Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/steam/

by primesuspect • 13 years ago

328 122 13 years ago

apps.ubuntu.com

peatmoss• 13 years ago

Prediction: Half-Life 3 releases a week early on Linux in order to spur adoption.

simeng• 13 years ago

I think they are saving its release for the SteamBox.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

Heck, make it a month. It's not like it's that uncommon to release a game with difference of months between launches for each platform. I'd see a lot of people buying Steamboxes if they made HL3, Portal 3 and the next L4D exclusive for them for a month or so.

pplante• 13 years ago

there is no proof that valve can count to three.

vor_• 13 years ago

Seems like wishful thinking. It's more likely that, if they were to release early at all, it would be on a platform most likely to make them money, such as one of the consoles. However, I think it's most likely that they'll release on all the platforms at the same time because of SteamPlay. Holding back Windows and Mac versions for a week for political reasons would just piss people off for a week.

zanny3• 13 years ago

The thing is, they make the most money on the platform they take the most money per sale from. That is always going to be Linux, because in the long run, Apple and Microsoft can lock down OSX / Windows and the consoles are already taking per sale cuts for MS / Sony. Valve can only bet on desktop Linux (aka, not Android) to never stop arbitrary application installation.

iends• 13 years ago

Is there a list of supported games somewhere?

dz0ny3• 13 years ago

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/

thezilch• 13 years ago

Steam is also throwing a sale for the release of Steam for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/; ends February 21st, 18:00 GMT. Highly acclaimed "Team Fortress 2" is free to play: http://store.steampowered.com/app/440

notatoad• 13 years ago

Isn't TF2 permanently free since they shifted their revenue stream over to selling hats?

onli• 13 years ago

Yes it is, but it really is said to be a good choice out of the games available under linux.

Symmetry• 13 years ago

I don't normally buy TF2 hats, but if they offer a penguin hat for linux users I'll totally buy one to say "Thank you" for porting this to Steam.

rmk2• 13 years ago

While you are at it, go grab FTL (Faster Than Light)! Its reduced by 50% and quite frankly a fantastic space roguelike!

And Trine 2 is good fun and absolutely beautiful!

(Not associated with either, I just like them...)

tuananh• 13 years ago

You're right! I would add Bastion (currently $3.49) to the list as well.

dlat• 13 years ago

FTL is one of the games you shouldn't buy on steam. Buy it in the humble store: http://www.ftlgame.com/

chrislloyd• 13 years ago

If you're wanting to play on your own server we (Minefold YC W12) have just silently released TF2 support.</plug>

mwill2• 13 years ago

Since we're recommending things, spacechem is on that list and well worth a purchase. It does a good job of pulling out that feeling when you hack together a clever solution to something.

kibwen• 13 years ago

Seconded. If you're a programmer, you will fall in love with Spacechem. Not exaggerating when I say it's the greatest puzzle game I've ever played.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately as a follower of the Humble Bundles, I own quite a few of these activated on Steam already.

dz0ny3• 13 years ago

64bit version http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/pool/steam/s/steam/steam6...

thechut2• 13 years ago

Tried this on 64bit Mint install but having trouble. What are the dependencies?

dz0ny3• 13 years ago

just steam, also ubuntu software center should offer you 64bit version.

Notice: It's only metapackage for now, this probably means that 64bit version is coming.

pferate• 13 years ago

When I tried installing the 64-bit version on Kubuntu 12.10, I got a dependency error [steam64 depends on steam (= 1.0.0.27)].

I just downloaded the 32-bit version also and installed them both.

kzrdude2• 13 years ago

It's an empty package.

Finster• 13 years ago

Great. Now all we need to do is petition nVidia to kindly unfuck their drivers so we can get decent Optimus support (among other things).

pavanky• 13 years ago

I have been playing a few games (mostly crusader kings and trine) without having many issues with bumblebee. I have had to install an alternative to optirun called primusrun though.

Mavrik• 13 years ago

I suggest you petition Linus. Its the kernel devs which don't want to allow nVidia access to needed APIs for Optimus due to GPL pissing contest.

BiosElement• 13 years ago

I suggest you learn the situation before making ignorant, unfounded comments.

darxius• 13 years ago

I see this as a very big "win" for Linux. I can't wait to game tonight, thanks Steam.

Nux2• 13 years ago

This is a big win for Ubuntu+Nvidia; the other distros received a well placed "go fuck yourselves". This is like gaming on Macos being a win for BSDs. :-)

gtaylor• 13 years ago

It's running great on my Arch Linux + AMD setup.

larrik• 13 years ago

AMD can fix their drivers whenever they want.

Spittie• 13 years ago

Why only Nvidia? Intel improved their open source drivers thanks to Valve, and AMD pushed some updates related to Steam as well.

And, while Steam officially support only Ubuntu (at least for now), Valve doesn't do anything for stopping it to run on other distro. They even modified the license to explicitly allow repacking, so that others could put the client in their repo.

They host on their site a .tar.gz with the Steam installer for distro that don't support .deb too.

drivebyacct26• 13 years ago

There are already packages for Arch, and as per the new licensing terms for the client there's no reason it can't or won't be packaged for other distros. AMD also improved their drivers with Valve. Not sure where the hate is coming from.

Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Arch: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux#N...

renanbirck2• 13 years ago

Working nicely (from cursory testing of non-graphics-demanding games, anyway) on Arch + Intel graphics.

slurgfest• 13 years ago

There is absolutely no reason you cannot run these games on a distro other than Ubuntu.

ibrahima• 13 years ago

Working pretty great for me on my Ubuntu+AMD desktop. Laptop is a clusterfuck of drivers though, Linux switchable graphics support sucks :(

Edit: Though I haven't tried anything too fancy yet, just FTL and Bastion. So maybe 3D gaming might not be as good as Windows but that's mostly fine for me for now. I'm fine booting into Windows to get my Starcraft 2 fix.

kostya-kow• 13 years ago

I have AMD Radeon+Arch, and it works perfectly.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

Different Linux distributions are more binary compatible than BSD/OSX is.

Besides Steam has been repackaged for other distros but their official support is only for Ubuntu currently.

If they did start supporting other distributions it is difficult to know where that should end. Perhaps there is a case for supporting Fedora and perhaps Debian, but what about Slackware,Gentoo,Mint,Arch etc?

It would be impossible to guarantee it would work on every wacky distro out there.

BHSPitMonkey2• 13 years ago

A week or two ago, Valve gave distros the licensing go-ahead to repackage Steam in their own repositories.

matthewinrw• 13 years ago

This is a really important development -- games have been one of the big things missing on the Linux front (excluding android).

Excited to see where this leads!

waltz• 13 years ago

This day did come

noahl3• 13 years ago

I think most people are excited about Steam on Linux because of gaming, but I've actually been excited because of better driver support. If this makes Nvidia put more effort into their Linux drivers and tools, it will make life a lot better for CUDA programming too. (I haven't tried OpenCL or AMD GPGPU stuff yet.)

desireco42• 13 years ago

Yes, this will do wonders for linux support.

kunai• 13 years ago

Agreed, but it's doubtful that nVidia will support the Quadro (which is pretty much the best workstation chip around, and also what I use) just because of Steam. If anybody wants to render very complex gradients and shading using a regular GeForce, it's not going to be nearly as good as with a workstation-optimized chip. Many CAD apps are much slower on an nVidia gaming chip than they are on a workstation card.

So, at least for me, I'm still probably going to get left in the dark if I buy a new chip because support for the Quadros are egregious.

noahl3• 13 years ago

Interesting. Do you know why CAD programs are slower on gaming chips? I know the gaming cards sometimes have much worse double-precision performance than the GPGPU cards, but I must admit that I don't know what the difference is on any particular chip. It could also be a memory issue or something like that.

cube132• 13 years ago

The funny thing is that my experience with Quadro chips and gaming is that support is pretty much non-existant, even on Windows.

My work laptop has a Quadro GPU, and I did try Starcraft 2 on it. SC2 wouldn't actually recognize the chipset, so I was set on very low settings.

Raphael_Amiard• 13 years ago

> it will make life a lot better for CUDA programming too

Well having done quite a bit of CUDA programming under Windows and Linux, i'm interested in knowing what you find lacking on Linux ?

Performance wise i can report CUDA is just as fast on Linux as it is on windows.

Regarding tool support, i actually prefer to work under Linux, not because tools are better per se, but because your usual Unix tool chain does wonders with C++/CUDA. Under windows you have to struggle with Visual Studio just to get syntax highlighting.

There seems to be the profiler that is windows only. I never used it so i can't report on that.

EDIT : More generally, i've always found NVIDIA driver support for Linux to be very solid. Of course, it's closed source, but then so it is on Windows. I've never had a problem with an NVIDIA card on Linux, and i can't say that much about AMD/ATI.

epidemian3• 13 years ago

> More generally, i've always found NVIDIA driver support for Linux to be very solid.

I guess you haven't had any laptop with the Optimus technology (NVIDIA dedicated card + Intel integrated GPU). There no official NVIDIA Optimus support for Linux whatsoever :(

noahl3• 13 years ago

I've had some problems with the drivers, which is what I was referring to. Sometimes the computer will get into an unusable state and I don't know why.

There are also some odd issues with the tools. Did you know that CUDA-GDB will give an internal driver error if it can't write to /tmp? No description of what's wrong, just "internal driver error". That one took a while to figure out (and I wasn't the one who figured it out in the end).

I've never really programmed under Windows, so I don't know about the tool support, but I'm very happy with Linux development tools. I have actually used the Nvidia profiler under Linux, but I haven't figured out how to make it give me useful information.

gosu• 13 years ago

> There seems to be the profiler that is windows only. I never used it so i can't report on that.

nvvp? It works for me on Linux.

sn0v• 13 years ago

> There seems to be the profiler that is windows only. I never used it so i can't report on that.

You mean nvvp? Idk about earlier versions but it ships with CUDA 5 for Linux. I've used it too, works just dandy :)

Edit - Beaten to it by "gosu"

dualogy2• 13 years ago

> Performance wise i can report CUDA is just as fast on Linux as it is on windows.

Great. But definitely not the case for OpenGL last I checked (which admittedly is half a year ago).

networked2• 13 years ago

I wonder how representative my rather underwhelming experience with graphics drivers in Linux is.

The last time I was able to use ATI/AMD's proprietary driver without any problems was strangely enough with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro in an old version of SuSE Linux. Since then AMD's proprietary driver has caused me semi-regular GPU lockups on R520 (X1650), Evergreen (HD 5670) and Southern Islands (HD 7770) series cards. Nvidia's proprietary drivers seem to have fared better with three generations of their cards (7300 GT, the notorious 8600M GS, GT 240, GTS 250...), with an occasional X server crash when running a video game in Wine but few lockups. On the other hand, in the FOSS world I have experienced the opposite (AMD being better than Nvidia). The worst individual case was setting up GeForce GT 240 to work in Linux Mint 13 last year. The OS wouldn't boot with kernel mode setting on and starting X once it has booted without kernel mode setting gave me a screenful of RGB noise; my solution was to install the proprietary driver in text mode and then write a custom xorg.conf. The drivers for Intel's graphics seem the best so far if you use relatively modern chips (I have tried GMA X3100, GMA 3150, Intel HD Graphics 2000), however, I had no luck trying to get the legacy Intel Extreme Graphics 2 to work. It doesn't really work with Linux 2.6+, resulting in an image that flashes and rolls up and down the screen like a the picture on an analogue TV that's lost the vertical synchronization signal.

If my case is in any way typical then I'd say the drivers are in dire need of fixing.

Edit: clarity.

drivebyacct26• 13 years ago

Good god when was the last time you tried this and had to write an X.org conf file?

I have to write one when I switch from novareau to nvidia-proprietary but it's for a very specific reason - my monitor outputs invalid EDID information. Otherwise, you should never have to write a config file in almost all cases.

adestefan• 13 years ago

I think you'd be interested in a story from LWN[0] and the presentation that was given at linux.conf.au[1]

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/536538/

[1] http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/ogv/Linux_Gami...

DeepDuh• 13 years ago

Regarding CUDA programming: If you want to do this seriously do yourself a favor and get a test machine with a Fermi and/or Kepler card running a CLI-only linux and ssh in for testing. CUDA drivers run just fine on linux, it's one of the most common environments for HPC programming right now.

What I mean is you usually don't want to do this on your laptop. First, a high end laptop like a macbook can hold up for 4 years while GPUs need to be replaced regularly in order to develop for the latest newest capabilities. At some point you will also want to try Intel MIC, AMD cards and so on. Secondly, it's just much nicer if the system you're working on doesn't get hot.

Note: If it's for graphical tools with user frontend I can understand if you don't want to do this. Even then it could be interesting to have offsite computing capabilities baked in however, since this is also preferred in many graphics/video designer houses.

Sarkie• 13 years ago

The articles on this blog always interested me.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

drivebyacct26• 13 years ago

I would have liked to see the rest of the Source games released first. I feel like it would have given it more momentum.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

It supports 101 games. Not bad!

http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/

Afal• 13 years ago

Not quite. A lot of the 100 "games" are DLC for other games.

zokier• 13 years ago

60 games, 47 DLC. Don't know if this url works:

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_230_linux__12...

okor• 13 years ago

It's a big step forward. The games are getting better but they really need a knockout game to push the linux platform forward, something like Borderlands. Something epic. Artsy/Indie games only go so far. Still, happy things are moving forward.

AdrianRossouw2• 13 years ago

Also, from what I can tell, you should be able to unlock the indie bundle games in steam.

even if you don't buy anything, it might be a good show of support.

renanbirck2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, not all of the Humble Bundle games are available on Steam for Linux, even if they have Linux versions.

AdrianRossouw2• 13 years ago

I'm aware of that. But a lot of the ones i've seen, such as bastion, have steamplay support. This means that you only have to buy/reclaim them once, and they will be available on all different platforms.

It can't hurt to push up the number of titles that linux users have in their libraries.

ajross• 13 years ago

This is a link to some kind of Ubuntu app store thing. Where are the binaries we can download for other distros?

fletchowns• 13 years ago

There's a link to a .deb on this page: http://store.steampowered.com/about/

In another comment here somebody mentioned it contains a .tar.gz

zoko• 13 years ago

Here is a screenshot of my desktop running steam http://www.flickr.com/photos/zokatomicic/8474868290/in/photo...

spuz• 13 years ago

I wasn't able to download it. Clicking the link on this page took me to the Software Centre saying "Not Found - There isn’t a software package called “steam” in your current software sources.". So I go to the main landing page of the Software Centre and find a link to Steam there. There is a banner saying "Free" with a button "Buy" next to it. I click it and it asks me to log into to some sort of payment service...

I love linux and Ubuntu but this is the kind of thing that I am starting to get sick of having to deal with. Can't I just use apt-get?

TazeTSchnitzel• 13 years ago

For some reason, no, because it's delivered through Canonical's special proprietary software channel. I suppose having the account means you can redownload this freeware for free?

gnu8• 13 years ago

Agreed, this is not what I expected and this is not the Linux way. I guess I'll make a Ubuntu account so I can give Steam a once over, but if I wanted to be abused I'd just get a MAC.

jvert• 13 years ago

If you manually add the Valve repo at http://repo.steampowered.com then "apt-get steam" will do exactly what you expect. Or you can download the .deb from http://store.steampowered.com and install it.

improv32• 13 years ago

Direct link for the lazy: http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_lat...

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

Fantasizing wildly, I hope this is a step towards one day releasing Steam for Android. (Perhaps when Intel Android devices finally arrive?). I imagine that the next generation of mobile GPUs must have pretty close performance to desktop graphics chips from not too long ago - there must be a huge back catalogue that could be deployed if games could be ported relatively easily.

mkhpalm2• 13 years ago

Its too bad they don't package for debian sid/unstable.

gcb02• 13 years ago

ubuntu is trying to not be 'just another linux'. sadly they are using a lot of lock-in tactics similar to Sony since the 80's or apple more recently.

that said, they are the distro with the best live-usb installer by far.

drivebyacct26• 13 years ago

The debs work fine under debian/sid and most deb packages work fine between debian and ubuntu and the places where they don't are by some evil design. yeesh

zanny3• 13 years ago

Hey, Arch takes like, 5 minutes! You just do the exact same process (format -> bootstrap -> locales -> users).

Whats that about not knowing how to use visudo?

gcb02• 13 years ago

just fired up the Ubuntu Software Center and searched... i can't install it.

it show a button "buy..." instead of "install" and it's disabled.

teraflop• 13 years ago

Also, Team Fortress 2 for Linux [1] was officially released today (it's been in open beta testing for quite a while).

What I find particularly interesting about this is the time-limited item giveaway. Valve did something very similar when they released the OS X version of TF2, where anyone who logged in on a Mac received a free cosmetic "earbuds" item. The promo triggered a mad scramble of players to find a Mac to play on, and when it ended, the buds acquired a huge scarcity value -- they currently trade at the equivalent of about US$30 a pair, even though they have no effect on gameplay.

I don't think the penguin will end up valued as highly, but what it will cause is a sudden influx of relatively non-technical gamers trying out Ubuntu for the first time. Should be interesting to see what pain points and rough edges they expose. There are already tech support threads popping up in the Steam forums, e.g. [2]

[1] http://www.teamfortress.com/linux/

[2] http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30729...

sigkill2• 13 years ago

I'm quite amused by Valve's business decision. One may say that this is the logical next step but I'm smiling on the insides. I can't help but think that they're tryig to out-Microsoft MS. The embrace, extend, extinguish policy is obvious as day.

They waited all these years to gain a significant foothold in the Windows segment. Now that they've got this, we could see them slowly expanding to Mac first, and today Linux. I mean, it's certainly a huge incentive if you're given ready access to your game library on the other OS, even though you didn't expect it when you purchased the game on Windows months or even years ago. Screams of extend. I just wait to see if the market forces themselves will play the 'extinguish' card or will Valve play it?

Once Office and a decent number of games port over to the penguin, I'm really confident that the only people who use Windows will be (a) people who know nothing about computers and use whatever it came preinstalled with (b) at work since they're not allowed to format the computer (c) they need a very specific software that is not available on Linux or Mac (Ansys etc.)

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

The tipping point will when/if a major OEM starts offering a large quantity of their products with a Linux distro as the default OS (i,e you have to specifically select Windows).

Realistically Steambox would seem to be the most obvious place for this to start happening. Of course how much the Steambox will be a "real" Linux computer vs just a kernel+whatever the minimal software stack is required to get Steam running remains to be seen.

I wouldn't hold out much hope for an Office for Linux regardless of what Phoronix thinks. Porting office to Linux would be a tantamount to MS admitting they have given up on Windows and would probably hurt their stock price significantly.

From a technical point of view the biggest thing that would make Linux a viable choice for the majority of desktops would be a WINE layer that provides at least as good compatibility as Windows XP for Windows software thus allowing legacy VB6 etc stuff to be moved over.

dualogy2• 13 years ago

> I'm really confident that the only people who use Windows will be (a) people who know nothing about computers and use whatever it came preinstalled with (b) at work since they're not allowed to format the computer (c) they need a very specific software that is not available on Linux or Mac

Or OpenGL graphics programmers who find the state of drivers under Linux, while a lot better than years ago, still sub-optimal compared to Windows...

jebblue• 13 years ago

Congratulations Valve! This is good news although unusual timing considering the layoff story that came out recently, but this is good news!

mck-• 13 years ago

If you click on 11.04 or 10.04 versions, you get:

Environment for cooperative knowledge management

sTeam provides a technical platform which allows groups of students, lecturers and any other groups to construct and arrange their individual and cooperative learning and working space...

I suppose it only runs on 12.04 and up?

buro92• 13 years ago

Uh-oh, Counter Strike: Source is available on Linux... there goes my startup.

buro92• 13 years ago

I'm spared, it doesn't yet work. Guess I best get back to work.

AimHere• 13 years ago

In the interests of truthiness, it might be a local issue for you - CS:Source works fine for me on Linux, but perhaps you should get your startup started up before investigating further...

jrogers65• 13 years ago

It's a happy day. I was considering installing Windows so I could dual boot on my Arch machine but this has made me reconsider. I remember how years ago, on KDE2, wine barely ran anything and the best games available on *nix were things like NetHack. What a long way it's come! Now we have a prominent gaming platform and ports of some excellent premium games. Things like this are edging GNU/Linux towards mainstream success on the desktop.

I think that one thing which would help here is a more complete gaming API ala DirectX. We can already achieve this with OpenGL/SDL/OpenAL/whatever good networking libraries there are but a project which aggregates these into one would be beneficial, in my opinion.

kzrdude2• 13 years ago

Hey, we had Heroes III, 13 years ago. http://www.lokigames.com/products/heroes3/ (Also the only commercial title ever to grace Linux/PPC.)

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

I read in the comments that you can also get it to run on other distros than Ubuntu. Does this also apply to the games you install through it though? I use Archlinux. Thanks!

Official Steam client for Ubuntu released

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