Penguins touchin' mai gun! (Steam/TF2 on Linux)

[STrRedWolf]

With the Mac version becoming a reality, the possibility of Linux being natively run on the system (w/o emulation libs from Crossover or WINE) starts growing.

Infact, there's hints in parts of Steam (Phoronix article; get your geek on).

[Purplecat]

I think they probably get it out stable and all first on Mac before even bothering with a widespread private beta of a Linux port (it seems like they're doing a private beta right now).

ATI is starting to catch up with their Linux drivers, but is still not usable unfortunately. :/ Steam, games and Windows itself is nearly the only proprietary software I use anymore.

Most people with working drivers get TF2 running under DX8 fine. Some people get it working in DX9 mode, but it's bit of a YMMV thing. openGL would solve most woes (but not all...) people have with trying to play the games throu Wine.

[Tehrasha]

If the 'Mac release' means that they will use OpenGL instead of requiring DirectX, and the Windows version reflects the same changes. It should be entirely possible to run HL2/TF2/etc.. under WINE without suffering with the crappy DirectX8 graphics.

An actual Linux port would be much better of course, but it would be a nice band-aid in the meantime. If they do fully port it to Linux, I wont have any reason to keep a Windows install!

At first I was , then I was , and finally I was , but my wife was all

[STrRedWolf]

Just remember, Mac is really BSD with a better GUI than X11 plus KDE/GNOME/XFCE/LXDE/etc, so there's a ton of code sharing.

That said, more posts from Phoronix:

More references to Linux in various parts of code.
A bit of manual labor, and you'll get a (non)working Steam client (limited to stopping you from logging in).

Can we say "Beta Linux after Mac full release?"