Valve is preparing Steam for Linux (again)

[kynes]

Any distribution that you recommend for someone who hasn't used linux regularly for eons, and wants to try steam?

[Bm4n]

Unfortunately, Ubuntu is the only one that officially supports it right now, if you want to download and install Ubuntu. If you want a slightly more advanced system, in Fedora, adding a repository where they carry Steam and installing it works perfectly.

[cobito]

In fact, there is official packaging not only for Ubuntu but also for Arch, OpenSUSE and Mageia 3 Beta. The latter added the package to its official repositories a few days ago and it works wonderfully.

However, as Bm4n says, the easiest option is probably Ubuntu.

[cobito]

As of today, Half Life 2, Eposidio 1, and Lost Coast are available for Linux.

On the other hand, Garry Newman, the creator of the popular Garry's Mod that allows us to play with the physics of Havok and Source, has said that his creation will soon be available for Linux.

Between the games and the mods, the Source engine is going to give a lot of trouble in the GNU system. For now, Valve has already managed to achieve great advances in the drivers of nVidia and Ati. And those that are yet to come.

To finish, Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, has stated that SteamBox, the company's console will run on Linux and that it will possibly be presented at the LinuxCon that will be held between the 16th and the 18th of September.

It seems to be the definitive end of the divorce between Linux and games. It remains to be seen the hardware with which the SteamBox will be motorized, although "out there" it is said that it will integrate Ati GPUs, which could give the push that its proprietary drivers need.

[Tecnho]

Great news, let's see if it goes ahead and so it gives me more desire to use more linux that I have it very parked.

[Tecnho]

This weekend I've been running steam in for a bit, for now I'm playing civilization V and it's going very well, what games have you tried? I'm using ubuntu on a low-end lenovo laptop with i3 and integrated intel graphics, the laptop is a b590.

[cobito]

So far I have only tested titles with Source engine. The performance is quite good although you only get the most out of it with Nvidia's proprietary drivers (the free ones are terrible).

In the case of AMD, their free drivers get pretty close to the proprietary ones when running Source. In fact, my recommendation for Radeon HD6000 models and older would be to forget about the proprietary driver.

For Intel, I have checked that the performance is poor with HD2xxx, HD4000 and HD4600, but these GPUs don't have any oomph in 3D, neither in Linux nor in Windows nor in anything.

[Tecnho]

Mine has an HD4000, obviously not for gaming, and I only play light games like civilization and at most a CS, I've only tried it, but it works pretty well and for the use of the laptop that my mother mostly uses, she says it works much better than with Windows XD so I'll keep trying it.

[cobito]

@Tecnho:

Mine has an HD4000 obviously it's not for gaming and I only put some light ones like civilization and at most a CS I've only tried it, but it works pretty well and for the use that is given to the laptop that my mother mostly uses, she says it works much better than with windows XD so I will keep testing.

Intel GPUs are the best for 2D use in Linux. They have a response and stability superior to Nvidia and AMD since their drivers are the most complete in the Linux ecosystem in addition to being free, which allows application developers to know how they work and optimize programs. Intel's free drivers, unlike those from AMD and Nvidia, are developed by Intel itself so their quality is guaranteed.

[Bm4n]

They had to have something good jajaja, I am very happy with steam on ubuntu with the i3 and the integrated one I am playing a few very cool games, in 3D at a minimum and the old ones and above all I use it to play indie games.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[krampak]

And 6 years later...

Steam will stop supporting Ubuntu Linux

[cobito]

Just in case the news leads to confusion, Valve will stop supporting Ubuntu, but will continue to produce Steam for Linux. The rest of the distributions have been packaging the client and its dependencies from the very beginning, which is what Canonical will have to do from now on. Surely for a few months the distro users will have some problems in the transition, but nothing that can not be solved in future versions.

When Steam for Linux came out, in Mageia it was not so easy to make it work if you did not use unofficial repositories and even then there were problems. For some time now, installing it is as simple as installing the package maintained by Mageia.