We have been waiting long for Valve to port Steam to Linux, and now the company has made it official for the first time. The priorities is to get Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 fully functional in Ubuntu, and then transfer more games.
Valve took the step to cross platform support a while back when it launched Steam for Mac OS X, but now it is official that it will also do Linux. Valve have been working on Left 4 Dead 2 for Linux for some time along with the distribution service Steam to Ubuntu. The company has already accomplished most functions and is getting ready for beta tests.
Left 4 Dead 2 working internally at Valve with Ubuntu 12.04
Beta tests will will focus on making automatic updates work and testing compatibility. Since Ubuntu does not support Windows exclusive DirectX the company is forced to use OpenGL. The goal is to make Left 4 Dead 2 just as fluent in Ubuntu 12.04 as in Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is the pilot project for the Linux platform, which will probably take a while before it works perfectly. When the job is cimpleted the company will move on to other titles to expand the Linux lineup.
“Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn’t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.”
Valve intends to support more distributions besides Ubuntu in the future, if everything goes as planned. Right now Ubuntu will get the focus though, which means Ubuntu is the way to go for those who wants to use Steam in a Linux-based operating system.
No active posts found.