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Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

apps.ubuntu.com

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Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#51
I wasn't able to download it. Clicking the link on this page took me to the Software Centre saying "Not Found - There isn’t a software package called “steam” in your current software sources.". So I go to the main landing page of the Software Centre and find a link to Steam there. There is a banner saying "Free" with a button "Buy" next to it. I click it and it asks me to log into to some sort of payment service...

I love linux and Ubuntu but this is the kind of thing that I am starting to get sick of having to deal with. Can't I just use apt-get?

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#52
post #23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big win for Ubuntu+Nvidia; the other distros received a well placed "go fuck yourselves". This is like gaming on Macos being a win for BSDs. :-)

Why only Nvidia? Intel improved their open source drivers thanks to Valve, and AMD pushed some updates related to Steam as well. And, while Steam officially support only Ubuntu (at least for now), Valve doesn't do anything for stopping it to run on other distro. They even modified the license to explicitly allow repacking, so that others could put the client in their repo. They host on their site a .tar.gz with the S…

Oh, if that's the case then I'll withdraw my hatred. Thanks. :-)

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#53
post #18
post #14

I see this as a very big "win" for Linux. I can't wait to game tonight, thanks Steam.

This is a big win for Ubuntu+Nvidia; the other distros received a well placed "go fuck yourselves". This is like gaming on Macos being a win for BSDs. :-)

Working pretty great for me on my Ubuntu+AMD desktop. Laptop is a clusterfuck of drivers though, Linux switchable graphics support sucks :(

Edit: Though I haven't tried anything too fancy yet, just FTL and Bastion. So maybe 3D gaming might not be as good as Windows but that's mostly fine for me for now. I'm fine booting into Windows to get my Starcraft 2 fix.

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#54
post #10

Great. Now all we need to do is petition nVidia to kindly unfuck their drivers so we can get decent Optimus support (among other things).

I suggest you petition Linus. Its the kernel devs which don't want to allow nVidia access to needed APIs for Optimus due to GPL pissing contest.

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#55
post #35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it's doubtful that nVidia will support the Quadro (which is pretty much the best workstation chip around, and also what I use) just because of Steam. If anybody wants to render very complex gradients and shading using a regular GeForce, it's not going to be nearly as good as with a workstation-optimized chip. Many CAD apps are much slower on an nVidia gaming chip than they are on a workstation card. So, a…

The funny thing is that my experience with Quadro chips and gaming is that support is pretty much non-existant, even on Windows. My work laptop has a Quadro GPU, and I did try Starcraft 2 on it. SC2 wouldn't actually recognize the chipset, so I was set on very low settings.

Did you try using official Nvidia drivers [1] (as opposed to notebook creator supplied ones)?

I have been using Quadros for long time (multiple generations, currently on Thinkpad with Quadro 2000M) and I never had any issue with games. Both compatibility and performance wise for me Quadros have been more or less equivalent to corresponding GeForce cards.

I do however always try to use the latest drivers from Nvidia and I turned off Optimus in BIOS.

[1] http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already packages for Arch, and as per the new licensing terms for the client there's no reason it can't or won't be packaged for other distros. AMD also improved their drivers with Valve. Not sure where the hate is coming from. Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Arch: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#N...

Steam runs great on Arch. Unfortunately TF2 does not, at least for me. Freezes my entire system while loading any map, to the point I have to ssh in and kill "hl2". I'd report it, but I'm not certain I should due to Arch being an unsupported platform.

The browser/installer frontend runs fine for me - TF2 doesn't even start though, I'm on Ubuntu 12.10 (with KDE).

I've an older Nvidia card and the game installer can't tell your system doesn't meet the opengl requirements before you download [for TF2 12GB of] game files [FWIW that took a couple of days].

Is there some way to tell the minimum requirements or a HCL or something? My issue is the glColorMaskIndexedEXT one; looking at fixes now. There's a ½GB upgrade downloading now. If that doesn't work then it looks like one can compile a shim, http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/846938351...).

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#57
post #51

I wasn't able to download it. Clicking the link on this page took me to the Software Centre saying "Not Found - There isn’t a software package called “steam” in your current software sources.". So I go to the main landing page of the Software Centre and find a link to Steam there. There is a banner saying "Free" with a button "Buy" next to it. I click it and it asks me to log into to some sort of payment service... I…

For some reason, no, because it's delivered through Canonical's special proprietary software channel. I suppose having the account means you can redownload this freeware for free?

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already packages for Arch, and as per the new licensing terms for the client there's no reason it can't or won't be packaged for other distros. AMD also improved their drivers with Valve. Not sure where the hate is coming from. Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Arch: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#N...

Steam runs great on Arch. Unfortunately TF2 does not, at least for me. Freezes my entire system while loading any map, to the point I have to ssh in and kill "hl2". I'd report it, but I'm not certain I should due to Arch being an unsupported platform.

So, I normally have issues with fullscreen applications - in Windows and Wine. Fullscreen in Linux hasn't been an issue, but I'm pretty sure that's because the Valve/Source games run in "Windowed Fullscreen" so the window manager still gets to control it when you've released the mouse (ie, pressed Esc and are at the menu).

tl;dr: Try adding '-windowed' to the launch options for TF2 and see if that helps at all. (Steam -> Games -> Right Click "Team Fortress 2" -> Launcher Options and add "-windowed" minus the quotes obviously.

(edit: For the original thread, it also works decently well on my Macbook Air with Intel graphics)

13.04 on both of machines, though it was working last week on 12.10 before I rebuilt my machines.

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#59
post #54
post #10

Great. Now all we need to do is petition nVidia to kindly unfuck their drivers so we can get decent Optimus support (among other things).

I suggest you petition Linus. Its the kernel devs which don't want to allow nVidia access to needed APIs for Optimus due to GPL pissing contest.

I suggest you learn the situation before making ignorant, unfounded comments.

Re: Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already packages for Arch, and as per the new licensing terms for the client there's no reason it can't or won't be packaged for other distros. AMD also improved their drivers with Valve. Not sure where the hate is coming from. Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Arch: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#N...

Steam runs great on Arch. Unfortunately TF2 does not, at least for me. Freezes my entire system while loading any map, to the point I have to ssh in and kill "hl2". I'd report it, but I'm not certain I should due to Arch being an unsupported platform.

Arch here, works fine. I had this issue for a 2 day period and did report it but it seems to have been fixed since then. You might want to try again.

There are many bug reports from non-Ubuntu users on GitHub and they all seem to get first-class support. Valve is pretty good about helping with that kind of stuff, they've even helped debug a few WINE bugs.

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