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Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

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Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#4

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

IsTom wrote: post #3

Steam for Linux is one thing, but how many games will you be able to run?

It's not Steam we should care about, what we really want is Source for Linux. And GoldSrc for that matter, I'm sure some people would like to play Counter-Strike.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#6

Post by loganfsmyth »

Andaith wrote: post #2

After reading their handbook, I'm not that surprised. I do wonder how long it's been a one-man project though... Also, I wonder if the Humble Bundles have had anything to do with convincing Valve that Steam for Linux is worth the effort?

The handbook was the first thing I thought of after seeing the headline too. It definitely seems like a project someone would want to put there time into, though maybe more as a side project.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#7

Post by masklinn »

IsTom wrote: post #3

Steam for Linux is one thing, but how many games will you be able to run?

Not many I'd guess: the amount of SteamPlay games (Win + OSX) is already pretty low (relative to the full count of Steam games), and I'd expect triple-play games to be rarer still (and annoyingly not all SteamPlay games are SteamCloud-enabled either).

Valve's own library should be guaranteed though.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#9

Post by pja »

IsTom wrote: post #3

Steam for Linux is one thing, but how many games will you be able to run?

At the moment? Anything (pre Rage?) by ID and all the HumbleBundle games.

On the other hand, all the pieces are in place: OpenGL support is pretty good and lots of games actually work well enough under wine. That probably means that if they were compiled directly against winelib (as Google did with the Picasa Linux client) they would work just fine. Anything that already runs on OSX is probably an easy port, given some support libraries. That's quite a big chunk of the Steam catalog.

I could well imagine that if Valve put some development time into it, they could ship a "PC" set top box based around Steam that would be pretty compelling. One obvious roadblock is that they'd promptly attract a pile of patent lawsuits from Microsoft & Sony as those companies tried to protect their existing platforms, but I'd love to see them do it.

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