Is Valve Porting Source to Linux?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
Linux gamers have it somewhat rough. There are countless free and open-source games available, but the platform severely lacks commercial support. There are a few exceptions, but the key word here is 'few'. One of the biggest requests from Linux users is to have Valve's Source support, along with their content-distribution client, Steam. According to our friends at Phoronix, that might soon be happening.

While no hard evidence is given, the site claims that it is indeed on its way, and once it hits, I think it will please many people. The fact is, emulation of both the client and the engine, through Wine and other products, is so good at this point, that it must not be much more difficult to just port it over. The client itself would be the easy part, but the games would be another task altogether.

Today, it's not too difficult to get Half-Life 2 to work through Wine, so it feels like we are so close as it is. If Valve does indeed begin porting games and Steam to Linux, it could very well blow open the doors for other developers as well. If Linux gets more games, then Linux might also get better support from the application guys as well. In the end, it could mean a lot more Linux users could result. Seems like a pipe dream, but weirder things have happened.

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While not as black-and-white as our privileged information, it was confirmed this week that Postal III -- a third-person shooter being developed by Running With Scissors Inc -- would be supported on Linux (as well as on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Mac) and it uses Valve's Source Engine. Postal I and Postal II were both ported to Linux by Ryan Gordon. This portion hasn't been corroborated, but it's also possible that the major Unreal Tournament 3 delay is attributed to this move by Valve Software.

Source: Phoronix
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Some linux site used Linux Mint and Wine-Doors... they installed Half Life 2 and it started up just like normal, although it did have a performance hit. Of course, Vavle games will run on even the most lousy 64bit discreet GPUs, so it's just a nitpick issue.

With PC games on the decline, and if games started becoming Windows/Linux compatible... Microsoft would be in serious trouble. It wouldn't take much extra effort beyond that to make a Mac versions, and it'd be worthwhile if their PC market share keeps going up...
 
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