Steam Linux Beta - who's signed up for it?

[dogsolitude_uk]

Hi folks,

I've just signed up for the Steam Linux Beta, and was wondering if anyone else has?

When entering my details it asked for distro/desktop details (naturally enough I replied Mint/Cinnamon), so I figured it may be useful to get as many Mint gamers on there as possible.

I've yet to hear back from Valve, but will keep you posted if I do

[Rudemeister]

I signed up too. I haven't heard anything from the yet either. I will post any news I receive from Valve.

[900i]

Signed up today. Used to play Team Fortress a long long time ago. looking forward to it. Maybe start a Mint Clan.

[absamide]

I have signed up for it, but as with others have not heard back on it.

I haven't attempted to load it yet as my primary machine is a bit under powered for it, but that should be changing soon as I am planning on picking up one of the new System76 Bonobo machines and considering reloading Mint on it.

One question I do have though is if there is any plan for Mint to directly support the Ubuntu software center so things like Steam/Humble Bundle/etc will be available directly or if they are going to provide their own version of the software center, or if we will have to decide if it is worth it to just stick with Ubuntu or deal with tweaking things and continue to use Mint.

If this has already been discussed somewhere I couldn't find the correct search terms to find the thread.

Alex

[mcoumans]

Not only did I sign up, yesterday I got invited to participate.

The biggest issue I have right now: the games only work when not using compositing. So I need to log out of Cinnamon and back in with Gnome Fallback (no effects) to be able to play.

-Computer-
Processor : 3x AMD A6-3500 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Memory : 3768MB (1477MB used)
Operating System : Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Kernel : Linux 3.5.0-19-generic (x86_64)
Desktop Environment : Unknown (Window Manager: Metacity)

-Display-
OpenGL Renderer : AMD Radeon HD 6530D
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
Version : 1.13.0
Driver : fglrx 9.000-0ubuntu3
Version : 4.2.11903 Compatibility Profile Context
Direct Rendering : Yes

[bigj231]

I signed up, but I'm not in the beta

I did get it to work, and i played TF2 a bit last night anyway. It was extremely laggy (my ping was over 200 and it's usually under 60) and I had a poor framerate (10-15fps with Intel HD3000) I did have to install the latest MESA driver to get it to work, and it took about 5 minutes to launch TF2. I'll have to try it with gnome fallback.

[spamazoid]

any way to get the installer to run on a 64bit machine, i know the client is 32bit atm, just errors invalid architechture.
i have the additional needed 32bit libraries just can;t install the client to start with, but that's running Mint 14.1 if that makes any difference

[bigj231]

Did you install the ia32-libs, and all the dependencies listed on the OMGubuntu page?(http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/reddit-users-bypass-valve-linux-beta-invitations) There is an error in the package list, but someone in the comments pointed it out. I'm running it on 64 bit 13. Look at the errors it is giving you, and don't use gedbi. I used dpkg to install per the instructions on that page. It is still in closed beta, so consider yourself lucky if you get it to work.
I did get TF2 to a playable framerate today. Thanks to mcoumans for the idea of running it in gnome-fallback. I got 35-40 FPS with medium settings at 1366x768.

[spamazoid]

Thanx for the response and yes thats the page i was on and got all that info, doing the dpkg via terminal results in
sudo dpkg -i steam.deb && sudo apt-get install -f
dpkg: error processing steam.deb (--install): package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)

but seems i end up answering my own question and hopefully help others in a similar position.

as for the other libs can't install those by default in Mint 14 64bit just get an error unable to locate turns out Mint 14 64bit doesn't include 32bit support but can add 32bit architecture with
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt update
and theres an error in that script for the libs anyway libcurl3gnutls:i386 should be libcurl3-gnutls:i386 otherwise it works after adding in the I386 achitecture and can install the deb file with GDebi
so im sorted now

[dogsolitude_uk]

Got it working OK, though I had to go round the houses. The annoying thing is I followed so many different instructions on the forums that I'm not entirely sure what it was that I did to get it working. Still, it's working nicely now and Darwinia is playing nicely and Psychonauts is downloading as I write this...

[Rudemeister]

The native Linux client for Steam works great!!!

I have Mint 14 KDE 32-bit running on one of my machines. I really like it too. I have the resources and power to run it very nicely. So I just found a download for Valve's Linux Steam client. I am NOT in the official beta, but I do have a bunch of PC Windows games I purchased from Valve. Lo and behold, the Steam client for Linux installed fine, updated and allowed me to play a few of the games already ported over to Linux natively!

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/how-to-u ... t-now.html

[bigj231]

The beta is open now, so you don't have to have the invite anymore. It happened a few days ago.
On another note, TF2 now gets ~30 FPS on my laptop while running cinnamon. It's CPU limited though. It gets about 40 FPS in an empty server and dips below 20 when there are multiple crits on screen. I really hate the beggars bazooka.

[CurtisCoburn]

I did not. That is because when the time that this was news and popular to people, I was just getting into Linux, and I was a total newbie. So I didn't really need to be getting into Steam. Plus, I didn't need it. I didn't play that many games. Now, though I don't need to be a beta member, I just hope it comes out pretty soon, so I can start gaming on Linux.

[NotSure23]

Is anyone getting graphics errors? I installed the .deb file located here but during the install i was having text and display errors.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valve

This is on an older laptop with the Intel graphics 855gm chipset and a Pentium M 755

[bigj231]

I'm not getting any graphics errors like that, but I don't think that that laptop will run TF2. It's barely playable on my i3.

[NotSure23]

Yea im not going to try and run TF2 but maybe some of the more simple games.

[cwwgateway]

I was invited, but it's open to everyone officially now, so I guess it doesn't matter . I was able to get it working in virtualbox under Debian Testing (it took a long time, though), but I had to pull libc6 and multiarch-support from experimental, which isn't really a good idea on a production install. ATM, however, it worked very well, apparently better than some Ubuntu steam installs. Hopefully, after the freeze ends, the correct packages will migrate to Sid or Testing, but until then I have to wait . I'm thinking of installing Maya Xfce on an external hard drive to watch netflix and steam (which are, for the most part, Ubuntu-only).

[Rudemeister]

I was able to get it working in virtualbox under Debian Testing (it took a long time, though)

Wait a minute. You're telling me you got decent OpenGL performance in Virtualbox? How the heck did you do that? What kind of hardware can do this? I don't get it. I have an HP XW8600 with dual quad core Xeons, an Nvidia GTX 560 and Virtualbox performance of OpenGL ain't very good at all. In native mode it smokes though.

[cwwgateway]

I was able to get it working in virtualbox under Debian Testing (it took a long time, though)

Wait a minute. You're telling me you got decent OpenGL performance in Virtualbox? How the heck did you do that? What kind of hardware can do this? I don't get it. I have an HP XW8600 with dual quad core Xeons, an Nvidia GTX 560 and Virtualbox performance of OpenGL ain't very good at all. In native mode it smokes though.

No, the hardware performance was really horrible . I meant that I got it to install and run, I didn't actually use it to do anything . I can't imagine playing games in VBox, especially on my more modest hardware.