Valve Announces Steam & Left 4 Dead 2 For Ubuntu Linux
In what could be a turning point in Linux gaming, Valve has announced that they will be porting the Steam client to Ubuntu Linux as well as Left 4 Dead 2. Some may ask why only one Linux distribution, or why Ubuntu? Well the answer is pretty simple, Valve wants to get it done and do it right and focusing on one distribution of Linux is critical for testing and making progress. And progress Valve has certainly made, with Linux-based servers for Source-based games already in use and Left 4 Dead 2 having been successfully ported already. With that said don’t worry if Ubuntu isn’t your favorite Linux distribution, Valve is looking at supporting more of them in the future they just need to start somewhere and Ubuntu already has some recognition in the gaming and developer communities.
As of right now, Valves goals are pretty straight forward, they want to get a fully-functional and fully-featured Steam client up and running on Ubuntu 12.04. After that is taken care of well Steam isn’t much without games so they want to get Left 4 Dead 2 running at higher frame rates in OpenGL. Finally they once these two challenges are overcome they plan to port addition Valve titles to the Linux platform. For more information on what Valve is up to when it comes to Linux check their blog located here.
The goal of the Steam client project is a fully-featured Steam client running on Ubuntu 12.04. Weve made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. Were still giving attention and effort to minor features but its a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.
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