It's Official: Valve Releasing Steam, Source Engine For Linux!

[Dragonlord]

Hmm I still believe most of the art work and audio is superficial compared to the source code. I believe the problem with Linux is actually the fact that it's so sparse. Making a game that will easily fit on many distributions is the nightmare. The support problems will be the major issue. I think this is why it's far easier to port a Linux engine back to windows than Win to Linux.

If you do it the right way cross-platform is a no-brainer. Problem is only that nobody did it right so far ( besides other reasons to keep this crappy licensing business model of theirs alive <.=.< )... and Source did not even tries to begin with :P

[Remco]

If you do it the right way cross-platform is a no-brainer. Problem is only that nobody did it right so far ( besides other reasons to keep this crappy licensing business model of theirs alive <.=.< )... and Source did not even tries to begin with :P

Source and all Valve games run on a Unix-like system called Mac OS X. Please provide citations from the source code to back up your claims that it isn't portable.

[jrgp]

Interesting, valve seems to have 403'd http://store.steampowered.com/public...m_client_linux

So much for the public unreleased beta updates. :-/

[Yezu]

Any news?

Sooooo... Any news from Valve on the subject?

[yogi_berra]

Well...
I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but it would have to be exceedingly rare. First of all, most studios don't consider Linux to be anywhere near a viable platform - hell, most studios are just now again seeing Windows as a viable platform, which is in no small part thanks to Valve and Steam.

That is a nice generalization. Here is another nice generalization: A lot of studios don't care about fixing the bugs in their shipped product. See generalizing is fun! Who cares if it leads to false or misleading statements?

Linux is somewhat widely used for things like video and audio editing and post processing, offline rendering, etc. As an actual target for game development (released or not), not so much, and I know this first-hand.

Who said anything about Linux being a development target? Bug fixing is what is important, compiling your code on multiple platforms with multiple compilers will expose more bugs than one platform and one compiler. Some studios compile on linux simply to expose and fix bugs.

This is why the possibility of Steam coming to the platform is such a big deal, and I happen to think it may well be very good for Valve to be the first.

Its really just a rumor until Valve announces it.

But I have yet to see a first or second tier studio that does PC development do hands-on Linux development of their titles as well.

And you've worked at how many tier one and two studios?

[yogi_berra]

Source and all Valve games run on a Unix-like system called Mac OS X. Please provide citations from the source code to back up your claims that it isn't portable.

Mac OS X is Unix. Linux and *BSD are Unix-like.

[Vash63]

Sooooo... Any news from Valve on the subject?

Of course not. Phoronix calling something official means about as much as trusting random people on valve's forum. There's still a good chance it will happen but I wouldn't expect to hear anything in the next few weeks.

[Zhick]

Mac OS X is Unix. Linux and *BSD are Unix-like.

Also not quite correct. Not that it matters, but since you're already being a smartass I'll be a smartass too :P: Mac OS X and *BSDs are Unix, and Linux is Unix-like.

[Svartalf]

They have to port it and porting equals to costs and time expenses (for business suits). You can not simply put your Windows game on Steam and "poof" it works on Linux.

No, but Steam's one of Elecorn's delivery platforms (the discussion forums for the game are over there in the Steam forums...) and there's a few other studios doing the same thing. Not that I'm for that- but the picture's a bit different than you're painting it.

You're right, however, in that Steam's not going to magically make games happen for Linux. All Steam and other plays like them do is take the bar for publishing down a couple of pegs. Now...Source coming to Linux makes for some games being a much easier port than previously, the ease being dependent on how badly they did their game code.

[Svartalf]

Touche. And you're right, of course, but they haven't done anything in what seems like ages. I know Rage is supposed to get Linux binaries, but that's also something that is, I would say, at least one to two years out. But, you are correct.

One shouldn't resort to that sort of hyperbole unless it's accurate...

My point, though, was simply that it's a rare thing. And studios developing for Linux to keep portability an option, and not releasing their Linux binaries, is even rarer.

I'd concur with the effort being done as a rarity.

I wouldn't know about the second, though. There's been a few examples of this in the past, with Blizzard being one of those notables doing it at least once in their past with WoW.