Steam Linux Usage Drops During August

[Bernard Swiss]

Huh? I don't think you understand how Linux software works. Yes there is a reason for it not to run. I spelled it out in my post. Read it again. Steam requires glibc 2.15 and RHEL uses 2.12. Steam flat out will not run on RHEL. Period. It has nothing to do with packaging.

As the first open source company to top $1 Billion in annual revenue, Red Hat is the biggest Linux vendor. It seems a foolish move on Valve's part to ignore such a large customer base. I'm curious how many percents of their Windows user statistics are actually Linux users running the Windows client via CrossOver (or wine).

Red Hat is in the servers and software services business, not the desktop business, and their market is entirely corporate; Not only does Red Hat have no interest in running Steam, neither does their customer base.

And that goes double for RHEL -- that's Red Hat's server distro. Their desktop version is RHED. And I wouldn't expect Steam to run on that, either. After all, the 'E' in RHEL and RHED stands for 'Enterprise'. Their top concerns are reliability, predictability and long support-life cycles. In fact, I'd wager that not running Steam is not only a deliberate decision, but is something that Red Hat and its paying customers both consider a positive benefit.

[vsteel]

Add me to the list of played a lot of games and spent a lot of time in linux and when I popped over to Windows to check something I got the survey. I wouln't put to much faith in the numbers.

[johnc]

Can you plop the glibc version you need in a separate directory and then set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH before launching Steam?

[squirrl]

Steam will probably be following whatever Ubuntu does.

[Zan Lynx]

This is just a guess - but I bet Steam is going to require more than just a newer glibc. (glibc is probably just the first major blocker. I can imagine that other libraries on the system will also require newer versions, no?)

Yes. It was the "not possible" statement that really made me respond. I wanted to make the point that it is possible to install a newer glibc on RHEL 6.

[DanLamb]

Less Steam!! Great news!! Please, break the Steam chokehold on PC gaming.

My favorite PC games are Steam only: ugh!

[Gps4l]

Your link does not include any information on RHEL / CentOS.

And the steam_latest.tar.gz does not run on RHEL. I know. I've tried it. It throws errors about GLIBC 2.15 not found. Which makes sense, since RHEL uses 2.12. There is no option for GLIBC 2.15 on RHEL6. Not possible.

So as I said in my previous post, RHEL & CentOS cannot run the native Linux Steam client. We can only run the Windows Steam client via CrossOver.

Which part of my post do you not agree with?

You can't expect Valve to support every distro around.

There are already 6 to pick from.

[Gps4l]

Linux is all purpose. Put some modules in and take some out and you have a hypervisor host, smartphone kernel, fridge controller or car controller... Same with games. I'm not sure what hard-core linux users don't use steam... All the ones I know do use it. By the way, you're talking BS.

I agree 100%, even Richard Stalman said steam might be good for Linux.

[smitty3268]

Wrong wrong wrong. I'm running RHEL 6.4 which is the very latest and greatest version. I did not "make a choice to use older software" and it isn't at all like someone running Ubuntu 10.10. RHEL6 is current latest and greatest from Red Hat, not some outdated supersceded version.

It is not Red Hat that "can't support Steam". Steam wrote the app. It's their responsibility to write it to work on an OS. Even more so when that OS comes from the biggest vendor in the business.

At the very least, there ought to be a note or statement somewhere that clearly states "Steam doesn't run on RHEL because of -insert reason-", or maybe "Steam only runs on glibc 2.15 based distros". Instead, as you can clearly see in this thread, you have confused users all claiming they "disagree" with me and claiming "there's no reason it shouldn't work". How many people have wasted time trying to install it, because Valve has chosen to ignore the biggest player in the Linux business?


It has nothing to do with "old". What they are providing is a stable API. Glibc is at the core of the OS, like the kernel. Red Hat is the largest Linux vendor because they provide a stable product with excellent commercial support. Yes the majority of their sales are for servers, but what do you think all those RHEL server admins run when they get home from work? They run RHEL or CentOS. I know this, because my day job is as a RHEL server admin. Why should I bother learning a whole different distribution for at-home use? I use RHEL Server at work, and I use RHEL Workstation at home.

As for your "give it a rest" comment, my replies were all to people who were asserting that Steam *does* run on RHEL. Which is flat out wrong. My responses were to them.

Stop being an idiot. RHEL is an ENTERPRISE distro. Expecting it to run the latest games is stupid. No one (except you, apparently) even wants to run Steam on RHEL.

You have 3 choices:
1 - run a desktop distro
2 - manually hack RHEL to fit your needs (unsupported)
3 - STFU - or don't, and keep whining on here and we'll just ignore you

I don't expect Valve to support running on Windows 2012 Enterprise edition, either, just Windows XP, 7, and 8.

[ninez]

I haven't tried it on RHEL 6 but I did similar surgery on old RedHat Advanced Server 2.1 systems. So I would take a RPM source package for glibc 2.15 and the current glibc 2.12 and look at the differences, especially build options to see if there are settings you need to change or patches you need to apply to the newer version. Then build a glibc 2.15 from source for RHEL 6. Cross your fingers and install, but it'll probably work fine.

This is generally the only way to do it because taking, say, a Fedora 19 glibc and force installing it on a RHEL 6 would likely kill it because of the build options selected and possibly that version of GCC used to build it.

This is just a guess - but I bet Steam is going to require more than just a newer glibc. (glibc is probably just the first major blocker. I can imagine that other libraries on the system will also require newer versions, no?)