Evidence Suggests Steam is Coming to Linux
Steam rolling to Linux?
When Valve announced that Steam was coming to Mac, Linux users from all over were wondering if this meant that they would be getting their own version too. After all, porting Steam and the Valve Source Engine games to OpenGL and WebKit meant that they're no longer tied to Windows.
Now Phoronix has taken a look at a beta version of Steam for Mac and found evidence that suggests Valve is working on a port for Linux as well.
Inside the launcher is a script that checks the platform for whether it is OS X or Linux, which would be nonsense unless Valve was really working on Linux.
#!/bin/bash
# figure out the absolute path to the script being run a bit# non-obvious, the ${0%/*} pulls the path out of $0, cd's into the# specified directory, then uses $PWD to figure out where that# directory lives - and all this in a subshell, so we don't affect# $PWD
STEAMROOT=$(cd "${0%/*}" && echo $PWD)
#determine platformUNAME=`uname`if [ "$UNAME" == "Darwin" ]; then PLATFORM=osx32 # prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="${STEAMROOT}"/${PLATFORM}:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATHelif [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ]; then
PLATFORM=linux32
# prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${STEAMROOT}"/${PLATFORM}:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
fi
if [ -z $STEAMEXE ]; then STEAMEXE=steamfi
ulimit -n 2048
# and launch steamcd "$STEAMROOT"
STATUS=42while [ $STATUS -eq 42 ]; do ${DEBUGGER} "${STEAMROOT}"/${PLATFORM}/${STEAMEXE} $@ STATUS=$? # are we running osx? if [ $STATUS -eq 42 -a ${PLATFORM} == "osx32" -a -f Info.plist ]; then # are we running from in a bundle? exec open "${STEAMROOT}"/../.. fidoneexit $STATUS
Linux users, keep your fingers crossed!

STEAM is going to Mac, and possibly Linux. Personally, I'm still doubtful that will suddenly introduce a shift and make developers make games for Linux and Mac, considering regardless of Steam's shift, DirectX, the most popular graphics API right now for better or for worse, is not on those platforms.
lol, I think most of the windows kiddies wont get that comment.....
linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00512000)
libtier0_s.so => not found
libvstdlib_s.so => not found
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00110000)
libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/mesa/libGL.so.1 (0x0022d000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x00b06000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0x0085a000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0x0071a000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0x006e4000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0x00b87000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00522000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0x008e6000)
libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00aa2000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x00292000)
libXxf86vm.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXxf86vm.so.1 (0x006ce000)
libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXdamage.so.1 (0x00bee000)
libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0x00cad000)
libdrm.so.2 => /lib/libdrm.so.2 (0x002a2000)
libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0x002ad000)
libexpat.so.1 => /lib/libexpat.so.1 (0x005f5000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00be6000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x004d5000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0x002c2000)
Here's the result of running ldd on one of the support libraries, vgui2_s.so. Basically, listing all of the includes/shared libs the program needs to run. While this doesn't necessarily point to an official release, at least it shows some active development is going on with a native Steam client (Dedicated server has no need for Mesa's GL, X11 support, etc).
Here's a link to the forum post on the topic, with download links for the files.
On the support website
Go to ask a question, then select category Steam questions, then subcategory Feedback. Select product Steam. Or whatever you want to do to get to the end result. I believe this news is going to make many people happy.
As far as I know, you buy once and play on whatever machine you can run Steam on. I think they call it Steam Play or something like that.
+1 HAHAHA!
It's the fact that it has to start from somewhere. Someone like Steam porting their support towards Linux is great for the Linux community. Hopefully other people will show some support and get other companies to follow suit...
The other hope I had a long time ago, was for the Unreal Engine to expand into multi-platform games. UT3 never made it to Linux, and UT3 user-base never got to be as large as UT2004.
I like valve, who doesn't, Half-Life 2, EP1, and EP2 is the best, the best game I have ever played (I take new suggestions).
Porting a program like Steam is far, FAR different than porting an entire game engine from one graphics API to another. Also contributing to this is that hardware developers themselves are supporting DirectX over OpenGL, further making a shift less likely.
Yes, it could happen. But spurred by something as simple as Steam now available to what, ~15%, if that, of the OS market? Ehh...