Less than two weeks ago we reported on the
Mac OS X Steam client confirming the existence of a Linux client and then
found more Linux references too. We then found the
unreleased Steam Linux binaries that were
under active development. Some still didn't believe the existence of a Steam client for Linux with Source Engine support, but it's something we have
said for nearly two years based upon our sources and then the emergence of these binaries.
These Linux binaries didn't successfully run, but now some independent users managed to get the first Steam client window to appear. Below is the first screenshot of the Steam Linux client provided to us by a Phoronix reader known as Kame.

This is part of the window being rendered, but as you can see, Valve is still working away at their Linux client. The client is not yet in a usable state to play your favorite games (at least in the external builds), but you can see that it is coming. You can follow
this lengthy forum thread discussing their poking around of the Steam Linux build and
today's IRC logs (via
#phoronix on FreeNode IRC) as those independent users continued in their exploration efforts (search for
mastertheknife within that page as he was the user that managed to achieve this feat).
Update: Here's another screenshot we just received of the Steam client log-in window again running natively under Linux.
