Steam’d Penguins

E

Elimentals

Honorary Master
Joined
Dec 11, 2010
Messages
10,819
Reaction score
15
Location
PE
Steam’d Penguins

Steam’d penguins? Is it a recipe for an exotic South Pole dish? Perhaps it’s one of those bizarre YouTube videos of penguins in a sauna cavorting with the Swedish Bikini team?

The truth is that this is the first post of the Valve Linux blog. This blog is where you can find the latest information from Valve about our Linux development efforts. Avoid the rumors and speculations that multiply on the Web. Instead, come to the source – a blog where people who are interested in Linux and open source game development can get the latest information on Valve’s efforts in this arena. In this initial post, we’ll introduce the team (and a bit of its history) and then give you a snapshot of what we’re currently doing.

Big Things Have Small Beginnings

For some time, Gabe has been interested in the possibility of moving Steam and the Source game engine to Linux. At the time, the company was already using Linux by supporting Linux-based servers for Source-based games and also by maintaining several internal servers (running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu server) for various projects. In 2011, based on the success of those efforts and conversations in the hallway, we decided to take the next step and form a new team. At that time, the team only consisted of a few people whose main purpose was investigating the possibility of moving the Steam client and Left 4 Dead 2 over to Ubuntu.

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

After successfully porting L4D2 to Ubuntu, interest grew within Valve and, as a result, the team and projects we were working on also grew. Currently, our focus is on the following projects:

getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality
optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL
porting additional Valve titles

Current Projects

The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. We’ve made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We’re still giving attention and effort to minor features but it’s a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.

Since the Steam client isn’t much without a game, we’re also porting L4D2 to Ubuntu. This tests the game-related features of the Steam client, in addition to L4D2 gameplay on Ubuntu. Over the last few months, excellent progress has been made on several fronts and it now runs natively on Ubuntu 12.04. We’re working hard to improve the performance and have made good progress (more on that in a future post). Our goal is to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows.

We’ll be posting more information about those projects (and others) on a regular basis. Since this is a new effort for the team, we’d love to hear your opinions about the blog so shoot us an email. We also encourage you to leave comments and ideas for future postings. We want this to be a community of game developers, communicating with each other and talking about current efforts and future efforts in a powerfully creative environment.

After all, isn’t that what open source is all about – the idea that collaboration and teamwork achieve amazing things?
Click to expand...

Source Steam

Finally!! after how many years...
 
This is good news, hope they stay motivated to keep support for Linux.

This will draw a host of people to try and finally migrate to Linux.
:D
 
Yes, but most games will work with opengl so in theory it should be rather simple to convert most titles to Linux.

The problem is that there is so many bugfixes, patches and whatnot after a release that the developers rarely have the motivation to work on any Linux ports, lets hope things change.
 
Fudzy said:
Won't the availability of games depend on the developers?
Click to expand...

Yes. I don't see games like Crysis, Assassins Creed etc coming to linux. What you will however see is a lot of Valve's own source engine games. Other games you could possibly see are those ported to OS X that uses opengl.
 
ponder said:
Yes. I don't see games like Crysis, Assassins Creed etc coming to linux. What you will however see is a lot of Valve's own source engine games. Other games you could possibly see are those ported to OS X that uses opengl.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd imagine anything with a Games for Windows logo will be locked in. I wonder what route EA will take? If Valve *nix takes off there should be a Origin port.
 
Fudzy said:
Yeah I'd imagine anything with a Games for Windows logo will be locked in. I wonder what route EA will take? If Valve *nix takes off there should be a Origin port.
Click to expand...

No doubt EA will wait to see if Valve succeeds before they follow with an Origin client for Linux
 
Mouse said:
No doubt EA will wait to see if Valve succeeds before they follow with an Origin client for Linux
Click to expand...

Read somewhere the other day about some delivery platform where the linux users generally donate more than money than their windows counterparts for the apps. Can't remember much else.
 
ponder said:
Read somewhere the other day about some delivery platform where the linux users generally donate more than money than their windows counterparts for the apps. Can't remember much else.
Click to expand...

That you can normally see on the Humbebundle deals, I have a feeling you probably saw an article based on those stats.

See the last one's stats:
4DPRs.jpg
 
Last edited:
MyWorld said:
This is good news, hope they stay motivated to keep support for Linux.

This will draw a host of people to try and finally migrate to Linux.
:D
Click to expand...

No it won't
I honestly do not know why they bother, I cannot imagine even 1% of their user base being linux.
 
kolaval said:
No it won't
I honestly do not know why they bother, I cannot imagine even 1% of their user base being linux.
Click to expand...
What is the single most largest argument for young people not trying out Linux?

And why is their user base only 1%? It is 1% now, but with proper Steam support it will at least rival/surpass Mac.

I'm perfectly fine with the way things are now, I have always hacked my way to a playable game and if that did not scratch the itch, was content to play the FOSS games. But that is me, a Linux geek. I'm all for progress and competition is never a bad thing and to drive innovation in the OS market we need that desperately.
I'm a Linux fanboy and I never hid that fact, but I'm rooting for innovation on all fronts so that we can have a more awesome computing experience.
 
kolaval said:
No it won't
I honestly do not know why they bother, I cannot imagine even 1% of their user base being linux.
Click to expand...
I can take a stab at why they bother.

1. Windows (or rather M$) is bringing out their own game content delivery platform soon, much like you know steam now, ect built into the Windows Live stuff, ie. with MSN ect integration I assume. Which mean they will be a direct competitor to Steam on Windows.

2. There are people that believe or suspect that Valve might want to bring out their own game console, and what would be easier and more affordable, than a Linux based console.

Speculations at best, I know, but who knows?


ps. If the games I want will work on Linux and delivered via steam, I would be a client and pay for it. I have already bought titles in the past, but mostly don't because I am not really a massive fan of booting into Windows all the time.
 
Tinuva said:
1. Windows (or rather M$) is bringing out their own game content delivery platform soon, much like you know steam now, ect built into the Windows Live stuff, ie. with MSN ect integration I assume. Which mean they will be a direct competitor to Steam on Windows.
Click to expand...

That's been out for a while already.
 
kolaval said:
No it won't
I honestly do not know why they bother, I cannot imagine even 1% of their user base being linux.
Click to expand...

Have you ever been to the Steam forums? Judging by the excitement and the fact that there have been countless threads over the years calling for a Linux client they're probably a sizeable amount, probably still a minority but a very active money-spending minority, just like the Mac guys.

Many people over there even refuse buy games if it has GFWL such is the hate for Microsoft.
 
Last edited:
Elimentals said:
No one is stopping you?

You can get a console for games or try and get your games to work via wine. I did a combo of both.
Click to expand...

I am stopping me. My knowledge of Linux is limited to running a live CD and installing it...
I am trying Linux and Play on Linux on my laptop but I'm not comfortable enough to migrate completely.
You mean a console like Ps3 of Xbox? Maybe one day when I'm earning a salary...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X