Brontoforumus Archive

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:


This board has been fossilized.
You are reading an archive of Brontoforumus, a.k.a. The Worst Forums Ever, from 2008 to early 2014.  Registration and posting (for most members) has been disabled here to discourage spambots from taking over.  Old members can still log in to view boards, PMs, etc.

The new message board is at http://brontoforum.us.

Author Topic: Steam for Linux  (Read 673 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Nickasummers

  • Beep
  • Tested
  • Karma: -3
  • Posts: 324
    • View Profile
Steam for Linux
« on: August 02, 2012, 09:09:26 AM »

Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Steam for Linux
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2012, 04:08:07 PM »

Steam for Linux Beta now open to the public.

That link takes you to a deb package.  Don't want a deb package?  There are also packages for OpenSUSE, Fedora, Arch, and Gentoo.

Downloading now.  God damn, have I mentioned lately how much I love OpenSUSE's package manager?  It's like the second-biggest reason I haven't ditched OpenSUSE yet.

(The biggest is just that I really don't feel like expending the time and effort on starting over from scratch so soon after the last time.)

Hm.  Do I actually have any of the Steam games that have Linux versions?

...
...yes.  Yes I do.  Eversion.

Thanks, guy who made Eversion.  Whoever you are.





...

Quote
SteamStartup.cpp (569) : Assertion Failed: ! "There was a problem with your Steam installation.\n" "Please reinstall steam.\n"

...welp, guess now I get to file a bug report.  Serves me right for downloading a beta.
Logged

Beat Bandit

  • be entranced by my sexy rhythm
  • High-Bullshit
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65418
  • Posts: 4293
    • View Profile
Re: Re: Game News Dump
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2012, 04:56:48 PM »

Should you get it working, Sword and Sworcery and Dungeons of Dredmor are both delightful games going for very reasonable prices if you don't already have them.
Logged

Zaratustra

  • what
  • Tested
  • Karma: 48
  • Posts: 3691
    • View Profile
    • Zaratustra Productions
Re: Re: Game News Dump
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2012, 05:28:57 PM »


Thanks, guy who made Eversion.  Whoever you are.

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Steam for Linux
« Reply #4 on: February 14, 2013, 03:47:56 PM »

Linux client officially out of beta; sale on for games that have Linux versions, even if you don't use Linux.

The Steam client still errors out when I run it.  Ironically I can still play Half-Life more easily under WINE than natively.
Logged

Mongrel

  • Emoticon Knight-Errant
  • kodePunc Team
  • Tested
  • *
  • Karma: -65340
  • Posts: 17029
    • View Profile
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #5 on: February 14, 2013, 07:52:56 PM »

Also, if you play TF2 on Linux in the next month, you get a silly TF2 Linux penguin. No, that doesn't really matter at all.
Logged

Mazian

  • Lullaby Supermarket
  • Tested
  • Karma: 3
  • Posts: 78
    • View Profile
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #6 on: February 14, 2013, 08:37:58 PM »

No, that doesn't really matter at all.
Sssssh!  Keep quiet, or you'll lure the Lyrais to our position!

The further away from the suggested distro you go, the more problems pop up.  I'm still tinkering around with library paths to make SpaceChem work on a 64-bit system, and had to fake out the packaging system to install the Steam package on Debian at all - which is still an improvement over the earlier beta versions that required that plus manually tweaking the package itself, then rebuilding it.  Lots of "the best thing about standards is..." moments.  I'd hate to be a new user of any distro except the recommended one trying to make it work.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #7 on: February 14, 2013, 09:40:04 PM »

Yeah, I'm on 64-bit OpenSUSE and I think that's the problem.  I've installed a bunch of 32-bit libraries that don't actually seem to be helping, and I managed to get the NetworkManager error to go away by tweaking some settings in YaST, but...nope, still won't start.
Logged

Brentai

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXYVlPgX_o
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65281
  • Posts: 17524
    • View Profile
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #8 on: February 14, 2013, 11:07:49 PM »

Part of the problem seems to be that they built for Ubuntu, and in my experience anything built for Ubuntu is built only for Ubuntu.

I can see why they would go that route (easiest to get new users to try switching, since Ubuntu can usually be obtained and installed without exposure to the dreaded Linux Community) but I'm not sure it satisfies the goal of increasing Steam's interoperability, if indeed that was ever a goal (I suspect Gaben just wants to find a new home for his little ecosystem now that Windows has gone all tablet-focus-and-hardware-DRM crazy.)
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2013, 11:29:35 PM »

Well, it's not simply that it's the easiest, it's that being the easiest has led it to be the most widely-used by end users.  (It's lost momentum to Mint since introducing Unity, but I think it's still probably reasonable to assume it's got a bigger install base than Mint.)

And its package system is widely compatible too.  A package designed for Ubuntu should, generally speaking, work on Mint with no alterations, and on any other Debian-based distribution with only minor alterations.

OpenSUSE's still got a pretty big install base, and is well-supported.  Its package management system is unique but it's based on RPM, so there's not MUCH challenge to changing a Fedora package to an OpenSUSE one.

(I would add that OpenSUSE's one-click install is the most goddamn beautiful thing I have ever seen and is one of the principal reasons I'm still using OpenSUSE despite some of the vexations I've had with it.)  As it is, I think it's great that they put out an OpenSUSE package almost as quickly as they put out the Ubuntu one.

And while I'm sure the focus on Ubuntu is part of the reason I'm having trouble with it on OpenSUSE, it doesn't seem to be the only reason -- I've seen reports of Ubuntu users having the same problems I am.  The bigger problem may be that, since Ubuntu's got a larger user base, they've got more people working on those errors and figuring out how to fix them -- and the same fixes don't work under OpenSUSE due to differences in package names, config locations, etc.

All that said: I don't blame Valve.  Starting with the largest install-base of potential customers is the smart thing to do.  I'm hoping that, once they've worked out major bugs under Ubuntu, they'll start looking at the bugs on other distros and, in the meantime, users will start to figure out fixes themselves and share with the class.

Of course, it would all be a fuck of a lot easier if the software were open-source, but you can't have everything.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #10 on: February 21, 2013, 04:51:26 PM »

...so Steam runs fine on Linux if I run steam.sh instead of just steam.  Go fucking figure.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #11 on: February 21, 2013, 09:32:43 PM »

...well, "runs fine" as in I got no audio in Half-Life and then when I restarted it it locked up my system.  But those are fixable problems.

I finally worked out how to underclock my graphics card in Windows.  Now I'm going to have to figure out how to do it in OpenSUSE!  (The nVidia Settings tool has a listing called PowerMizer that tells me what clock speed it's running at.  It's even got 3 different configuration levels.  But none of the numbers are editable and I can't find any way to set them; it appears to be just a monitoring tool, not a configuration one.)
Logged

RoboticDinosaur

  • [Custom Title]
  • TOTAL DORK
  • Tested
  • *
  • Karma: 2
  • Posts: 95
    • View Profile
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #12 on: February 21, 2013, 09:40:29 PM »

Have you tried sudo PowerMizer? Probably a dumb question, but might as well ask it to get it out of the way.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #13 on: February 21, 2013, 11:09:36 PM »

PowerMizer's not a binary, it's a listing in nvidia-settings.

And, on reading up, it's got an overclocking setting that you can enable on older nVidia hardware by fucking around in xorg.conf (which is of course my absolute favorite thing to do), but it doesn't work with Fermi or Kepler cards.

Other stuff I've tried:
  • Running MSI Afterburner under WINE -- Doesn't detect the card.
  • Using nvclock -- won't compile; hasn't been updated since 2009 so I don't have high hopes for it working even if it did
Logged

Mazian

  • Lullaby Supermarket
  • Tested
  • Karma: 3
  • Posts: 78
    • View Profile
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2013, 11:24:38 PM »

  • Running MSI Afterburner under WINE -- fails at runtime with a DLL error; tried to install the DLL with winetricks but MS has removed the download and, while it's mirrored all over the place, I've got this thing about running random exe files I find on sites I've never seen before.  (If any of you guys have a known-good copy of vc6redistsetup_enu.exe , let me know.)
If it helps verify such a file, the antique copy I have sitting around in a winetricks directory is 1833232 bytes and hashes to:
MD5 - dd50945bcf3e09e22453be43684f3d39
SHA1 - 382c8f5a7f41189af8d4165cf441f274b7e2a457

I can't vouch for its authenticity beyond "winetricks downloaded it back when it still could".
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2013, 11:52:49 PM »

Thanks -- actually I discovered that the sha1sum is included right there in the winetricks script itself.  (Good to know in case MS ever pulls any of the other winetricks installers and I have to go hunting for them on potentially-dodgy sites.)

Anyway I got it installed but, unsurprisingly, it still doesn't work.  (The GUI comes up but the backend doesn't recognize any of my hardware.)  What a pain.

...hm.  Wonder if it's a perms thing -- I know I need to run it as admin to get it to do anything under Windows.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2013, 02:19:17 PM »

Turns out I just needed to set SDL to ALSA (export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa) to get sound.  Surprised OpenSUSE doesn't use PulseAudio.

Haven't had another freeze so I'm hoping that was a fluke and everything's in order now.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2013, 06:23:46 PM »

No more freezes but now every time I run the steam binary (either as /usr/bin/steam or ~/.steam/steam/steam.sh) it tries to update and then segfaults.

Well, that was pretty cool how it was working for fifteen minutes, anyway.

Wonder if there's a command-line flag to make it ignore updates.
Logged

Thad

  • Master of Karate and Friendship for Everyone
  • Admin
  • Tested
  • Karma: -65394
  • Posts: 12111
    • View Profile
    • corporate-sellout.com
Re: Steam for Linux
« Reply #18 on: March 02, 2013, 12:57:21 PM »

...rebooted; reboot forced fsck; fsck found buttload of errors in Steam files; Steam working again.

Jesus Christ this thing has not ceased to find new and exciting ways of breaking.
Logged