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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

#61

Post by Angostura »

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…

I remember when Steam was first launched for Mac; Valve decided to pop all the games' assets and support files into a folder in ~/Documents. It took a few days to explain to them that this probably wasn't the best place to dump a few GB of files.

A lot of people's backups suddenly grew rather large.

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

#62

Post by StavrosK »

Garoof wrote: post #60
StavrosK wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that reasoning, if you have one package on your system that's not managed by the package manager, you should discard the package manager entirely. The more packages managed by the system, the better. Ideally, you'd want the games, too, but I understand why Valve might not like that. Using the unclean alternative when there's a clean one that's just as good isn't a good decision, in my opinion.

"By that reasoning, if you have one package on your system that's not managed by the package manager, you should discard the package manager entirely." No? Something like "I want to play TF2, so I should update Steam and TF2" is a reasonably common thing and it makes sense to want one thing to handle both of them. "You should discard the package manager entirely" does not follow from that.

You don't need to update Steam to play TF2 any more than you need to update Gnome to play TF2. By your reasoning, if you should need to update Steam to play TF2, and therefore need to keep Steam out of the package manager, you should also update Gnome, and therefore keep it out of the package manager, as well as the kernel, and pretty much every other package, just to play TF2.

Ergo, "you should discard the package manager entirely".

Steam is separate from the games, it's just an installer. You can play (and update) the games without the installer, therefore at least Steam should be a managed package.

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

#63

Post by rbanffy »

emperorcezar wrote: post #22
jcastro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://launchpad.net has a bug tracker and a blueprints function.

Can only say one thing about Launchpad, "ew". It has a horrible UI.

One pitfall of open source is that it's sometimes made by people smarter than its users for people smarter than its users.

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

#64

Post by AdrianRossouw »

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…

it's best to think of steam as a new package manager for games, the same way you would have ruby gems or npm packages.

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

#65

Post by Garoof »

StavrosK wrote: post #62
Garoof wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By that reasoning, if you have one package on your system that's not managed by the package manager, you should discard the package manager entirely." No? Something like "I want to play TF2, so I should update Steam and TF2" is a reasonably common thing and it makes sense to want one thing to handle both of them. "You should discard the package manager entirely" does not follow from that.

You don't need to update Steam to play TF2 any more than you need to update Gnome to play TF2. By your reasoning, if you should need to update Steam to play TF2, and therefore need to keep Steam out of the package manager, you should also update Gnome, and therefore keep it out of the package manager, as well as the kernel, and pretty much every other package, just to play TF2. Ergo, "you should discard the package m…

"and therefore keep it out of the package manager"

That is not much like my reasoning. Taking something out of the package manager does not generally make it so that it is taken care of by the same thing that takes care of TF2 being up to date. Making Steam handle Steam updates does.

Once you have introduced Steam as a thing that handles updates for you, moving Steam updates from package manager to Steam is clearly not exactly the same issue as removing things from the package manager in general.

(I mean, it sort of is if "the package manager should handle as many things as possible" is your goal. It is not if "as few things as possible should handle package manager-like things" is your goal.)

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

#67

Post by papsosouid »

emperorcezar wrote: post #22
jcastro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://launchpad.net has a bug tracker and a blueprints function.

Can only say one thing about Launchpad, "ew". It has a horrible UI.

Yeah, the UI is pretty terrible. The only worse UI I can think of is github's.

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

#68

Post by w1ntermute »

fsniper wrote: post #42
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…

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.

> I believe they do things as they do now is they are looking forward for interoperability with other distros in their own way.

Well, it's not working very well, since only Debian-based distros can directly install the software. And those distros could just add a repository anyway.

Other distros, like Arch, are forced to create workarounds, such as scripts that download and extract the .deb[0].

0: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/steam/

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

#69

Post by mariuolo »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #56
mariuolo wrote: post #48

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

You need to update the client to fix that. Easiest way to do this is to evade the beta check (start steam with "steam steam://store"), then choose "steam/check for steam client updates" from the title menu.

I did that. For some reason I also had to delete ~.steam and ~.local/share/Steam and start from scratch to be able to log in.

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

#70

Post by duaneb »

w1ntermute wrote: post #27
duaneb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point they need a downloadable installer, if only for e.g. gentoo or slackware.

Not for Gentoo, which has overlays[0]. Slackware would be the exception, as it has no de facto package management solution. 0: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/userguide.xml

Well, the overlay needs to download something as well. So my point remains, I think.
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