Steam Coming To Linux Soon?

Steam Coming To Linux Soon?

Linux has long been a neglected platform on the gaming front.  However, things have begun to change in recent times.  Nvidia and ATI have been releasing progressively better graphics card drivers.  Creative finally released an official Linux driver recently.  And now it seems that the platform may be soon getting one of the most popular of game provider clients: Steam.

An observant user discovered that the demo version of Valve’s recently released Left 4 Dead game came with a number of Linux library files, including steamclient_linux.so, studiorender_i486.so, vstdlib_i486.so, libsteam_api_linux.so, and engine_i486.so.  Linux enthusiast site Phoronix did a bit of investigating and discovered strings in these libraries, such as “k_EMsgClientRequestForgottenPasswordEmailResponse, k_EMsgClientGetLobbyMetadataResponse, k_EMsgClientPurchaseWithMachineID, k_EMsgClientGamesPlayed, k_EMsgAMSetCommunityState, SetOverlayNotificationPosition hates linux, Average %.2f fps, %.2f ms per frame, Steam_GSSendSteam3UserConnect, GetBillingAddress” that indicated a client rather than a server.

For more info, check out Phoronix’s investigation here.

This isn’t the only hint of things to come that Valve put into the L4D demo.  An indication of a possible 10th class in the popular Team Fortress 2 was also discovered.  It looks like if you want early updates on what Valve is up to, it pays to be extra attentive when messing around with their demos.

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