Valve Beginning To Look At Steam Linux Not On Ubuntu

[Hamish Wilson]

Desura uses lots of patched libraries.
Desura isn't isn't packaged and put into the Ubuntu repository.

Your point being?

Desura is of course going to have the advantage of it being free software when it comes to multidistro support though. Not that the original closed client release handled it that badly.

[uid313]

Two ways : through the package manager, or with the adobe website, using the "other system" option.

But your method should have already worked, I think.

Oh, I use 64-bit Ubuntu, hence I use 64-bit Firefox and 64-bit Adobe Flash Player.
Steam is 32-bit only?

Hence need to get the 32-bit Adobe Flash Player.

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/pdc/11.2.202.258/install_flash_player_11_linux.i386.tar.gz

[Morpheus]

Two ways : through the package manager, or with the adobe website, using the "other system" option.

But your method should have already worked, I think.

[uid313]

Just installs the mozilla version of the plugin, it will use it automatically (need to restart steam after installing it).

I can't get videos launch when downloaded (media section). Need to go to the video folder to launch it manually.

How do I install the Mozilla version of the plugin?

I downloaded the Flash player .tar.gz file from the Adobe website and unpacked the libflashplayer.so file into ~/.mozilla/plugins/

[Morpheus]

The beta has some bugs, I think.

There were some bugs on the input control when registering a new account where the carret in the textbox would insert text in reverse. I.e typing "hello" appeared as "olleh".

The client uses Flash, I don't know how to get it to work.
Maybe they should use HTML5 <video> instead?

Just installs the mozilla version of the plugin, it will use it automatically (need to restart steam after installing it).

I can't get videos launch when downloaded (media section). Need to go to the video folder to launch it manually.

[Morpheus]

It is weird, considering closed drivers have a huge shared codebase between sytems, that "beta drivers" are still needed in order to play games. I'm toying with Serious Sam 3, and even with "old" drivers (296 series under windows, 304 under Ubuntu 12.04, both stable), game is still playing good, considering I'm using the publicbeta channel, and seeing there are several fixes on the game side, not drivers. Can I assume that it's the same for other games ?

Considering the package format flamewar, deb, rpm, tgz, whatever it is, and how bad it can be configured, Valve is trying to do the same thing as on windows : be independant of the "admin rights" security, like on windows, and like Chrome (installing in Appdata instead of standard place just to be sure of permanent write permission : it's like installing in /home/user directory, not standard way). It may be the worse thing apart from being a closed software. Package dependancy handling has already been a problem for years between distros, I'm not expecting it to be solved magically just because Steam is coming.

[uid313]

Flash

The beta has some bugs, I think.

There were some bugs on the input control when registering a new account where the carret in the textbox would insert text in reverse. I.e typing "hello" appeared as "olleh".

The client uses Flash, I don't know how to get it to work.
Maybe they should use HTML5 <video> instead?

[uid313]

Deb is not a great packaging format, rather a well and widely supported one. I looked into the deb format, and into Ubuntu's derivative of deb, and it's a hairy mess.

Which formats are good and which are bad?

Is RPM better than .deb?

[uid313]

Desura has handled that all a lot better, but that is just my opinion.

Desura uses lots of patched libraries.
Desura isn't isn't packaged and put into the Ubuntu repository.

[LinuxRocks]

Deb is not a great packaging format, rather a well and widely supported one. I looked into the deb format, and into Ubuntu's derivative of deb, and it's a hairy mess.

Not to mention the fact that the LSB (Linux Standards Base) spicifically determined that RPM was the standard. There were problems with the dep package management and little support for it over all.

If the LSB is going to flouish and be a standard, then companies (Read... Valve) should adhear to said standards!

Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base

Choice of RPM package format
The LSB specifies that software packages should either be delivered as an LSB-compliant installer,[11] or (preferably) be delivered in a restricted form of the RPM Package Manager format.[12]
This choice of package format precludes the use of the many other, existing package formats not compatible with RPM. To address this, the standard does not dictate what package format the system must use for its own packages, merely that RPM must be supported to allow packages from third-party distributors to be installed on a conforming system.
[edit]Limitations on Debian
Debian has included optional support for the LSB early on, at version 1.1 in "woody" and 2.0 in "sarge", and later 3.1 in "etch" and 3.2 in "lenny". To use foreign LSB-compliant RPM packages, the end-user needs to use Debian's Alien program to transform them into the native package format and then install them.
The LSB-specified RPM format has a restricted subset of RPM features?to block usage of RPM features that would be untranslatable to .deb with Alien or other package conversion programs, and vice versa, as each format has capabilities the other lacks. In practice, not all Linux binary packages are necessarily LSB-compliant, so while most can be converted between .rpm and .deb, this operation is restricted to a subset of packages.
By using Alien, Debian is LSB-compatible for all intents and purposes, but according to the description of their lsb package,[13] the presence of the package "does not imply that we believe that Debian fully complies with the Linux Standard Base, and should not be construed as a statement that Debian is LSB-compliant."[13]
In general, Debian does strive to comply with the LSB, but there may be other limitations.[14]