Here Is Valve's Source Engine Left 4 Dead 2 On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Valve on 9 August 2012 at 08:12 AM EDT. 27 Comments
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Valve's SIGGRAPH 2012 presentation last night -- about the Source Engine on Linux and their experiences with maximizing the OpenGL performance of their game engine on Linux -- was a success.

More details about the presentation will be available in the coming days, including the slides. However, for those overly-excited, here's a few photos from the Valve Linux presentation in Los Angeles. There's also a photo of Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux, although it's not too clear and doesn't show (Ubuntu) Linux in the background with my photos from April when at Valve HQ being much more clear.

Left 4 Dead 2 on the Source Engine running natively under Linux with OpenGL is faster than on Windows when both the Direct3D and OpenGL renderers are tested there.

With the performance now being maxed out and the Linux graphics driver support moving along, I would expect to see the Left 4 Dead 2 Linux beta to surface in the very near future. The support is now in rather good standing for some sort of beta (though how open it will be remains to be seen) and originally the target that was estimated back in April when I was at Valve HQ was that they might be able to ship something around July. With Valve time factored in, we should see something soon -- also leading to my previous comments months ago about safely seeing something before my "annual pilgrimage", which most faithful Phoronix readers know what that means (hint: think dirndls, bretzn and bier!). Valve has already publicly stated that L4D2 will be delivered this year.

Thanks go out to Jeroen Baert, the Phoronix reader that sent in these SIGGRAPH photos. The slide deck for the presentation should be published soon.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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