Screenshots emerge of Steam Linux client, BeOS wonders if it's next

There's some old adage referring to smoke and fire meant to explain this phenomenon, but frankly, we're too focused on the promise of the future to go and look it up. Merely weeks after the Steam for Mac beta proved that Linux support may be in the works, along comes this: two glorious screenshots proving as much. 'Course, nothing much about this situation has changed, but having pictorial evidence that a Steam client exists in some stage for Linux is a boon for hopefuls. A Phoronix reader managed to snag a capture of the client working its magic early on, and while it's pretty obvious that it's not ready for primetime, we're just stoked to see that there's legitimate reason to believe such an app is on the way. Hang tight, Penguin Nation -- your Steam should be just about the bend.

[PSPHacker Posted May 3rd 2010 4:29PM]

Steam wouldn't be able to run on the PS3 because it is made for x86 machines like PCs. The PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii all use PowerPC processors.
You couldn't grab the same Firefox binary from your PC and run it on your PS3, you would have to get the source of Firefox and compile it for PowerPC instead.

[PSPHacker Posted May 3rd 2010 4:37PM]

This could be fake.
Maybe the guy wrote a simple program that outputs the text you see in the Terminal window, and shows a fake Steam splash screen.

But like erik1080 said, this link found in the Terminal window appears to work:
http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux

Hmm :D

[dingus Posted May 3rd 2010 4:39PM]

HP/UX or GTFO.

[mkhpalm Posted May 4th 2010 12:17AM]

@dingus

Well let me be the first one to welcome you to the 21st century.

[Cringer Posted May 3rd 2010 5:04PM]

This would be great, since my gaming has gone downhill some and all towards the PS3 since I started using Linux last year.

The only thing I would need to completely dump Windows would be to talk some work related website into dropping their idiotic IE only design stance.

[mko Posted May 3rd 2010 5:05PM]

You mean Haiku?

[dicobalt Posted May 3rd 2010 5:20PM]

Now all Linux needs is an implementation that isn't so high maintenance and prone to stupid compatibility issues. It'll never happen.

[Standingfast Posted May 3rd 2010 5:25PM]

I love linux and most os's in general including win and osx. Thing that sucks is games, most are only coded for direct3d........thats what keeps me rockin the windows lol.

[Dygear Posted May 3rd 2010 6:05PM]

It would seem the cat is out of the bag. The first screen shot gave me all of the information I needed, if you go to the urls and start poking around you'll find these links your self also.

http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux

This is a nice little JSON file that will give you the links to all of the client files (I think, I've got to boot my ubuntu install to see what this is for sure.)

http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/public_all.zip.2753195c03d19feacae0dfbc81e25fcb60648e19

now do the same with all of the other links on that page.
I'm going to boot ubuntu and find out for sure now :).

[wicketr Posted May 3rd 2010 6:15PM]

@Dygear

Nice. The more interesting one is this: http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_linux.zip.52367793a26b83abc84871770277e1b8d77608bc

Simply download it. Rename the file to simply steam_linux.zip and then open it up. It has a steam.sh and a linux32/steam binary in it.

[Dygear Posted May 3rd 2010 6:32PM]

A lot more information can be found here:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23328

Looks like I'm not the only one tinkering around with this :)

[cocopuffz Posted May 3rd 2010 6:37PM]

I just built a win7 HTPC/ gaming rig so its a little late for me... but id love to run Linux steam on my ubuntu HP hdx 16 and dump win to forgo the dual boot. Pc gaming is doing just fine! I hope we don't need to have separate accounts for it though.

[Pearl Jam Posted May 3rd 2010 7:05PM]

I love Steam

[Atro Posted May 3rd 2010 8:03PM]

Gaming is the only reason I boot my vista partition. The only reason.

[jf79 Posted May 3rd 2010 8:40PM]

@Atro
Yeah, the only reason I boot win7 in bootcamp on my mac pro is to play certain games.

[Atro Posted May 3rd 2010 8:47PM]

@jf79 bootcamp on your mac pro eh?

[PhrostByte Posted May 3rd 2010 9:13PM]

This is awesome.. been using Linux (Mint) as my desktop for a couple years now. I want to see more people make the switch to free/open source. :]

[ch3burashka Posted May 3rd 2010 10:19PM]

Kinda funny that Valve's official stance on the PS3 is that they'll develop for it when "it makes sense", all the while creating a Steam client for Linux. Granted, it's almost an apples-to-oranges comparison, but still.

[tnoy Posted May 4th 2010 12:37PM]

@ch3burashka

Valve creating a Steam client has little to do with them developing their games for Linux, in a way.

There is currently next to no market for gaming on Linux. I'm talking AAA-Title new releases of native games. Wine doesn't count. A Windows game doesn't say anything about a developers care for Linux. Sure, it might work 100%, but that is secondary to a developer's acceptance of Linux as a viable gaming platform.

There is also no good solution for Linux gamers to get new retail games, and no good Steam-like Linux solution for developers and publishers. If this Linux client turns out to be real, Valve will effectively own the Linux gaming delivery market. Big-name publishers are used to Steam and trust Steam. Valve making a Steam client for Linux is also telling the industry that Linux gaming is something worthwhile.

Valve knows that if no Linux games are available, no one will care. If they want this to work, they'll HAVE to port a number of their own games over to Linux. If they do it, others will follow. They'll definitely get the support of the other developers that are already Linux friendly--like id Software.

With Steam, Valve could effectively create the mainstream gaming market. If Steam becomes the first-stop for purchasing Linux games, they'll make money on every game sold.

With regards to the PS3, it would just be Valves games on a PS3.

[mkhpalm Posted May 4th 2010 12:12AM]

If you're gonna port to OS X there is almost no reason not to port it to linux too. With all 3 you have near complete market domination so I think its safe to say linux users will get it. The question is how many games will make it to both mac and linux? Just Source based games or more?

[Herr Posted May 4th 2010 2:50AM]

Steam runs fine on Linux with wine, CSS played fine on my laptop with Ati 3200 (Which isn't good gpu).

[Bhima Posted Jun 1st 2010 3:03AM]

God if Adobe would just support Linux I'd leave Microsoft in a heartbeat.