
Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux - jeffisabelle
http://steamdb.info/app/220/#section_history
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aspensmonster
I loved Half-Life 2. I loved Counter-Strike 1.5 (and 1.6 too). I loved Portal.
Valve has done a good job of making games. But I reeeeally wish some other
developers would step up to the plate and port as well. I'm thinking
Borderlands, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and others. Those two already have Mac
ports so I doubt it's unfeasible to move things over. Wine typically works
well enough --assuming you're willing to either fiddle with it for hours or
else pay for an out-of-the-box solution like Crossover-- but nothing beats
native :)

Edit: Been playing the Portal Beta. The horizontal tearing without vertical
sync is annoying. Mainly because, with vertical sync, there is substantial
input lag. But hey, it's called "beta" for a reason.

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BuddhaSource
Sorry little off topic : Is anybody working on HALF-Life 3 ?

I was really looking forward for this, I am old now but not old enough for
HL3.

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gcr
Between the Steam Box, porting everything in their catalog to Linux, Dota 2,
and scrambling like madmen to make the ten thousanth TF2 hat, I assume Valve
has a lot on their plate right now.

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hack_edu
Roll out a new revamped set of TF2 Unusuals and, boom!, cash enough to hire
another entire product team.

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gcr
Wow, I'm going to go try this! Portal runs "surprisinly well" (eg. great
performance but it has occasional graphical glitches) on my machine (Arch x64,
Intel HD 4000), so I'm curious to see how HL2 runs.

I understand Valve hasn't gotten the bugs out quite yet, but this is an
excellent start.

Edit: Oh man, "Half-Life 2 (Beta)", "Half-Life 2: Episode One (Beta)", "Half-
Life 2: Episode Two (Beta)", and "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Beta)" are all in
my steam library. It's like Christmas all over again.

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pmh
While I agree that it's nice to have native (assuming it's actually native)
ports, HL2 and most of the other Source engine games have reportedly run great
via Wine for a while now:
[http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...](http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2095)

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ajross
There's a big gap between "can be made to run under wine by following a recipe
someone posted to appdb.winehq.org" and "click on Download, then Plan".

I fiddle with messy integration issues on embedded Linux and Android
professionally, and am about as qualified as anyone could be to make that
work. I never once bothered trying to get wine running. I installed Portal
last week without a moment's thought.

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chongli
Just use PlayOnLinux. It makes handling of wine configuration very easy and
automatic.

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PakG1
You know why I'm going to download this? Because I never played the game and
when I finally downloaded it to play, there were major graphics engine or
driver issues that made it dirt slow and unplayable on my m11x R2. And I
couldn't figure out how to fix it so eventually gave up. Coincidentally, I
have Linux on my m11x R2. Maybe it'll work on Linux.

What a silly reason. But true. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Linux beta was
more bug free in my experience than the Windows version...

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brokenparser
Will not buy, HL1 is still full of bugs:
[https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-
linux/issues?labe...](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-
linux/issues?labels=Half-Life+1)

They should at least fix the bugs which affect gameplay, so I won't end up
with a library of broken games.

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gcr
Half life 2 works OK on my Intel HD4000. The only bugs are graphical glitches,
and they're not very noticable. (Keep in mind that Half Life and Half-Life 2
use completely different game engines; one's bugs don't necessarily translate
to the other.)

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brokenparser
_Half Life and Half-Life 2 use completely different game engines; one's bugs
don't necessarily translate to the other_

Yes, but that doesn't mean there won't be bugs in HL2. And Valve not fixing
HL1 before releasing HL2 doesn't bode well.

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Aardwolf
Do they also have Portal?

Because I never played it, and if they release it for Linux, I could be this
guy:

<http://xkcd.com/606/>

Even the date is about right :)

(I do play modern games as well, but due to the rebooting to another OS
required for that it's a commitment which I don't make for every game)

~~~
jsalinas
Yes, portal is already on Linux: <http://steamdb.info/app/400/>

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jzelinskie
They also added VR mode if you opt into the SteamPipe beta.

See more info here:
[https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&...](https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=957)

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KayEss
I wish I had the time to support this better by actually playing some of the
Linux games I've bought.

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chii
to support them, you only need to buy their games. Playing them is not needed!

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ekianjo
Tried HL2 on linux yesterday. Very impressed to see that HL2 still does not
look too bad even many years later. At full details on full HD, it's still
very decent graphically speaking.

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kwijibob
I know this is only HL2 beta - but unfortunately it doesn't run nearly as fast
as HL2 on wine. I'm on ubuntu 12.10, 2010 mac mini (nvidia graphics)

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pezz
Steam on Arch Linux here, old Core 2 Duo 3 GHz, but I added a nVidia GTX550Ti
(2GB) card a few months ago and HL2 is running amazingly.

Playing it on a 46" TV at 1080p. Smooth as hell and looks fantastic.

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moystard
I am waiting for DOTA 2 to be ported on Linux; this would really help the
Linux Steam platform taking off.

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hexonexxon
valve said last yr they would start porting to linux to avoid microsoft 8
store plans where they want to restrict software sales to the "microsoft app
store" and shave 20% fees from all sales. this would destroy the steam
delivery model so makes sense they are diversifying

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Yuioup
Erm. Wasn't Half-Life 2 already out? Pretty sure I've had it in my library for
months.

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gcr
For linux? It wasn't in my library last week. Perhaps you got lucky and were
chosen for a fancy linux beta test period?

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Yuioup
Ah that explains it. I was indeed selected... I assumed that everybody had it
when it came out of beta...

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kbar13
almost thought they released half life 3 exclusively for linux or something.
Wouldn't that be fun?

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thejosh
It's almost like it's a BETA or something.

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Murk
Looks like my weekend is set, then.

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goggles99
Isn't this game like 10 years old?

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OrsenPike
It may be almost 10 years old but it is still one of the best FPS games ever
created. Hell I still play Deus Ex as it is my favourite game ever made. Just
because a game is not brand new does not mean porting it to a new platform is
not worth it.

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gcr
It also helps Valve keep excitement for half-life 2 going strong when they
choose to release episode 3. Then their story won't be "Hey, remember when we
released the last chapter to this one back in 2007? Well go play the new one!"
Instead, they can say "Hey, remember Half-Life 2? Now you can play it all over
again and reacquaint yourself! Then you'll remember why you want episode 3 so
bad!"

