Steam for Linux Beta is now open to the public • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by jiggy2011 » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 7:57 AM UTC

thristian wrote: post #36

stephen_g wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 LibreO…

There is also the issue that a Steam game may have dependencies on different versions of certain libraries than those which may be shipped with popular distros. You also have to think about people with custom PPAs etc.

I think it makes sense for Steam to be isolated from the rest of the system as much as possible.

It is also helpful to Valve if it is as consistent with Steam on other platforms as possible.

Game downloads can be pretty big and take a while too, I'd rather not have apt locked for an hour while it grabs some large game update.

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

#42

Post by fsniper » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 8:33 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #23

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.

> 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…

So if they "do not grasp yet how things work on Linux", Why they are not meeting Canonical guys and get some help? I believe they do things as they do now is they are looking forward for interoperability with other distros in their own way.

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

#43

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 8:40 AM UTC

throwaway64 wrote: post #39

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After looking more it appears that I was doing something that only works when targetting a chroot environment. My mistake.

It would be interesting to think more about user-level applications and how that sort of trust would work, if it could.

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

#44

Post by Maakuth » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 9:25 AM UTC

thristian wrote: post #36

stephen_g wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 LibreO…

In Linux game packaging, this issue is often resolved by having a separate package for game data. This is also a neat workaround for licensing differences. For example Quake 3 is now open source, but the game data is still under commercial license. Distributions now offer just the game binaries built from the source and you have to buy the data yourself.

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

#45

Post by Maakuth » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 9:30 AM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

csense wrote: post #6

What black magic do they use to make the games run under Linux? Wine? Are all Steam games now compatible with Linux, or only a few titles that the developers are willing to support Linux? Is there a list anywhere?

The games are native ports, according to their Linux blog.

So far. Nothing stops game publishers from shipping a Windows game with Wine strapped on the side if it results in a working game.

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

#46

Post by jlgreco » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

shardling wrote: post #35

jebblue wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :(

Weird that they never even gave OSX Half-Life: Source.

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

#47

Post by arnoooooo » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 9:53 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #41

thristian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 LibreO…

There is also the issue that a Steam game may have dependencies on different versions of certain libraries than those which may be shipped with popular distros. You also have to think about people with custom PPAs etc. I think it makes sense for Steam to be isolated from the rest of the system as much as possible. It is also helpful to Valve if it is as consistent with Steam on other platforms as possible. Game downl…

The libraries can be installed from steam packages as well.

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

#48

Post by mariuolo » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 10:01 AM UTC

It doesn't work for me. Still saying it's a closed beta.

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

#49

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 10:07 AM UTC

throwaway64 wrote: post #38

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 whoeve…

This is irrelevant. They can add the Steam binary to their own PPA and update it as they update the client now. Steam will be able to do all those thing, like every single program in Linux can, while being installed as a system package.

The way they're doing it now is plain unclean.

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

#50

Post by ojii » Thu, Dec 20, 2012, 10:14 AM UTC

s_husso wrote: post #40

batiudrami wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

uplink works. defcon doesn't, unless you some manual "patching" (download the demo, fire up defcon in wine/windows to get your steam key, activate it on linux). It'll eventually come though.