The Steam Linux Beta Begins...

[deanjo]

Would that serve either them or Linux though? Or only Apple?
Didn't they say from the very start that initially they'll have Ubuntu support and then develop for other distributions too?
I guess some people missed it. After the beta, It'll [should mostly] work on other distros as well anyway .... Not like I never used Ubuntu software on Arch etc ...

In this day and age of build services being freely available to build for a multitude of systems there is little reason to concentrate on one distro. It should have also been in a LSB compliant format.

[Rigaldo]

In this day and age of build services being freely available to build for a multitude of systems there is little reason to concentrate on one distro. It should have also been in a LSB compliant format.

I guess you're right. Promoting Apple won't help in any such direction though ..

[deanjo]

I guess you're right. Promoting Apple won't help in any such direction though ..

Well I'm not going to promote Ubuntu as a distro to use. If you are going to promote something for "Linux" then mean it. It drives me nuts when people use Linux as a synonym for Ubuntu.

[psycho_driver]

I didn't get in (unless it was one of the ones in my spam folder that I just deleted). I did list Ubuntu in their survey, and semi-honestly, because my wife's desktop runs it, and is very gaming capable. I would have been using it w/ gentoo, though.

Not terribly tore up about it, as I want to support Valve and the companies providing ports for their games financially, and I just wouldn't be able to do that at this exact point in time since I'm trying to close on a house.

PS - gaben for president!

[Rigaldo]

@psycho_driver

You can download it, login and you will probably realize whether you're in or not.

[chris200x9]

Does it even matter if Valve provide official support for other distros? People are already running it on Arch. It's even in the AUR.
Valve will probably support 1 or 2 popular distros like Fedora, debian, opensuse. Really after those distros, there is nothing major enough to even bother supporting.

Link to the AUR package?

[calubi]

Anyone try gamepad support?

Not too bad for me on Ubuntu 12.10 x64 + HD3000 graphics + Cinnamon on a MacBook Air. I'm impressed with what they've been able to do!

Notes:

• Quite a few graphical artifacts in the Steam UI (missing/corrupt textures).
• Font scaling seems to be excessively large (much larger than screenshots would lead me to believe).
• Generally very sluggish, and Big Picture mode complains about not enough VRAM available if I go to 720p. Never had a problem with this on OS X. I wonder if it has to do with texture compression support.
• In-game overlay seems to work like a charm!
• Several areas of the UI lock up the program and I have to 'kill -9' the Steam process.

I'm perfectly willing to chalk just about all of this up to the open-source drivers. I'm running the stock 12.10 drivers for HD3000, and have no intention of going with the x-swat PPA.

[andy_v]

Link to the AUR package?

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/steam/

[johnc]

Anyone try gamepad support?

Not too bad for me on Ubuntu 12.10 x64 + HD3000 graphics + Cinnamon on a MacBook Air. I'm impressed with what they've been able to do!

Notes:

• Quite a few graphical artifacts in the Steam UI (missing/corrupt textures).
• Font scaling seems to be excessively large (much larger than screenshots would lead me to believe).
• Generally very sluggish, and Big Picture mode complains about not enough VRAM available if I go to 720p. Never had a problem with this on OS X. I wonder if it has to do with texture compression support.
• In-game overlay seems to work like a charm!
• Several areas of the UI lock up the program and I have to 'kill -9' the Steam process.

I'm perfectly willing to chalk just about all of this up to the open-source drivers. I'm running the stock 12.10 drivers for HD3000, and have no intention of going with the x-swat PPA.

Just to clarify... you're running 64-bit Ubuntu and got an invite? Or are you just testing the Steam client?

[calubi]

Just to clarify... you're running 64-bit Ubuntu and got an invite? Or are you just testing the Steam client?

No invite, just testing using the friends list hack. I should have mentioned that.