Steam and L4D2 are coming to Ubuntu

Nick Mertes 17 Jul, 2012 at 11:11am ET Article published in Gaming

Last night, the Valve blogs were updated with a new section, called Valve Linux. Its first entry, titled ‘Steam’d Penguins‘, finally gives solid information on something we knew was coming: Steam on Linux.

At the moment, only the Ubuntu distribution is supported because it’s one of the most widely used flavors of Linux, which makes it an excellent starting point for developers who are in the testing phase. Other distributions should be added to the supported list in the future.

What good would Steam on Linux be without games, though? Valve thought the same thing, leading them to port the Source Engine as well as Left 4 Dead 2. Those two ports are now fully capable of running under Linux using OpenGL.

The company’s current areas of focus are on getting the Steam client’s full functionality working under Linux, optimizing L4D2’s performance under OpenGL, and porting additional Valve titles.

For those running Ubuntu 12.04, it shouldn’t be long before you’re able to double-tap some zombies with friends without having to boot into Windows. Just don’t forget your cardio, and remember to buckle up.

Comments

17 Jul 2012 ~ 11:21am PirateNinja Inb4 Tux TF2 Hat.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 11:22am mertesn Wouldn't surprise me one bit.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 11:47am ardichoke It's about time.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 1:23pm Soda
17 Jul 2012 ~ 3:53pm BobbyDigi
Inb4 Tux TF2 Hat.
Wasn't excited til I read this... #Hats
17 Jul 2012 ~ 4:23pm Guppy Great to hear this is finally happening. Hopefully it works out well and more devs start following suit.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 4:55pm PirateNinja It's not easy to port DirectX to OpenGL. Also, I wonder how many people will setup Ubuntu just because they think there might be a hat. I'm one of those people.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 4:56pm mertesn /me raises hand
17 Jul 2012 ~ 5:19pm Cliff_Forster Hell Yes!!
17 Jul 2012 ~ 6:15pm oni_dels tf2 running on nux = me switching back.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 9:21pm Thrax
It's not easy to port DirectX to OpenGL. Also, I wonder how many people will setup Ubuntu just because they think there might be a hat. I'm one of those people.
The Source engine has long had a codepath for OpenGL; you can activate it yourself if you add the proper switches to the command line. It's not well-optimized for Windows, however, so I can only imagine how bad it was for m00nix.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 9:31pm trooster89 Now Ubuntu needs to ditch unity and everything will be perfect.
17 Jul 2012 ~ 10:06pm Tushon You could just ditch it yourself?
17 Jul 2012 ~ 11:09pm trooster89 I already have in favor of E17.
18 Jul 2012 ~ 7:00pm Cliff_Forster @trooster89 - What do you have against unity? Have you been using 12.04?
18 Jul 2012 ~ 8:22pm trooster89 I just found it very limiting and unstable, but then again that was back in 11.04 and I suppose Gnome 3 wasn't much better either at the time.
19 Jul 2012 ~ 12:27am Cliff_Forster @trooster89 - Definitely give it another look on 12.04, I think it has improved tremendously.
19 Jul 2012 ~ 11:20pm trooster89 Oh well that's good to hear. I'll give it a try.
23 Jul 2012 ~ 5:36am HomelessJackScot Beautiful thank you, I have been using Windows XP for a long time and a so would like to switch I don't have money to buy and even if I am an homeless and without money I still wants to be legit!!!!