Valve Beginning To Look At Steam Linux Not On Ubuntu

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Beginning To Look At Steam Linux Not On Ubuntu

With the initial roll-out of the Steam Linux client being a success while primarily focusing upon supporting the Ubuntu distribution, Valve is now looking at improving the Steam support on non-Ubuntu Linux distributions...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI2MzA

[nightmarex]

Phoronix: Valve Beginning To Look At Steam Linux Not On Ubuntu

With the initial roll-out of the Steam Linux client being a success while primarily focusing upon supporting the Ubuntu distribution, Valve is now looking at improving the Steam support on non-Ubuntu Linux distributions...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI2MzA

I'm glad they're looking into the big picture (pun intended). Simple gaffes, and bugs really take out of what is shaping up to be.... well something.

I probably shouldn't have to change the way X handles "default" mouse pointers to not have a weird backwards pointer while using Steam.

Updating graphics drivers to a beta release just to use TF2 isn't super unreasonable other than the beta part. (still locks up like hell on me)

I know they're working hard to deliver the goods and I will keep looking in, hopefully with Unity4 we will get some non FPS AAA titles.

[Xilanaz]

the whole .deb for Steam is useless to be honest as well as other systems packaging it again in their format, I am on suse, so I opened the .deb with ark, ripped out the bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz and unpacked that in ~/Steam. Ran steam.sh and it updated from there and has been running fine ever since. no root no nothing needed.

only thing that worries me is how the scripts and even binaries are so full of ubuntu12_32.

Desura has handled that all a lot better, but that is just my opinion.

[przemoli]

Nobody said it would be easy.

The thing is that most of those package formats are redundant. Or just have advantage of tooling...

[Detructor]

the whole .deb for Steam is useless to be honest as well as other systems packaging it again in their format, I am on suse, so I opened the .deb with ark, ripped out the bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz and unpacked that in ~/Steam. Ran steam.sh and it updated from there and has been running fine ever since. no root no nothing needed.

only thing that worries me is how the scripts and even binaries are so full of ubuntu12_32.

Desura has handled that all a lot better, but that is just my opinion.

pff, everyone should just start using the great packaging format that is .deb and we wouldn't have that problem in the first place.

[MùPùF]

pff, everyone should just start using the great packaging format that is .deb and we wouldn't have that problem in the first place.

Stop trolling. The package format isn't the issue here. The problem is that distributions do not agree on how should packages be split and their names. It is easy to adapt a format, guessing the package names is the real "issue".

[mark45]

pff, everyone should just start using the great packaging format that is .deb and we wouldn't have that problem in the first place.

Deb is not a great packaging format, rather a well and widely supported one. I looked into the deb format, and into Ubuntu's derivative of deb, and it's a hairy mess.

[LinuxRocks]

Deb is not a great packaging format, rather a well and widely supported one. I looked into the deb format, and into Ubuntu's derivative of deb, and it's a hairy mess.

Not to mention the fact that the LSB (Linux Standards Base) spicifically determined that RPM was the standard. There were problems with the dep package management and little support for it over all.

If the LSB is going to flouish and be a standard, then companies (Read... Valve) should adhear to said standards!

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base

Choice of RPM package format
The LSB specifies that software packages should either be delivered as an LSB-compliant installer,[11] or (preferably) be delivered in a restricted form of the RPM Package Manager format.[12]
This choice of package format precludes the use of the many other, existing package formats not compatible with RPM. To address this, the standard does not dictate what package format the system must use for its own packages, merely that RPM must be supported to allow packages from third-party distributors to be installed on a conforming system.
[edit]Limitations on Debian
Debian has included optional support for the LSB early on, at version 1.1 in "woody" and 2.0 in "sarge", and later 3.1 in "etch" and 3.2 in "lenny". To use foreign LSB-compliant RPM packages, the end-user needs to use Debian's Alien program to transform them into the native package format and then install them.
The LSB-specified RPM format has a restricted subset of RPM features—to block usage of RPM features that would be untranslatable to .deb with Alien or other package conversion programs, and vice versa, as each format has capabilities the other lacks. In practice, not all Linux binary packages are necessarily LSB-compliant, so while most can be converted between .rpm and .deb, this operation is restricted to a subset of packages.
By using Alien, Debian is LSB-compatible for all intents and purposes, but according to the description of their lsb package,[13] the presence of the package "does not imply that we believe that Debian fully complies with the Linux Standard Base, and should not be construed as a statement that Debian is LSB-compliant."[13]
In general, Debian does strive to comply with the LSB, but there may be other limitations.[14]

[uid313]

Desura has handled that all a lot better, but that is just my opinion.

Desura uses lots of patched libraries.
Desura isn't isn't packaged and put into the Ubuntu repository.

[uid313]

Deb is not a great packaging format, rather a well and widely supported one. I looked into the deb format, and into Ubuntu's derivative of deb, and it's a hairy mess.

Which formats are good and which are bad?

Is RPM better than .deb?