Edit: Been playing the Portal Beta. The horizontal tearing without vertical sync is annoying. Mainly because, with vertical sync, there is substantial input lag. But hey, it's called "beta" for a reason.
Also porting old games is one thing, but these days most 3rd party game engines support Linux, too, and it should be even easier to support Linux at launch with new games.
Considering Linux users buy about the same amount of games (in revenue) as Mac users right now (from the surveys/research I've seen), it should be a no-brainer to support Linux if you're already going to support Mac. I could see some not wanting to bother with Mac either, though, but for those who choose Mac, they should also choose Linux.
The catch is that the mac version isn't available on Steam.
The best hope here would be that valve could take some of the games that are known to work flawlessly with WINE and package them up with Steam handling all of the WINE config so it becomes transparent.
It will be interesting to see if a popular AAA franchise (elder scrolls, COD etc) announces a Linux release alongside the Windows release. As game devs have to think more about crossplatform I guess this might become more likely.
I was really looking forward for this, I am old now but not old enough for HL3.
I understand Valve hasn't gotten the bugs out quite yet, but this is an excellent start.
Edit: Oh man, "Half-Life 2 (Beta)", "Half-Life 2: Episode One (Beta)", "Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Beta)", and "Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Beta)" are all in my steam library. It's like Christmas all over again.
Or is there some trick I'm not aware of to get native x64 Steam going under Arch?
I fiddle with messy integration issues on embedded Linux and Android professionally, and am about as qualified as anyone could be to make that work. I never once bothered trying to get wine running. I installed Portal last week without a moment's thought.
What a silly reason. But true. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Linux beta was more bug free in my experience than the Windows version...
They should at least fix the bugs which affect gameplay, so I won't end up with a library of broken games.
Yes, but that doesn't mean there won't be bugs in HL2. And Valve not fixing HL1 before releasing HL2 doesn't bode well.
Because I never played it, and if they release it for Linux, I could be this guy:
Even the date is about right :)
(I do play modern games as well, but due to the rebooting to another OS required for that it's a commitment which I don't make for every game)
See more info here: https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&...
Playing it on a 46" TV at 1080p. Smooth as hell and looks fantastic.