There Is No Doubt, Steam Is Coming To Linux!

[aliendude5300]

I quickly hacked a script to automatically download and extract the steam client. It will also update the client files if valve would upload new zip files.
You can find it here: http://pastie.org/930514

Aww... I was working on a bash script to do the same thing. You beat me to it. Good Work!

[KellyClowers]

what would this mean really though? just some games on linux. If the unwashed mases start to use linux where can a geek go.

Are you kidding? Setting aside the issue of "should Linux be elitist and geek only?", there are plenty of options. Lesser known distros to start with, then on to the *BSDs and Solaris, and then HURD, Haiku, Syllable and Plan 9

[sirdilznik]

what would this mean really though? just some games on linux. If the unwashed mases start to use linux where can a geek go.

See this is the kind of attitude that drove me away from Gentoo... (not that I have anything against the distro itself or some of the more open minded members of its community) That and I didn't feel like waiting for hours when running an update. For years and years people were praying for a Linux distro to become easy and accepted enough for it to gain mainstream acceptance. Then once Ubuntu, and Fedora to a lesser degree, became more friendly to the less technically inclined and begun to gain a bit of mainstream acceptance then all of a sudden the elitists started crying about how all these n00bs were ruining their platform. Personally I'll gladly take a million n00bs over just one elitist. Don't like all the n00bs constantly asking for advice? Ignore them. Want to have your own niche elitist OS? I hear HURD is going to reach stable any day now... no really... I mean it...

Personally I'll take all the mainstream support I can get for Linux and any native big company (and indie) games I can get, even if they're games I could have already played using wine.

[aliendude5300]

Although I wasn't the first to do this, I started a bash script before Flyser made his post, and I don't mean for my script and his to end up competing or anything -- they both work just as well. The reason I'm releasing this code is because I feel that my effort would be worth nothing if nobody even sees the code I wrote. Who knows? Maybe somebody will learn something by looking at this code. One thing I did notice is that my code uses a much simpler method than Flyser, with only 8 lines of code, excluding comments. Anyways, here's what I have written:

#!/bin/sh
#Linux Steam download script by Dylan Taylor
mkdir steam; cd steam #Create a directory and cd to it
wget $(wget -qO- http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux | egrep "*zip*" | sed 's/"file"//' | tr -d '\011' | sed 's/\"//g' | sed 's/^/http:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/public\/client\//' | tr '\n' ' ') #Download the files
unzip -e -o \*.zip.\* #Extract the files
rm *.zip.* &> /dev/null #Cleanup...
#Set permissions
chmod +x steam.sh
chmod +x ./*/steam #Not platform specific...
./steam.sh #Run the main steam bash script

[Kano]

Is the shortest script searched then or what

wget -qO- http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux|awk -F\" '/file/{print $4}'|wget -i- -NB http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/
unzip -o -d steam \*.zip.\*
chmod +x steam/steam.sh steam/linux32/steam
steam/steam.sh

[SlickMcRunfast]

the valve script somehow kills my mouse after it runs

[Hans]

the valve script somehow kills my mouse after it runs

Also here. But it will return to normal after a while.

[BlackStar]

the valve script somehow kills my mouse after it runs

That's why mice tend to avoid steam valves if they can help it.

[srg_13]

There's a problem where the client makes both a Steam and a steam folder in the home directory (windows paths are case insensitive, so it probably thinks they're the same folder). It seems to stop the error in the log file if you copy the files into each other.

But it still dies - it seems to be the fatal error in the updating that kills it, not the thing about failing to open a file that shows up in the log...

[Zhick]

Steam on Linux would be awesome, but I'm not holding my breath for it.
As others have pointed out, it's very well possible that they have an internal client running, but have no plans to release it. It was the same with Blizzard's World of Warcraft Linux-beta-client.
But if Steam, and maybe even some of the Source-games, were released for Linux that'd probably the biggest thing to happen for Linux-gaming (and maybe even for Linux on the desktop in general) till now. If it turned out succesfull this might even convince the other publishers that there's money in Linux-gaming. For example Blizzard might decide to do a Linux-port of Starcraft 2, since they're already doing a Mac-port anyway.