Steam for Linux Confirmed

It’s been hinted at for almost two years now. A file here, a library there. But now Valve, hot on the heels on their Steam for Mac release, has confirmed Steam for Linux within the coming months. Linux is often overlooked as a desktop OS, and indeed, it only holds about 1% of the market share. But with releases like Ubuntu 10.04 being about as user friendly as possible, and with the addition of Steam for Linux in the coming months, I dare say Linux is finally making progress after years of stagnation.

The last major game release for Linux was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars back in 2007, which really wasn’t a great game to begin with, so the fact that the entire Source library is being ported over to Linux is a pretty big deal. In terms of raw performance, Linux performed on par with Windows and outperformed OSX in OpenGL benchmarks, so there isn’t any performance reasons for weak game development for Linux. Rather, no major companies, with the exception of id Software and S2Games, have ever really developed for Linux.

This is all in very early development, and while some members of the Linux community have managed to get the Linux client half running from some leaked code, no fully running beta client is officially available from Valve yet. Perhaps PC gaming will see a resurgence once top level games are available across all three major OSs?

Source: Phoronix