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Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

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Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#31

Post by scottlu2 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19

I'm not 100% sure why they have a "repo" for an "installer". It sort of rather defeats the purpose. If they're going to do that, just put the client in a DEB and put that in the repo. At this point I see no reason in adding the repo to apt. Either way, it'll get sorted, Steam for Linux is already quite great. Still can't get over that TF2 runs better in a window in Linux than I've ever had it run in Windows.

The Steam executable, libraries, data files, and games install with user permissions. This way games can install and update, and Steam itself can auto-update, without privledge escalation. Windows and Mac versions behave this way.

There is a launcher script that is installed in /usr/bin/steam. There was strong feedback from users that updating this script should belong to the system package manager. This is why the repo exists - so this script can be updated and managed by the system package manager.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#32

Post by drivebyacct2 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #30
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19

I'm not 100% sure why they have a "repo" for an "installer". It sort of rather defeats the purpose. If they're going to do that, just put the client in a DEB and put that in the repo. At this point I see no reason in adding the repo to apt. Either way, it'll get sorted, Steam for Linux is already quite great. Still can't get over that TF2 runs better in a window in Linux than I've ever had it run in Windows.

that is because they are keeping themselves open to have a Steam packaging format. It is something I have always bet that they will eventually do - once they see the number of support questions by people who have some sort of dependency problems (e.g [1], [2] and [3]). I wonder how long will it take for them to latch on to something like Zeroinstall or nix. [1] http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/84694…

No, I understand not distributing the games in DEB form, but what's the point of versioning an installer that then goes and downloads the latest version of the client? Just put the client in the repo...

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#33

Post by drivebyacct2 »

scottlu2 wrote: post #31
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19

I'm not 100% sure why they have a "repo" for an "installer". It sort of rather defeats the purpose. If they're going to do that, just put the client in a DEB and put that in the repo. At this point I see no reason in adding the repo to apt. Either way, it'll get sorted, Steam for Linux is already quite great. Still can't get over that TF2 runs better in a window in Linux than I've ever had it run in Windows.

The Steam executable, libraries, data files, and games install with user permissions. This way games can install and update, and Steam itself can auto-update, without privledge escalation. Windows and Mac versions behave this way. There is a launcher script that is installed in /usr/bin/steam. There was strong feedback from users that updating this script should belong to the system package manager. This is why the r…

This isn't directed at you, but that sounds like exactly what I'd expect of someone who doesn't understand the point of package managers.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#34

Post by Dylan16807 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #33
scottlu2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam executable, libraries, data files, and games install with user permissions. This way games can install and update, and Steam itself can auto-update, without privledge escalation. Windows and Mac versions behave this way. There is a launcher script that is installed in /usr/bin/steam. There was strong feedback from users that updating this script should belong to the system package manager. This is why the r…

This isn't directed at you, but that sounds like exactly what I'd expect of someone who doesn't understand the point of package managers.

Package managers need better support for installing under a user.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#35

Post by shardling »

jebblue wrote: post #29
clauretano wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a list, found here: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux Very few games are compatible, but Team Fortress 2 is one of them.

I'm interested in TF2 and Red Orchestra but look forward to my old favs...HL and HL2! I might even buy a new system so I can play the whole L4D series too!

I don't think they ever ported HL1 to Mac, though, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a Linux version. :(

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#36

Post by thristian »

stephen_g wrote: post #28
w1ntermute wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not 100% sure why they have a "repo" for an "installer". It sort of rather defeats the purpose. It's because they don't really grasp yet how these things work on Linux. Which is understandable, since they're coming from a Windows world, where package management has to be done manually. So the Steam executable you download is an installer that downloads/installs the Steam package manager, which then downloads/ma…

They'd have issues with their DRM doing that. They should ship the Steam binaries properly through apt and yum repositories, but I doubt that they'll ever ship the games that way.

I don't see why. If the Steam-DRM'd version of a game requires Steam installed in order to play, they can just add the Steam package as a dependency.

Possibly a bigger issue would be that Steam has incremental updates (fixing a bug in a game requires downloading a fixed binary but not the multi-gigabyte data files) while most Linux package managers do not support incremental updates (when Debian releases a new LibreOffice package that fixes some dependencies for the s360 archictecture, I still have to download hundreds of megabytes of changes on amd64).

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#37

Post by drivebyacct2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #34
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't directed at you, but that sounds like exactly what I'd expect of someone who doesn't understand the point of package managers.

Package managers need better support for installing under a user.

1. I don't see a reason for Steam to be installed per-user. (First, the client ought to be a standard binary/assets that can be shared between users. Second, the games should too, though I know games currently are per-Steam-user in Windows anyway so I understand that game installs would be installed per-User, but that can easily be done by a globally installed Steam executable).

2. I'm pretty sure path prefixes can be used and the same set of pkg management tools can be used to install in user land. I've done it in the past into an env I was chrooting and minifying to power a picture frame.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#38

Post by throwaway64 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19

I'm not 100% sure why they have a "repo" for an "installer". It sort of rather defeats the purpose. If they're going to do that, just put the client in a DEB and put that in the repo. At this point I see no reason in adding the repo to apt. Either way, it'll get sorted, Steam for Linux is already quite great. Still can't get over that TF2 runs better in a window in Linux than I've ever had it run in Windows.

Steam has a package so dependancies can be satisfied easily without resorting to "install xyz beforehand", and it runs an installer into your home folder because the user has to be able to modify the games directory for many, many games on steam, because stuff like configuration, custom maps, custom models etc, is stored alongside everything else.

Also steam has diff based patching (which requires accress from whoever is running the steam binary) which makes a lot more sense than how package managers operate for large packages, imagine downloading an entire 20 gig game every time there was a minor bugfix, it would be very obnoxious.

Unless the design of both package managers, and how steam games store settings/etc both change radically, this really is the only workable solution.

Luckily, you will still be able to share steam folders cross user, just simply give both users read/write access to the folder.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#39

Post by throwaway64 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #37
Dylan16807 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Package managers need better support for installing under a user.

1. I don't see a reason for Steam to be installed per-user. (First, the client ought to be a standard binary/assets that can be shared between users. Second, the games should too, though I know games currently are per-Steam-user in Windows anyway so I understand that game installs would be installed per-User, but that can easily be done by a globally installed Steam executable). 2. I'm pretty sure path prefixes can b…

path prefixes only generally apply to ./configure scripts when you are generating makefiles.

As paths to libs and stuff are hardcoded as part of the ELF spec, it becomes difficult to implement something like this and ive not seen a package manager that can do it.

Re: Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public

#40

Post by s_husso »

batiudrami wrote: post #14
mylittlepony wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Amnesia, which was already supported -.- Left4Dead was also going to be available, not sure what happened.

My understanding is that the plan is for all Valve Source Engine games are going to be ported (and should be relatively simple now that TF2 is working). Everything else is up to the various game studios, though all games in the Humble Indie Bundles support Linux so hopefully they are added to Steam soon.

> though all games in the Humble Indie Bundles support Linux > so hopefully they are added to Steam soon

Darn. This what I'm waiting for as most of my games are from humblebundle. Well at least uplink+defcon should work :)

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