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>> Obviously not going to happen. > Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a s

>> Obviously not going to happen. > Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a store with a handful of $5 indie games or free games. No, they will definitely have AAA games. (Or at least AA games...not sure how many A's Left 4 Dead rates.) The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from the official repositories. They'll probably provide their own debs and rpms, or maybe a straight binary download like they do for the Steam dedicated server.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that it would necessarily be available directly from official repos (although perhaps it could be, being able to easily install steam would be a good selling point of a distro that was not intended to be 100% free software). I wonder how ubuntu would feel as this could be competition for their own app store. What I meant was will this be targeting the traditional distributions (Fedora/Ubuntu) and be installed in a relatively normal "Linux way" (like dropbox or spotify). They could of course create their own Distro which would essentially be minimal WM + Steam + Other basic apps (Chrome,thunderbird,openoffice).
- StavrosK 14y ago
  As I see it, it will be an app (if it ever happens, I'm not sure how much I can trust these "omg Steam is coming to Linux!" posts any more) that you can just install, exactly like Dropbox or Spotify. It will then download your games whenever you tell it to and you can play them, just like Steam on any other plaform. Of course, which games those are will depend on availability of each individual game.
  - frio 14y ago
    I'd actually really like it if it was a repo. Add "http://steampowered.com/fedora/username/securitytoken http://steampowered.com/fedora/username/securitytoken or /debian/ (etc.) to your list of repos, then apt-get install steam. The username/security token stuff is provided so that you get a dynamically generated repo, which includes access to the games you've bought. You could then install games via apt/yum (and I'm going to go ahead and assume they're all statically linked and include all needed binaries, because traditionally, closed-source games on Linux have forced users into dependency hell). Steam then becomes a marketplace and apt/yum frontend :). (Of course, I doubt very much that this is realistic; it'd just be awesome)
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      That would be quite cool , even if not I hope they provide a command line tool. The steam GUI always feels sluggish to me. 'steam offers -genre=fps -orderby=price' 'steam buy halflife3 -cc=saved' 'steam install -all' 'steam showfriends -online' 'steam playwith myfriend'
bdonlan 14y ago
> The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from the official repositories. This is completely possible. You can write a stub package that just automates the process of downloading and installing steam, and put it into debian's non-free repository. Flash player was installed this way for years.
- bnr 14y ago
  Ubuntu also has Skype in their official repository.

jiggy2011 14y ago

I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that it would necessarily be available directly from official repos (although perhaps it could be, being able to easily install steam would be a good selling point of a distro that was not intended to be 100% free software). I wonder how ubuntu would feel as this could be competition for their own app store. What I meant was will this be targeting the traditional distributions (Fedora/Ubuntu) and be installed in a relatively normal "Linux way" (like dropbox or spotify). They could of course create their own Distro which would essentially be minimal WM + Steam + Other basic apps (Chrome,thunderbird,openoffice).

StavrosK 14y ago
As I see it, it will be an app (if it ever happens, I'm not sure how much I can trust these "omg Steam is coming to Linux!" posts any more) that you can just install, exactly like Dropbox or Spotify. It will then download your games whenever you tell it to and you can play them, just like Steam on any other plaform. Of course, which games those are will depend on availability of each individual game.
- frio 14y ago
  I'd actually really like it if it was a repo. Add "http://steampowered.com/fedora/username/securitytoken http://steampowered.com/fedora/username/securitytoken or /debian/ (etc.) to your list of repos, then apt-get install steam. The username/security token stuff is provided so that you get a dynamically generated repo, which includes access to the games you've bought. You could then install games via apt/yum (and I'm going to go ahead and assume they're all statically linked and include all needed binaries, because traditionally, closed-source games on Linux have forced users into dependency hell). Steam then becomes a marketplace and apt/yum frontend :). (Of course, I doubt very much that this is realistic; it'd just be awesome)
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    That would be quite cool , even if not I hope they provide a command line tool. The steam GUI always feels sluggish to me. 'steam offers -genre=fps -orderby=price' 'steam buy halflife3 -cc=saved' 'steam install -all' 'steam showfriends -online' 'steam playwith myfriend'

bdonlan 14y ago

> The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from the official repositories. This is completely possible. You can write a stub package that just automates the process of downloading and installing steam, and put it into debian's non-free repository. Flash player was installed this way for years.

bnr 14y ago
Ubuntu also has Skype in their official repository.