More hints that Steam is coming to Linux

Brian Ambrozy 1 Dec, 2008 at 10:15am ET Article published in Gaming

Steam coming to Linux?

I know it’s been a long weekend, so this news comes a few days late, but it’s good stuff. An attentive Phoronix reader was recently poking around in the file heirarchy for the new Valve co-op shooter Left 4 Dead, and found some interesting things.

With Source engine and Steam support on Linux, that means Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike: Source, and the epic Half Life 2 saga would all be natively playable on your leet linux b0x. In addition to the AAA first party titles, Steam support would probably open the floodgates of indie titles for Linux. Steam has been a great way to get games that you may have otherwise missed, and the potential for Linux to be a viable gaming platform will be given a big legitimacy boost when the official client is released.

Comments

1 Dec 2008 ~ 12:14pm Leonardo There must be at least 12 people eagerly awaiting the release!

No, I'm not making fun of Linux, just at some of the users who have been claiming that Linux is on the threshold of becoming mainstream. Oh, the claim has been going on for years now. That mainstream always gets put off for future special development.

I hope it does take off and go mainstream. I'm not holding my breath.

But yeah, I must acknowledge that if the Stream engine is released for Linux, that would indeed by a HUGE milestone.
1 Dec 2008 ~ 2:01pm jared This is big.

The two most common complaints I hear from the Linux community is
- No game support (besides Q3, UT, and a handful of others)
- No Adobe CSX support

To which I agree 100%. If I could get more of my games and Adobe Creative Suite with native linux support (because I dont care what you say running Pohtoshop in crossover office blows) I'd reformat this XP rig and put Gentoo or Ubuntu on it in an instance.

I love fiddling around with Linux. I actually love the learning curve (especially with Gentoo) and having to "get under the hood" to make things work. What I don't like is having a shitty app selection.
1 Dec 2008 ~ 2:22pm kryyst Getting Steam to work for linux is cool. But it in no way is going to put linux into the mainstream for the desktops. I predict it'll have almost no impact at all. Before linux can go mainstream you'll have to be able to walk into EBGames and buy whatever software you want for it. Now if that means the 'linux' rack or more preferably have all PC games worth on windows, linux and OS X. That will be a beautiful world.
2 Dec 2008 ~ 9:32am Caffran Will there be good driver support for our video cards?
2 Dec 2008 ~ 9:37am Snarkasm Only if there is currently.
2 Dec 2008 ~ 9:59am shwaip a lack of game support is pretty much the only reason i don't run linux on my desktop. a distant, distant second is itunes.

I wonder if steam will guarantee that all of the games available on steam will run correctly...looks like only source games now. Maybe they should partner with cedega.