Steam - It's Not Just for Windows and Macs Anymore

http://media.steampowered.com/client...
You apparently need an account with access to do anything useful with it though.

Installed, got a regular old steam updating window where it downloaded 100mb worth of client. Now it just segfaults when trying to launch. Beta indeed.

psoplayer wrote:

Installed, got a regular old steam updating window where it downloaded 100mb worth of client. Now it just segfaults when trying to launch. Beta indeed.

Filed a bug report?

Steam for Linux Beta Now Available

Nov 6, 2012--Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the launch of a limited access beta for its new Steam for Linux client.

The Steam for Linux Beta client supports the free-to-play game Team Fortress 2. Approximately two dozen additional Steam titles are now also available for play on Linux systems. Additionally, the Steam for Linux Beta client includes Big Picture, the mode of Steam designed for use with a TV and controller, also currently in beta.

“This is a huge milestone in the development of PC gaming,” according to Gabe Newell, Valve President and co-founder. “Steam users have been asking us to support gaming on Linux. We’re happy to bring rich forms of entertainment and our community of users to this open, customer-friendly platform.”

The Steam for Linux Beta client is currently available for installation on Ubuntu 12.04. “An overwhelming majority of beta applicants have reported they’re running the Ubuntu distro of Linux,” according to Frank Crockett, a member of the Steam for Linux team, “We intend to support additional popular distros in the future; we’ll prioritize development for these based on user feedback.”

Within its first week, Valve received over 60,000 responses to its request for participants in the Steam for Linux Beta. The first round of beta participants has been selected from this group of respondents.

The Steam for Linux Beta client will become available to a widening group of users over the course of the beta. Subsequent participants will be chosen among survey respondents, and once the team has seen a solid level of stability and performance across a variety of systems, the Steam for Linux client will become available to all users of Steam.

Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC and Mac games with over 50 million accounts around the world and over 2,000 titles offered.

More details regarding Steam for Linux, including community discussion, beta participants’ feedback, official announcements and syndicated news can all be tracked on the new Steam for Linux Community Hub at http://steamcommunity.com/linux.

wow, they don't waste time, do they?

SixteenBlue wrote:
psoplayer wrote:

Installed, got a regular old steam updating window where it downloaded 100mb worth of client. Now it just segfaults when trying to launch. Beta indeed.

Filed a bug report?

I would have if any of the following were true

a) I was one of the invited group of testers
b) I was installing it on something other than my development VM
c) I am more than mildly curious how this whole thing turns out

I'll probably check back with it in a couple of weeks, or when I get added to a later round of invites.

psoplayer wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
psoplayer wrote:

Installed, got a regular old steam updating window where it downloaded 100mb worth of client. Now it just segfaults when trying to launch. Beta indeed.

Filed a bug report?

I would have if any of the following were true

a) I was one of the invited group of testers
b) I was installing it on something other than my development VM
c) I am more than mildly curious how this whole thing turns out

I'll probably check back with it in a couple of weeks, or when I get added to a later round of invites.

Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine when someone runs beta code and complains when it doesn't work, without submitting the info back.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/918992914911354523/3EC7B64DE3662AB4D4076DF3B725028369992DEC/1024x640.resizedimage)
Found here

I installed beta, but my account is not in it yet. So am getting this message stating that and being logged out again.
But did notice that quite a few games on my list are playable. Killing Floor, Trine and way more
Strangely enough not L4D(2) or TF2.

Can't wait for this to go live. I want to build a TF2 box for my son.

Tried it on my Xubuntu 12.04 install, on this machine (Sandy Bridge, NVidia 680), running the most recent 310 NVidia drivers that they just announced as being super-extra-special for Steam.

It just locks up, and doesn't do anything. I had to first chase down the 32-bit libc6 libraries to get it to run at all (it's a 64-bit install), and then it just froze without displaying anything. Because it's Xubuntu, I'm probably missing something it needs.

Just wondering, can 3rd party apps like how steam seems to be currently distributed, trigger or request package installs within a distribution's package manager? For instance could steam do an initial run, see it's missing libraries X/Y/Z and request they get installed. Or I suppose they could just bundle it's dependencies with it, although I'm not sure of the license ramifications of that.

Edit: just tried it on mine. Double-click the .deb and it tells you it needs to grab dependencies as well, and does so. On Mint 13 cinnamon, a ubuntu derivative. And no crashes.

From the command line, run "steam steam://open/games".

This will open Steam directly to the Games window, bypassing the beta account check.

Valve games themselves still won't work without a beta account - and, in fact, a lot of games that may appear in your account won't work - but some do.

*Legion* wrote:

From the command line, run "steam steam://open/games".

This will open Steam directly to the Games window, bypassing the beta account check.

Valve games themselves still won't work without a beta account - and, in fact, a lot of games that may appear in your account won't work - but some do.

Damn, it works!!! Thanks!

I was able to install and successfully launch Frozen Synapse. My cloud-saved data (server login, etc) worked, and it even did the activation of the "Red" DLC which was gifted to me since the last time I fired up the game.

A number of games don't have their actual files up on Steam yet, and others have most of their files but not the Linux executable binary.

One of the best places for info right now is /r/linux_gaming on Reddit, a community which is unsurprisingly energized right now.

Like Justin pointed out

justinmwhitaker
@knigge Who would have thought that the road to Linux adoption would be Steam Powered?

The best thing to come from Steam will be the added emphasis on fixing the media experience on Linux - video, sound, etc.

These subsystems are the worst parts of Linux. The added attention has already pivoted the focus of Ubuntu, which knows this is a golden opportunity that isn't going to come along again.

If Linux can really get thoroughly modernized in those areas (and the coming of Wayland will help there too), it will mean very good things for the platform going forward.

*Legion* wrote:

The best thing to come from Steam will be the added emphasis on fixing the media experience on Linux - video, sound, etc.

They've already made strides in improving video drivers, so that's huge. Some of those improvements came back to Windows too.

Installed Cogs and it works. Not a big miracle, but still

Getting the New NVidia drivers dialog. So I installed those. After a reboot, Steam tells me to use an up to date driver and kicks me out. So sticking to the one I am using for now. Despite the dialog I now get that there are new drivers! Arrgh

I'm very excited by this. Very excited.

Sparhawk wrote:

Installed Cogs and it works. Not a big miracle, but still

Getting the New NVidia drivers dialog. So I installed those. After a reboot, Steam tells me to use an up to date driver and kicks me out. So sticking to the one I am using for now. Despite the dialog I now get that there are new drivers! Arrgh ;)

In Mint, I used the additional drivers dialog control panel thingy, told it to install v310, waited for it to stop doing stuff, rebooted and I was done. I just ran some GW2 in wine, so it's working.

I successfully installed and ran Amnesia, which worked both in single-screen and triple-screen on my ATI Eyefinity setup.

Nice, because I *just* started playing this on Windows, after playing through the two Penumbra games over the weekend (skipped the Requiem expansion after an hour of boredom).

Only thing that didn't seem to work is the Gamma slider.

Important performance note: if you're using Compiz (and if you're in Unity in Ubuntu, you are), you want to turn off compositing in fullscreen windows (ie. 3D games).

Run CompizConfig Settings Manager, go to General, and check "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows".

This feature was removed from Compiz at one time, and is available in the Compiz version that Ubuntu 12.10 is running. It's highly likely it will be backported to 12.04 (since that's the Steam target) if it's not there yet.

Some more details on this, written prior to the 12.10 release, in case you care to know more.

Not Steam related, but Humble Indie Bundle folks hire full-time Linux dev for their Linux ports.

After so many years of gaming on Linux being a complete non-starter, and some very brief blips (remember Loki Software?), it's just beyond exciting what has happened with HIB and now Steam (and I don't doubt for a second that the Linux returns on HIB were a big part of Valve's serious consideration of Linux as a platform).

*Legion* wrote:

Important performance note: if you're using Compiz (and if you're in Unity in Ubuntu, you are), you want to turn off compositing in fullscreen windows (ie. 3D games).

Run CompizConfig Settings Manager, go to General, and check "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows".

This feature was removed from Compiz at one time, and is available in the Compiz version that Ubuntu 12.10 is running. It's highly likely it will be backported to 12.04 (since that's the Steam target) if it's not there yet.

Some more details on this, written prior to the 12.10 release, in case you care to know more.

Ubuntu told me it wasn't installed. So I installed it just to check it out. The option was also unselected by default. I am sure that I must have gone wrong somewhere lol

Sparhawk wrote:

I am sure that I must have gone wrong somewhere lol

I don't think so - I think CCSM is indeed uninstalled by default. There's a more simplified, less power-user Compiz effect setting tool that I think is installed by default instead.

Are you on 12.10 or 12.04? I'm really interested to see if this setting gets backported to 12.04.

12.04.1

Ahh, nice. I figured with Steam targeting 12.04, it had to be coming.

Next question is, when is it going to be flipped to on by default? It's pretty important for removing a significant performance penalty in Unity.

[How to] Login to Steam Big Picture Mode in Ubuntu
IMAGE(http://cloudfront.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/steamlogin.jpg)

Ubuntu gamers wanting to get right to action with Steam can now do so straight from the login screen.

Steam-login runs nothing but Steam’s Big Picture Mode. No fuss, no frills, just Steam.

Add in some wine support for some of those windows only games and I just may switch.