The Steam Linux Beta Begins...

[deanjo]

Rhetorical question - yes you did. We've got logs. Saying "I use {insert your favorite flavor of Linux here} and a piece of closed beta software wasn't packaged for me" gets me going because it's stupid. Would you be complaining if they said "we're building Steam on Arch first, and then we'll spread out to some of the more popular distros"? Also, I suggest you check your AUR repositories because I've read that someone has already deconstructed the *.deb and repackaged it for Arch. And it works. The god damned thing works.

If it is just a matter of packaging then there should be no good reason to make it distro specific at all in the first place. If they wanted to make individual packages for the distros that is fine as well but it is not hard at all for them to for many platforms at once. Hell there are even live distros that will setup a multipackage multi distro multi version automated package build if they really wanted to have specific packages. Then there is the option of even doing a generic installer like sooooo many other binary distributed software packages out there do. Loki did it, ID did it, Epic did it, Ryan G can do it, Nvidia can do it, ATI can do it, VMware can do it etc etc etc. There is absolutely no reason for them to single out one distribution. The LSB is there for a reason..... use the damn thing.

[Kamikaze]

So.. did anyone get an actual invite into the Steam Linux beta? I'm curious to know if any non-Ubuntu users were invited.

[Kayden]

So.. did anyone get an actual invite into the Steam Linux beta? I'm curious to know if any non-Ubuntu users were invited.

There are definitely Fedora and Arch users participating, likely among others.

[Kamikaze]

There are definitely Fedora and Arch users participating, likely among others.

Interesting. What's your source? Are you in the beta?
Do you know if Valve are accepting official bug reports from non Ubuntu distro users?

[blackout23]

There are definitely Fedora and Arch users participating, likely among others.

I highly doubt that anyone who selected "Other" as their distro got picked. If anything they said they'd test it on Ubunutu (like I did) but use something different.

As for Bug reports I'd wait until Valve says they need more input. If they wanted bug reports from non beta participated they would not have limited the beta to 1000 people and created a hidden forum for them where they can work together in a controlled manner. Let Valve execute their plan.
No one has a clue if people who tricked their distro into running steam have really all necessary dependencies with the right version. That's not a controlled enviroment where you can easily find and fix bugs.

[Kamikaze]

I highly doubt that anyone who selected "Other" as their distro got picked. If anything they said they'd test it on Ubunutu (like I did) but use something different.

This is why I asked Kayden where he got his info from. As an OpenGL graphics driver dev they may have been invited and can see the kinds of bugs being submitted to Valve.

As for Bug reports I'd wait until Valve says they need more input. If they wanted bug reports from non beta participated they would not have limited the beta to 1000 people and created a hidden forum for them where they can work together in a controlled manner. Let Valve execute their plan.

I wasn't planning on sending in a bug report or interfering with their plan. As you stated - they have their limited 1000 user base with their own private discussion area for filing bugs already. I'm just interested in whether anyone who selected a non-Ubuntu distro in the survey got into the beta, and whether Valve are accepting bug reports from non-Ubuntu environments.

[Paradox Ethereal]

Serious Sam : http://store.steampowered.com/app/41..._7_7_230_150_1
+ LFD2 should be pun.

PS: I guess you have already read this: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...kernel/1627920

Peace Be With You.

[Kayden]

Interesting. What's your source? Are you in the beta?
Do you know if Valve are accepting official bug reports from non Ubuntu distro users?

There are people commenting in the forums (which can be found via google):

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions

Some of them claim to be using other distros, and also have been reporting issues there (so they obviously must have it).

Personally, I'm using the client on Arch Linux, and I know Eric has it running on Debian.

[droste]

probably because they lied when filling in the beta tester form :-D Just look at http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410...4057641974752/ nearly everybody has 64bit and I wouldn't say Ubuntu is mentioned in > 60% of the posts.

[blackout23]

probably because they lied when filling in the beta tester form :-D Just look at http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410...4057641974752/ nearly everybody has 64bit and I wouldn't say Ubuntu is mentioned in > 60% of the posts.

I lied because selecting "Other" felt like putting myself in the "special" corner. I hope at least everyone was frank when they said they run 64 bit.
They'll see that it is silly to just provide just a 32 bit client. This isn't Windows where people have no clue and don't care if something is 32 bit until their new game starts lagging on their new PC because the game can't allocate enough memory and gets bottlenecked.