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

Saw this and thought of this thread.

Blizzard Entertainment Planning A Linux Game For 2013

Cloud save for FLT on Windows Steam is only for your profile. It doesn't transfer a saved game for you to pick up from PC>laptop or whatever.

My list of games just keeps getting longer without me doing anything! More and more are becoming available automatically all the time.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/DX20Y.jpg)

Crusader king 2 is now available? It's not in the list yet!

CK2 shows up in my list too, but I don't think it's ready yet. Says "missing executable" when starting it.

Whoa!

Also Michael, why we no see you in TF2?

I setup Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on an old P4 3.4 with an Nvidia 7600 GS, but TF2 doesn't work.
1st with the default driver, there was no OpenGL installed, so I went to Menu->Preferences->Software Sources->Additional Drivers and installed the Nvidia driver.

TF2 tries to start but dies with a different OpenGL error. On the Steam forums, it looks like this definitely is the case for others with a 7600 or 7800 card. Hopefully this will be resolved soon so I can put this antique to some good use.

I did have Space Pirates and Zombies working just fine, as well as Solar 2 (even thought Solar 2 has a quirky workaround where you have to create your own Display.txt file to set the resolution correctly).

tboon wrote:

Whoa!

Also Michael, why we no see you in TF2? :)

I need to get back on fo sho! Lately I've been playing Skyrim like it's my job. Like some kind of Skyrim job. Audio work has also been eating up my desk time at home.

Wow, the rare quad-post! Thanks, iPhone'

I can't even play TF2 anymore. It tells me to use the Steam Beta client. Weird. Can't even see my inventory or connect to the store...nothing....

Michael wrote:

Wow, the rare quad-post! Thanks, iPhone'

That's what you get for letting the salesman talk you into buying the new quad-core model.

PRG013 wrote:

I setup Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon on an old P4 3.4 with an Nvidia 7600 GS, but TF2 doesn't work.
1st with the default driver, there was no OpenGL installed, so I went to Menu->Preferences->Software Sources->Additional Drivers and installed the Nvidia driver.

TF2 tries to start but dies with a different OpenGL error. On the Steam forums, it looks like this definitely is the case for others with a 7600 or 7800 card. Hopefully this will be resolved soon so I can put this antique to some good use.

I don't know if this is going to get fixed -- TF2 on NVIDIA cards relies on fixes only available in the latest driver, and those drivers have dropped support for those older cards. I guess there's a chance they'll extend that support to the legacy drivers, but it seems unlikely.

Backfilling quad-posts with pictures of kittens

IMAGE(http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16000000/Cute-Kitten-kittens-16096836-1280-800.jpg)

more kittens to replace quad post

IMAGE(http://nationalpetcenter.com/joomla/images/stories/COOL-KITTENS/coffee-cup-kittens.jpg)

pneuman wrote:

I guess there's a chance they'll extend that support to the legacy drivers, but it seems unlikely.

Drat. Even though these cards work under Windows.

CS : 1.6 Beta for Linux Live

http://steamcommunity.com/games/2214...

Half-Life 1 Beta released for Linux is also Live!

http://steamcommunity.com/games/2214...

CS1.6 for linux could be interesting I think. My (stereotyped) view is that there's a significant proportion of elderly PCs given to little Johnny and don't have the funds to upgrade hardware or OS, but do every little tweak to get the most out of that hardware, the kind that runs it on DX8 mode and drops every visual effect they can. Linux gives these guys a new avenue to pursue.

This was posted by MeatMan as well over here : http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

But it is nice I guess to have it in both.

Meatman's post linked below predates mine. Click through for a video of a recent talk by Gabe at UT.

django wrote:

CK2 shows up in my list too, but I don't think it's ready yet. Says "missing executable" when starting it.

I just tried CK2 and it worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04, so I guess they've fixed what was wrong.

Just letting everyone know that it might work for them know.

Sweet, the Steam for Linux sale is on!

The "on sale" games all have Linux versions on Steam, but the sale prices are valid regardless of the platform you play on.

EDIT: I picked up CK2, which is ten bucks. Most everything else on the list I either already owned or didn't want.

Don't miss getting your penguin in TF2.

Free Penguin

PRG013 wrote:

Don't miss getting your penguin in TF2.

Free Penguin

Thanks.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to go through the hassle, set aside a hard drive for dual boot, or something.... but there is a simple link to run off a USB stick. I think I could handle that for a penguin.

When the mac version was coming out, people were giving account details to people so they could get the ear buds. Just saying.

Scratched wrote:

When the mac version was coming out, people were giving account details to people so they could get the ear buds. Just saying.

Yeah that's how I got my earbuds. Changed password to something simple for a goodjer friend to help me out.

I have linux installed and TF2 on it. Willing to help out, just let me know.

A small FYI. Yesterday I was having a problem where TF2 would stall on startup and need to be killed. That bug is gone now and I now have a bird on my belt.

I also have TF2 on Linux fully installed, if anyone needs me to log in for them. PM me with the details, and I'll do it right away. (Don't give me your real password, make sure to change it to something else first.)

The recent update seems to have fixed the lag thing; it feels as responsive and fluid on Linux as it does under Windows. Then I started fiddling with sound, and finally got Linux to talk okay to my 5.1 sound setup, but that was fairly painful. I forgot to test whether TF2 now uses surround sound.

And then trying to set up network shares to run as nicely as they do on the Mac or Windows is really painful. On both those systems, you can store the credentials in an encrypted format, so that your local login decrypts the remote passphrase. But on Xubuntu, at least, the only password storage seems to be for the file browser, and its resources only work with programs that know how to talk to it. I was trying to use the DeaDBeeF player (stupid name, but it's pretty Foobar-ish, and works pretty well), and it absolutely would not use any file opened that way. The file browser file shares don't seem to actually exist in the filesystem, which is the way that Linux has done these things for-freaking-ever.

So then I saw a program called pyNeighborhood that's supposed to make this work better, but it wants to mount my remote share on /targetdir/WORKGROUP/SERVER/sharename. I have one major share I use, on my file server, and I want to just mount it on one target location, /home/username/fileshare. Really basic stuff. But I can't use the regular system facilities to do that, because if I just list it in /etc/fstab with credentials, then the credentials have to be in plaintext, so if my local machine gets hacked, my fileserver will be next, guaranteed.

What I finally settled on was using fstab with options of 'noauto,user,username=[redacted]'. This means I have to open a prompt and type 'mount fileshare', and then type in the share password, but at least the files will then work with everything.

Sometimes, when dealing with open source, I long for corporate control, or at least a gigantic newspaper I could whack open-source coders with. From what I can see, there are at least three, maybe four different systems for mounting network shares, and NONE of them work properly with everything. If they'd just mount the goddamn files under the goddamn directory tree, like the way every f*cking Unix program has worked for the last thirty years, none of this would be an issue. This is hard, and it should not be hard.

Malor wrote:

Sometimes, when dealing with open source, I long for corporate control, or at least a gigantic newspaper I could whack open-source coders with. From what I can see, there are at least three, maybe four different systems for mounting network shares, and NONE of them work properly with everything. If they'd just mount the goddamn files under the goddamn directory tree, like the way every f*cking Unix program has worked for the last thirty years, none of this would be an issue. This is hard, and it should not be hard.

FWIW, everything mounted via GVFS (the GNOME virtual filesystem layer) shows up at the real file system level, through the magic of FUSE. This used to happen under ~/.gvfs, but on Ubuntu 12.10 it's under "/run/user//gvfs". Apps that are GVFS-aware can just use GVFS directly, but those that aren't shouldn't have any trouble accessing the same files via the directories under that gvfs directory.

The passwords for GVFS mounts are stored in the GNOME keyring, which is encrypted on disk. It's usually set up so that it's unlocked automatically upon login, using the user's password.

EDIT: it looks like Thunar, the XFCE file manager, which is what I'm guessing you're using on Xubuntu, also uses GVFS, so all the above might Just Work for you even though you're not actually running GNOME.

Malor wrote:

And then trying to set up network shares to run as nicely as they do on the Mac or Windows is really painful. On both those systems, you can store the credentials in an encrypted format, so that your local login decrypts the remote passphrase. But on Xubuntu, at least, the only password storage seems to be for the file browser, and its resources only work with programs that know how to talk to it. I was trying to use the DeaDBeeF player (stupid name, but it's pretty Foobar-ish, and works pretty well), and it absolutely would not use any file opened that way. The file browser file shares don't seem to actually exist in the filesystem, which is the way that Linux has done these things for-freaking-ever.

So then I saw a program called pyNeighborhood that's supposed to make this work better, but it wants to mount my remote share on /targetdir/WORKGROUP/SERVER/sharename. I have one major share I use, on my file server, and I want to just mount it on one target location, /home/username/fileshare. Really basic stuff. But I can't use the regular system facilities to do that, because if I just list it in /etc/fstab with credentials, then the credentials have to be in plaintext, so if my local machine gets hacked, my fileserver will be next, guaranteed.

What I finally settled on was using fstab with options of 'noauto,user,username=[redacted]'. This means I have to open a prompt and type 'mount fileshare', and then type in the share password, but at least the files will then work with everything.

If you're using CIFS, there's an option for mount.cifs called "credentials" which you can point to a file of your choosing, though the file must of course be decrypted at mount time. If you have an encrypted home directory or some other storage that is automatically decrypted when you log in, you could set up autofs (rather than fstab) to mount on demand (e.g., the first time you 'cd' over) and read from that file (which would already be decrypted).

Also as pneuman mentioned I'm pretty sure you can do all this trivially with GNOME using only the GUI (e.g. gnome-keyring and Nautilus), and I'm pretty sure KDE has its equivalents. If you're using any of the more popular desktop environments all this stuff should be baked in and pretty painless.