Valve Has A Christmas Present For Linux Gamers

Valve will allow many more Linux gamers to participate in the Steam Linux client beta testing at the start of next week.

At the beginning of this month, Valve greatly expanded their closed Linux beta program to include many more gamers to help test their Steam Linux client and their Source Engine games running natively on Linux. So far those results have been quite positive and they have collected a lot of valuable feedback. (Note: For those who play Team Fortress 2, Valve recently released an update to the game that dramatically improves the performance when using AMD Radeon hardware with the Catalyst driver.)

Valve is becoming quite comfortable with the state of their Linux activities so beginning next week will be a more "open" beta program. If you're a Linux gamer who wasn't yet selected to be part of the beta program, you should be able to gain access in time for the holidays. Help them test out their Linux ports to ensure the Valve Linux-based game console will be a great success.

With the more open beta program, Valve has also now allowed me to publish Source Engine Linux game benchmarks. There's been a few problematic points so far, but expect those performance results soon for a variety of graphics cards and drivers.