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 $STATUS
Linux users, keep your fingers crossed!
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Woot! Maybe more games will come to linux so I can ditch Window$ completely. Games are the only thing holding me back.
Woot! Maybe more games will come to linux so I can ditch Window$ completely. Games are the only thing holding me back.
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.
Oh this would be a great day indeed! Games hold me back from making a complete switch BUT not having native support for Photoshop (GIMP BLOWS MONKEY BALLS, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE TRIES TO TELL ME) is a reaaaal let down. I NEED PHOTOSHOP DAMNIT! I have CS4 loaded with Wine through a work-around but it still is not enough. I need native Linux support. Only god knows if this will ever happen. C'MON VALVE! GIVE ME STEAM!
Holy smokes man! This is awesome.
This isn't too surprising since Steam is coming to Macs and Macs run on UNIX, but it's still cool and a definite plus for the computer gaming industry. Hope it works well!
all in favor of linux say YUM .....
SWEET!
I've been tracking this all day at Phoronix. There are files to be had - including said launcher, a binary, and support libraries (the latter including references to Linux-only libraries). Nothing too functional yet (I would assume due to a very closed authentication scheme on the prelease stuff).
You guys pretty much nailed it. Games + Photoshop = me on Linux full time. I WANT to go to Linux; just need the apps to be there.
all in favor of linux say YUM .....
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.
If you guys like this, you should contact Steam at their support page and show your enthusiasm.
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.
If Steam goes to Linux, I will never run Windows again....period.
I got a question. Does that mean if I bought games like Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike etc. I can play them on all Operating Systems for no extra charge? Or do I have to buy each copy again, for each operating system?
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.
lol, I think most of the windows kiddies wont get that comment.....
+1 HAHAHA!
Ok now they need to take over the development of OpenGL and finally update it. Create a new modified standard if they need to, but having a bunch of CAD/CAM manufactures holding up the process is just too much. That and reverse engineer DirectX ... or somehow get MS to release code / binary's for the Linux world (yeah I can dream).
Sounds really cool, lets hope this goes on and others take part in this, not just steam.
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.
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...
What we really need is a fully immersive game platform. For example, Second Life could be used to "walk" from one game to the other. However, at the moment Second life's graphics suck, and their direction seems to try to cover too much.
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).
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...
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...
Nice one steam. Kudos!
I'd love for Steam to move to Linux, but like most things I wish for, they disappear into the furnace vent/suggestion box
Speaking seriously though, even if they put the platform on Linux distributions, I could count the games I know of one one hand that have native Linux support that I would actually play right now.
I got a question. Does that mean if I bought games like Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike etc. I can play them on all Operating Systems for no extra charge? Or do I have to buy each copy again, for each operating system?
You don't have to buy them again for another OS, just like you don't have to buy them again to play on another PC.
I so hope this happens. Ubuntu and I would become the bestest friends and windows would become a virtual machines(7, Vista, XP) since I would just use Office and the really nice windows programming tools.
Ok now they need to take over the development of OpenGL and finally update it.
You know OpenGL 4.0 is finalized, right? Feature parity with Direct3D 11? They even back-ported a lot of the features in 4 to the new 3.3 point update for older hardware.
Yeah this is only for game servers... don't hold your breath on getting actually game support. The open source community is more concerned with purity than making the platform closed source games friendly. That and PC gaming with OpenGL is a minority of a Gaming minority with the dominance of the console market.
I know its been said before, but I'll say it again, games are basically the main reason holding me back from natively running linux. And in my opinion the main reasons why Linux is not more widely excepted.
There are plenty of Linux distro's for basic things like office work and browsing the internet, but not to the high end consumer. Whom of which, by the way, are the ones that set the trends for the rest of the market to follow.
(GIMP BLOWS MONKEY BALLS, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE TRIES TO TELL ME)
Photoshop is better at most things but far too few designers use more than a fractions of capabilities of either application. It's rather a matter of habit: if you invested as much time (years) in using GIMP as you did in using Photoshop, you'd probably have a more balanced view. Plus Photoshop is $700 (+ at least $200 per upgrade yearly) and takes up a few gigabytes while GIMP is $0 and is a 18 megabytes download.
And perhaps most importantly, GIMP liberates you from any proprietary OS. Tomorrow Microsoft could charge $500 for a Vista-like mess and you'd be stuck with it because you need Photoshop and only Photoshop.
Not necessarily, after all mac os x is just a very beautiful version of linux.
Not necessarily, after all mac os x is just a very beautiful version of linux.
What? If you mean beautiful as in crippled old BSD.
I'll keep my Linux thank you.