Valve's Portal 2 Now In Beta On Linux

[Spittie]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM2Mzk

Not exactly soon, but better late than never

[mendieta]

(Excuse me for the silly question but I'm not a gamer, just buying this for the kids.)

How do you buy the beta if you don't already own the game or run Mac/Windows at all? You buy the regular Game (it only shows WIn/Mac support), and then download the Linux Beta version? Or is there a beta channel you can search games on?

[darkbasic]

You buy the game and then you enable the beta feature which will allow you to install it on linux.

[Gps4l]

Downloading, it just appeared in my games library

[mendieta]

You buy the game and then you enable the beta feature which will allow you to install it on linux.

Works like a charm, thank you! Downloading!

[GraysonPeddie]

Okay, downloading it now...

[jmcharron]

I really want to see Counter Strike: Global Offensive but this will have to do.

[zman0900]

You buy the game and then you enable the beta feature which will allow you to install it on linux.

It appears you don't even have to opt-in to the beta to get access. At least it's available for me, and I didn't have the beta selected.

[zman0900]

Damn Valve, this is awesome!

For some reason I'm not allowed to edit my previous post...

I was able to install without opting in to the beta, but the portal2.sh file had windows line endings and only referred to an OS x executable, so it didn't work at all. Enabling the beta was only an additional 60 MB download and now the game works amazingly well.

The game autodetected native resolution with mostly high settings, except no AA or AF, and is running smooth as anything. I am amazed at how well this is running. Better than what half life 2 does. Here's my setup:

Linux 3.13.5
Mesa 10.0.3
Llvm 3.4
GPU: radeon hd 7850 with radeonsi driver
CPU intel i7 3770
Monitor: 2560x1440

[johnc]

Pretty sure the way they're fixing this is to move every popular title (those MP titles with regular updates, like TF2, ...) to the upcoming OpenGL-based Source 2 Engine... says Pidgey.

The Source 2 engine is D3D with another crappy D3D -> OGL translation layer. Yeah maybe they'll get around to doing native OGL support in Source 2.

Just like maybe they'll get around to reading any of the millions of bug reports on github.

As a customer, I can't say I'm too impressed with Valve. They take your money and then drop off the planet to work on something else. JMO.