Steam coming to (Ubuntu) Linux

[Blix]

So the rumors have been around for a long while that steam might be getting ported to Linux. Since the first time the rumors came out (I think about two years ago) nothing happened, I had been very skeptic because I didn't want to be let down. But on July 16, valve officially launched it's Linux blog steam'd penguins.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/

As the rumors suggested, valve has been hard at work, porting the linux client, the source engine and Left 4 Dead 2 over to linux. More valve games will be ported after that. At the moment, the only linux distribution supported is Ubuntu but in time, that may change. You can't blame them for wanting to start out small and since Ubuntu's 12.04 version of Ubuntu is a Long Term Support (LTS) which will be supported for five years, they can have a very stable and well supported distribution to develop in. Also, since Ubuntu code is used on so many other distributions... you can safely assume other distributions will find a way to make it run.

Personally, I am very excited over the news since, I like using Ubuntu over windows for media playback, coding and web browsing. The only thing I felt that was really missing were the games. This also means that in my next gaming setup, I can take away $100 from the windows OS and put them towards a better Gpu or Cpu, which is great. So, what do you guys think about this news?

[gekko]

Steam may be on Linux, but the games still need to support Linux. Unless I've missed something, games still don't generally support Linux, so why would you be so quick to ditch the copy of Windows?

[Blix]

Originally Posted by gekko

Steam may be on Linux, but the games still need to support Linux. Unless I've missed something, games still don't generally support Linux, so why would you be so quick to ditch the copy of Windows?

Valve is porting the source engine along with L4D2 to linux. Aparently, L4D2 has the most advanced version of the source engine and once they get it working, they'll port all of their other games. Many indie games already run in linux and are available in steam (and also the ubuntu software store). It's not much but once it gets moving, we'll be seeing more games. If I get TF2 on Ubuntu I can see myself spending most of my time in linux. I won't drop Windows right away and I don't actually have any problem with windows, atm. But it's nice to not have to worry about getting a new copy each time you build a new gaming pc.

[Seth]

With windows 8 soon to arrive, this is at the very least a glimmer of hope.

[Blix]

Originally Posted by Seth

With windows 8 soon to arrive, this is at the very least a glimmer of hope.

I don't think Valve liked many aspects of Win 8. This caused them to push steam on linux more.