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I'm actually really frustrated by Steam's linux port. If you're not running Ubuntu it's freakishly inconvenient to get running. Don't get me wrong - I'm not c

by dthunt 14y ago

I'm actually really frustrated by Steam's linux port. If you're not running Ubuntu it's freakishly inconvenient to get running. Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining that Steam doesn't have a gentoo package that is maintained by them. I'm pissed off that they call apt-get directly from the application, don't make it easy to discover steam's requirements to run, have a confusing maze of launch scripts, and a bunch of other major no-no's. The ubuntu desktop is an easy access market, with some big upsides from Steam's perspective. But there's a long history out there of vendors successfully handling a broadly usable linux port without pulling this kind of nonsense (attempting to maintain dependencies system-wide without even asking if it's okay!), and a great number of linux users are happy to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and rebuild libpng or whatever for any special application requirements if they're not running your 'officially supported' distribution. That having been said, I'm playing Cave Story right now on linux.

deleted 14y ago
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- charliesome 14y ago
  Are you serious?
gizmo686 14y ago
The current license agreement explicitly allows repackaging of the client to work and be distributed on other distros.
- ajross 14y ago
  It's a technical thing, not a legal one. The current client is blindly, stupidly tied to the Ubuntu 32 bit distribution in ways that are dumb even for a binary package on Ubuntu.
  - simoncion 14y ago
    I'm running the Steam client on 64-bit Ubuntu 12.10, and didn't do anything special to get it installed. Why do you say that it's tied to the 32-bit version of Ubuntu?
    - armored_mammal 14y ago
      Do the videos work? Did you follow the 'special' instructions to install the 'special' version of Flash that will work with Steam? Because I sure didn't, and so no videos in the Steam client play. Though that's probably even worse than being 32-bit specific.
      - btmorex 14y ago
        In fairness, steam videos don't work for me even in Windows. Something about wrong flash version. I really wish they would just embed a normal video player.
      - simoncion 14y ago
        I dunno. The videos don't even work on my Windows machine, as I don't have Flash installed over there. If I wanna see promotional videos, I run on over to Youtube.
scottlu2 14y ago
Steam launches a script to install dependencies. The expectation is that this script will be modified by distros to account for the packaging mechanism on that distro, and package name differences. So if you are not on an apt based distro yet apt-get is being run, then your distro's Steam package needs to be updated. It would be nice to describe all the dependencies on the steam package itself and let the package manager handle this, unfortunately it wasn't possible on Ubuntu 12.04 because of multi-arch issues. Other distros might not have this problem.
- dthunt 14y ago
  I'd find that a compelling statement if they didn't update bin_steamdeps.py every time the application updated.
ajasmin 14y ago
It doesn't integrate that well in Ubuntu to start with. There's no app menu integration for Unity. Edit: I mean the unified menubar. Steam menubar is attached to the steam window, not at the top of the screen.
- anoncow 14y ago
  i got a steam icon in the launcher. Although it does update itself separately instead of appearing as an update via apt.
- zanny 14y ago
  Steam doesn't use a toolkit and overrides compositor decorations. It is never intended to integrate, it doesn't integrate at all on Windows or Mac either.
keeperofdakeys 14y ago
It wasn't too hard to get running on Gentoo, but then again it is Gentoo...
cookiecaper 14y ago
No issues using the package provided by ArchLinux. Has run fine since the day I got an invitation to the beta. This is probably due to someone writing a good PKGBUILD for it, but it demonstrates that it is not intractable for interested distros/parties to make an easy out-of-the-box install.

by dthunt 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

charliesome 14y ago
Are you serious?

gizmo686 14y ago

The current license agreement explicitly allows repackaging of the client to work and be distributed on other distros.

ajross 14y ago
It's a technical thing, not a legal one. The current client is blindly, stupidly tied to the Ubuntu 32 bit distribution in ways that are dumb even for a binary package on Ubuntu.
- simoncion 14y ago
  I'm running the Steam client on 64-bit Ubuntu 12.10, and didn't do anything special to get it installed. Why do you say that it's tied to the 32-bit version of Ubuntu?
  - armored_mammal 14y ago
    Do the videos work? Did you follow the 'special' instructions to install the 'special' version of Flash that will work with Steam? Because I sure didn't, and so no videos in the Steam client play. Though that's probably even worse than being 32-bit specific.
    - btmorex 14y ago
      In fairness, steam videos don't work for me even in Windows. Something about wrong flash version. I really wish they would just embed a normal video player.
    - simoncion 14y ago
      I dunno. The videos don't even work on my Windows machine, as I don't have Flash installed over there. If I wanna see promotional videos, I run on over to Youtube.

scottlu2 14y ago

Steam launches a script to install dependencies. The expectation is that this script will be modified by distros to account for the packaging mechanism on that distro, and package name differences. So if you are not on an apt based distro yet apt-get is being run, then your distro's Steam package needs to be updated. It would be nice to describe all the dependencies on the steam package itself and let the package manager handle this, unfortunately it wasn't possible on Ubuntu 12.04 because of multi-arch issues. Other distros might not have this problem.

dthunt 14y ago
I'd find that a compelling statement if they didn't update bin_steamdeps.py every time the application updated.

ajasmin 14y ago

It doesn't integrate that well in Ubuntu to start with. There's no app menu integration for Unity. Edit: I mean the unified menubar. Steam menubar is attached to the steam window, not at the top of the screen.

anoncow 14y ago
i got a steam icon in the launcher. Although it does update itself separately instead of appearing as an update via apt.
zanny 14y ago
Steam doesn't use a toolkit and overrides compositor decorations. It is never intended to integrate, it doesn't integrate at all on Windows or Mac either.

keeperofdakeys 14y ago

It wasn't too hard to get running on Gentoo, but then again it is Gentoo...

cookiecaper 14y ago

No issues using the package provided by ArchLinux. Has run fine since the day I got an invitation to the beta. This is probably due to someone writing a good PKGBUILD for it, but it demonstrates that it is not intractable for interested distros/parties to make an easy out-of-the-box install.