July 16, 2012

Another Sign Of The (Linux Gaming) Times - The Steam Client Cometh

More and more gaming news for Linux just keeps pouring in this week! Just a short post that over on Phoronix, they have pointed out that there is a new blog over at Valve Software.....entitled....get ready for it....are you ready? Ok. It's called "Valve Linux: A blog by the Valve Linux Team"! Yes, you read that right. The Valve Linux Team.

There's a lot of goodness to digest here but to keep from being redundant just go to the links above get the official blog post, as well as the Phoronix link to get their take on the post and some thoughts and implications as to what it all means. To Phoronix's credit they have followed this story for a very long time, so it's good to see them get the credit of being the first to float the idea out there, as well as to keep on the story and sticking by their words even in the midst of a lot of doubters. Good job, Michael.

The one thing I will note specific to the concerns of this blog and presumably our readers, however, is that the first (and perhaps only) supported Linux flavor for Valve is Ubuntu. That should mean that we as Kubuntu users (and you, if you are using a (K)Ubuntu-based derivative like Linux Mint KDE or Netrunner) will get a supported OS out of the gate. I use the word should because, as we saw with the Desura client for Linux, there were things about Desura that just do not play well with Kubuntu. The developers assumptions apparently were that everyone using a 'Buntu based system uses GTK. On our systems, many Desura linux games will simply not run due to missing libraries that are not present by default in Kubuntu. Let's hope there's nothing like this on the horizon for Valve.

All in all this is pretty big news. Big for Valve, and we must acknowledge that this is also very big for Canonical. And by extension, big for Kubuntu users. And having Steam on Linux will certainly push Linux more into the PC gaming limelight.


No comments:

Post a Comment