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Penguins Get Game: Steam for Linux Beta Is Ready For Action

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News Posted: Tue, Nov 6 2012 5:45 PM
If you’re a regular here, you already know that Valve has been working up a Linux-flavored dish of Steam for some time. You might’ve even been one of the reportedly more than 60,000 people who put their names in the pool for the upcoming Beta. Scratch that – the existing Beta. The Steam for Linux Beta is up today with support for Team Fortress 2 and several other Steam games.

In addition to TF2 and other titles, Steam for Linux Beta also supports Big Picture, the feature that lets you play on a TV. Right now, Steam for Linux Beta supports Ubuntu 12.04. Valve opted for the Ubuntu distro based on feedback from Steam users who also use Linux, but it plans to add more distro support down the road. User feedback will direct the order of these distro adds, too.
 

Steam For Linux Beta Supports Team Fortress 2

The big question for all of us (including Windows users): Is this a Big Deal? After all, Steam for Linux isn’t appearing out of the blue, and neither is Valve’s support for Mac. Gabe Newell, Valve’s founder, has made clear that he thinks Windows 8 is bad news for gamers (and for everyone, in fact). Blizzard has weighed in with a similar, if slightly less harsh, assessment of the shiny new operating system.

Meanwhile, Linux his getting a lot of attention from the gaming community. Nvidia recently released new GeForce drivers that should vastly improve gaming performance on Linux systems, and it’s already been reported that Left 4 Dead 2 runs faster on Linux than it does on Windows 7.

So, what do you think? Are you excited to see Valve’s push into Linux (or Mac, for that matter), or are you gaming on Windows 8 and wondering what all the fuss is about?
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realneil replied on Tue, Nov 6 2012 8:35 PM

Lets try it out,..............(smiles)

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

(Mark Twain)

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RWilliams replied on Tue, Nov 6 2012 9:34 PM

So stoked. Interested to see if it'll run under my usual distro (not Ubuntu-based).

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3vi1 replied on Wed, Nov 7 2012 3:33 PM

> "Is this a Big Deal?"

Yes. The only people saying it's not a big deal now are the ones who have for years disparaged Linux for the desolate state of gaming options. To the tens of millions of Linux users that have had to do their higher-end gaming via Wine, where there's a lack of vendor support, this is huge.

This is entirely different than when Steam came to the Mac. You can't use your existing hardware, or throw together just any combination of PC components and make use of Steam for Mac.  With Steam for Linux, you can make an awesome little entertainment box for your big-screen TV that boots directly into the 10 foot interface.

What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?

++++++++++++[>++++>+++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>+++.>++++++++++.-------------.+++.>---.>--.

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