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

[Setlec]

@Gokumon: i feel like talking to a wall, nevermind!

@Almindor: what? no lib stability?, you are kidding, right? Oh i might understand what you mean when you make your binary yo link it to use a certain version of it located at /usr/lib/* right? in that case you should provide the libs that you binary require within your package rpm/deb/bin/whatever. As snuwoods said most games that has been ported to linux like the ones already quoted + some few others tend to provide everything and sometimes it does require installing libSDL-1.2.so!

[nanonyme]

Almindor: what? no lib stability?, you are kidding, right? Oh i might understand what you mean when you make your binary yo link it to use a certain version of it located at /usr/lib/* right? in that case you should provide the libs that you binary require within your package rpm/deb/bin/whatever. As snuwoods said most games that has been ported to linux like the ones already quoted + some few others tend to provide everything and sometimes it does require installing libSDL-1.2.so!

Which requires distro packagers to keep packaging and maintaining legacy versions of libraries just so that proprietary games would keep running. You'd better hope your distro doesn't consist of too radical freedom fighters in that case.

[Setlec]

well yes LSB isn't really respected anymore, i guess. Since Ubuntu came up it really crushed the LSB. this why i would like to switch from OS where the dev doesn't allow or force distros to be standardized. (Honestly i keep my eyes on Haiku OS ) Maybe i should simply go for debian... Many good distros around like Mandriva (my first linux distro), Red Hat, Fedora, RHEL but so many incompatibility.

What if Windows was open-source would you guys make a distro? j/k

Sorry went Off-Topic!

[V!NCENT]

That's great. So what? I was merely pointing out that Michael's claim that Valve is currently developing the client goes in complete contradiction to Valve's official statements.

No shit? A game development studio with employees under and NDA. Wow!

And also 'leaking' info to other sites, no fscking way!

Holy shit... that hasn't ever, ever, ever happened before!

[Almindor]

Haha.
That's odd because UT2004, Osmos, and Any Yet It Moves all seem to have it figured out. What about any of the Humble Indy Bundle games?
To me, the problem seems like a situation of catering to the cash cows and industry standards(M$ and DX).

No they don't. I had to fix libopenal.so.1 to libopenal.so.0 on many occasions with 3d FPS games to get them to work. I bought And Yet It Moves and it works "now" but I expect it to break a few distro releases later. Don't know Osmos.

Look at the LGP games and how they don't work anymore for more quick clues on linux "stability". Also ALSA/libopenal is a big mess, pulseaudio doesn't save that either.

Linux is simply fubar with this, even packaging static libs down to libc/libc++ level doesn't help because well.. ALSA might break (or some kernel compilation setting changes something).

[grigi]

And wow, what about all that games released 10 years ago for windows? oh! I'm so amazed! I can't even install them. And the ripped versions don't work either, and there is nothing I can do to get it to work, bar run it on a 12 year old version of windows...

The fact that I can get similarly old games to work at all on native Linux means that it is no worse than Windows.

Besides, the game studios rarely care past the first 2 years.

[snuwoods]

No they don't. I had to fix libopenal.so.1 to libopenal.so.0 on many occasions with 3d FPS games to get them to work. I bought And Yet It Moves and it works "now" but I expect it to break a few distro releases later. Don't know Osmos.

Look at the LGP games and how they don't work anymore for more quick clues on linux "stability". Also ALSA/libopenal is a big mess, pulseaudio doesn't save that either.

Linux is simply fubar with this, even packaging static libs down to libc/libc++ level doesn't help because well.. ALSA might break (or some kernel compilation setting changes something).

I don't find that absolutely impeding. If that's all you'd have to do to get a program to work, I'm sure valve could accommodate those cases by putting instructions on their site for linking libraries.

[Almindor]

I don't find that absolutely impeding. If that's all you'd have to do to get a program to work, I'm sure valve could accommodate those cases by putting instructions on their site for linking libraries.

I'm sorry if I sound rude here, but this is extremely naive. People are not capable of this kind of disciplined behavior with computers (and gamers especially). You get a "hardcore" group which will go to any lengths to get a game working but most players will simply go to tech support (if at all) and then call the quits if such problems occur.

Also, they'd have to make instructions per-distro which is unthinkable.

[V!NCENT]

And wow, what about all that games released 10 years ago for windows? oh! I'm so amazed! I can't even install them. And the ripped versions don't work either, and there is nothing I can do to get it to work, bar run it on a 12 year old version of windows...

The fact that I can get similarly old games to work at all on native Linux means that it is no worse than Windows.

Besides, the game studios rarely care past the first 2 years.

Errr... Carmageddon TDR2000 retail... Only with Wine and nothing else...

Futhermore I'm playing Tomb Raider; Anniversary retail, without a crack flawlesly on venilla Wine 1.2.

And there are a lot more. For example the latest Prince of Persia work flawless too. Red Alert 3 just the same. Age of Empires, Rollercoaster Tycoon and 40% of all the other games I have work flawlesly under Wine.

[deanjo]

No shit? A game development studio with employees under and NDA. Wow!

A denial breaks NDA's as well as a confirmation. When a NDA is in place the only allowed answer is "no comment".