfenstein gave me
motion sickness, and I don't have great motor skills), that's why I forgot
about those.

I've always liked turn-based strategy games, or real time strategy games (at
medium or slow speeds, I get destroyed on online matches), puzzle games,
point-and-click graphic adventure games, etc... and I distinctly remember
searching for those and not finding much back then.

I definitely need to give Linux another try, but I don't manage to convince
myself to set aside the time (it might be a good investment, though :) )

~~~
vq
The Humble Store has a number of Linux games:
<http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store>

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a favourite of mine, not sure how easy it is to
get a copy of these days though.

DEFCON, Darwinia: <http://introversion.co.uk/>

Wesnoth is a great turn-based strategy game and has an unusual amount of
polish for a FOSS game.

SpringRTS is a really fun RTS, if you can look past the many bugs in the
launcher/lobby: <http://springrts.com/>

------
sspiff
I don't think this is urging users to switch to Linux, but at least the huge
penguin is the most obvious thing on the page: it's the biggest, it's visually
distinctive, and it's smack in the middle of the page. So they are definitely
trying to raise awareness of Steam for Linux to the larger audience.

I just rebuilt my desktop yesterday, and downloaded Steam for it. The above is
what you get when you click the "Install Steam" button on their homepage, and
it definitely caught my eye.

------
charonn0
Would the (many, many) games I've already purchased on Steam work on Linux?
Will Steam for Linux ship with WINE or something similar? If not, I don't see
the real value for someone like me.

~~~
jiggy2011
The games will work if there is a Linux port on Steam and you've already
bought for Windows/Mac. You don't have to buy twice. However there seems to be
a few games with working Linux ports that aren't available in Steam under
Linux yet, bastion being one example.

I believe most of the Steam Linux games available are native ports and don't
use Wine. Maybe there are some that do use Wine, but I don't imagine that they
will make them available through Steam unless they are confident that they
will actually work.

So the real question here is, "what is the real value of this assuming you
already have a dedicated Windows PC or a dual boot for gaming?"

For myself it is nice to have a few good quality indie games available to play
if I fancy a short break from coding on my Linux box without having to power
cycle my PC. For serious gaming sessions Windows is still king for now.

The real question is about future games. There seems to be increasing interest
in cross platform toolkits for game development, this is probably most because
people want to target iOS and Android rather than Linux however.

However if it gets to the point where Linux just becomes another output format
for a cross platform game engine (like unity3d) then perhaps you can expect
future game titles to become available on Linux simply because the friction to
launch on the platform is so low.

~~~
devcpp
>You don't have to buy twice.

How do you know ports will be free? It removes most of the incentive that
developers would have to make a good port: money (unless Valve pays for the
ports, which would be _very_ expensive).

~~~
jiggy2011
The ports are currently free on the beta, assuming you have bought the
original. Seems unlikely that they will change that as "buy once, run
anywhere" seems to be a big selling point of Steam.

I guess in terms of incentives to do ports, if Valve plans to launch a Linux
based Steam box they can tempt developers with more prominent placing of games
with Linux ports, a larger audience (assuming Steambox has good sales) or even
flat out make it a requirement to get onto Steam.

There are also current Linux users like myself who are just more tempted to
buy a game if it has a Linux port.

~~~
bluedanieru
>or even make it a requirement to get onto Steam

Let's hope not.

~~~
chii
> >or even make it a requirement to get onto Steam > Let's hope not.

why not? i think if steam flex its muscle (of which it still doesn't have
enough), it might jerk studios to put in the effort!

~~~
bluedanieru
Valve doesn't have any business muscling developers into this or that
platform. It's wrong if Microsoft does it, and it's wrong if Valve does it.
Let the better platform win, in an open and competitive way. (I'm confident
Linux would win out in such a contest, btw.)

~~~
jiggy2011
IIRC they currently mandate Windows compatibility to launch any game on Steam.
You can't publish a Mac only game for example.

If Valve are serious about launching their own platform , they're likely to
apply as much muscle as they can in order to get games on there.

------
ameen
For some reason I don't want to install Steam on my Ubuntu partition. I use it
to get work done. If I feel like playing a game I just boot into my Windows 7
partition.

Having a "work boot" has done wonders for my productivity.

------
lambada
I'd understand the headline if it was a pop-up for those using the Steam
Client on Windows. As it is, it looks like they're just using their website to
advertise. Not really targeting Windows users specifically.

------
ericcholis
I would love to switch to Ubuntu at home, games is one of the reasons I don't;
Unity being the other.

This may be isolated to my experience, but the PCs that I've installed Ubuntu
on suffer huge performance drops when using Unity. Most of these PCs were
running XP, one them is running Win 7. I even had one machine running like a
dream on Ubuntu 11.04 then upgraded to 11.10, now it's nearly unusable.

I've drank the Ubuntu kool-aid in the past, but now it leaves a sour taste in
my mouth.

*edit for clarification, I'm referring to Ubuntu's new default UI: Unity.

~~~
stinos
It's not isolated.. Recently I quickly needed some linux distro in a VM to
test some things out and since I just found a premade VirtualBox image of the
latest Ubuntu I tried that. Could hardly believe how slow it felt. I know a VM
is not the real thing, but given that anything else I run in it flies it's at
least an indication something is wrong.

~~~
daliusd
I have found recently out that VmWare Player works better with Ubuntu 12.10
than VirtualBox. Difference is "you can work with it" and "I will suffer
because I need it".

------
ck2
I found the crucial ssd video on that site far more fascinating:
[http://www.geek.com/articles/games/how-its-made-crucial-
ssds...](http://www.geek.com/articles/games/how-its-made-crucial-ssds-come-
from-very-clean-rooms-20130121/)

------
armored_mammal
My biggest issue with Steam on Linux is the load times. They seem ridiculous
for no discernible reason. Based on my watch opening simply loading a game
must read through 20 Gigabytes of files. Oh, wait. The game is only 14 G on
disk. Maybe it's 14 gigs of ridiculously compressed data?

Connecting to servers in TF2 takes an eternity, too.

------
kelvin0
Does this mean that Ubuntu supports GPU Hardware acceleration drivers?

I am not an expert on the matter, but it seems that most Linux distributions
used to lack this, unless you had a specific Card that had drivers for it
under yer distro ..

Please feel free to correct me. This is one of the issues which prevents me
from 'jumping' completely onto Ubuntu.

Thanks

~~~
lucian1900
The official proprietary drivers for nvidia and amd gpus tend to work pretty
well, and Ubuntu will prompt you to install them. The open source ones are
generally not suitable for games yet.

Most Intel gpus just have open source drivers.

~~~
csense
Mobile nvidia cards with nvidia's Optimus technology require two steps to
work:

1\. Install Bumblebee (requires a PPA) and possibly x-swat PPA as well. [1]

2\. Launch video programs through optirun. For example:

    
    
      java -Xmx1024m -jar minecraft.jar              # non-Bumblebee users
      optirun java -Xmx1024m -jar minecraft.jar      # Bumblebee users
    

If you run the first command but have an Optimus card, the program will still
run, but it will use the weak Intel GPU instead of the powerful nvidia GPU --
which is plenty powerful enough for "normal" desktop usage like web browsing,
email, word processing, or video players, but a recent 3D game will likely
turn into a slideshow.

Hopefully the Steam client will make it easy for people to use Bumblebee by
giving a GUI to install the PPA and automatically invoking 3D games with
optirun.

[1] <http://bumblebee-project.org/install.html#Ubuntu>

------
AshleysBrain
I find it more significant that the Steam homepage now has a fairly prominent
Linux tab: <http://store.steampowered.com/>

------
bio4m
Blatant sensationalism; its on their About page and appears to users of all
OS's, not just Windows. Just had a look on a Mac and Linux and the page is
static.

------
immigrantsheep
Steam ported on linux is one thing. Games, specially AAA titles ported on
linux is a completely different argument.

------
venomsnake
Мake all of my steam backlog work on linux and I switch. And not a moment
before that.

~~~
StavrosK
If you're already using Linux as your day-to-day OS, there's no reason for you
not to install Steam already, as there's no "switch" for you to make.

If you are using Windows and aren't looking to switch otherwise, there's no
reason to do it, since all games work fine there. This is for people who've
wanted to switch (or have already switched) to Linux and miss Steam, or dual-
boot (like me).

So, basically, you're not the target market, and nobody cares what you do!

~~~
vitalique
>If you are using Windows and aren't looking to switch otherwise, there's no
reason to do it.

Depends on what you mean by 'not looking to switch'. Permanent, set in stone
decision? Then sure, no point in proving that 1 == 1. But decisions drift and
change (which is nice), and so does software (which in some cases is
excellent). So I wouldn't be that categorical.

I'd agree that for some folks Steam not running on Linux may be the only
reason to stay with Windows (though I don't think they miss Steam, as you put
that; I think what they miss are their games - owned ones and not yet released
- and venomsnake says just that, actually), but I'm pretty sure there's quite
a large number of people who consider many different general-purpose sides of
switching platforms (gaming, music, video, paper/docs work, some development),
and for them Linux version of Steam as a provider of games may be an important
signal.

~~~
StavrosK
Of course it is an important signal, but they don't say "I'll switch when
_all_ my games work, to the very last (even the ones I have no intention of
ever playing again), and not a moment earlier". That's just an unreasonable
position, which I'm sure not even venomsnake really believes.

Now that I typed that, it's obvious that we're feeding the troll.

~~~
venomsnake
It was not attempted trolling. The problem comes from the fact that even if
there cannot be "some" games working under linux. And i will try to argument
myself. My steam and gog library is about 200 games. For the majority of them
- i will never touch them again. But there are maybe 20 games that I play
regularly. The problem comes from the fact that they are scattered trough time
and technology.

Giving up on the most of the games will be easy, not so much on vampire the
masquerade, deus ex, painkiller, icewind dale, jedi outcast,skyrim,
psychonauts or heroes 3. These are games I tend to play a lot.

But you don't have much chance with compatibility - if you make any of these
games work, there is strong chance you will be able to make most of the games
of this generation also playable. And then comes the thing that everyone has
some games that are dearly loved but they are different for each person.

So yeah - all is not what I meant. So if Gabe wants the linux users to play
from now on - that is amazing. If they want to get people to switch the
comparability is important. And for old games too - because for some they are
beloved classics that have stood the test of time.

------
Millennium
The games I'm interested in will probably never be ported. Valve needs to get
in on the Wine project, specifically with an eye toward improving the gaming
experience, and then integrate that into Steam/Linux.

------
davidlumley
While I'd love to get rid of Windows as my gaming OS, I can't see this
happening while game developers still use (and enjoy) Direct X and D3D over
Open GL.

------
justin66
What's the story with Steam for Linux system requirements? It seems unlikely
that they'll end up supporting Ubuntu alone.

------
daGrevis
Port Dota 2 and I'm deleting Windows from my dual-boot system.

~~~
NuZZ
There are reports from WINE users that Dota 2 actually runs better than on
windows, under WINE.

Cool.

------
drivebyacct2
Why has not a single person pointed out that the number of Linux games is very
obviously artificially low? All of the Source engine based games are
effectively ported via the TF2 port.

And no mention of the momentum that will be caused by the Steam box?

