No alpha for Linux users?

Hi,

I'm one of the backers who paid for alpha access. What, back then, pushed me over the edge to actually shell out more than $100 for a game was that the dev team committed to support Linux.

Now I don't see Linux listed as a supported platform on the Steam early access page, and rumours are floating around that it won't be supported before the retail is out. Is that true?

If so, how are we supposed to help testing the game on that platform, and why would you do this to us people who really don't want to have to buy and install Windows to play a game?

Thanks for any insights on that matter. I am still hoping that I can actually play that alpha I paid for...

Sorry if this already came up elsewhere in the forums; could not find anything right now and I'm not usually following very closely.

Did you read this thread?

Inthe end, It's planned to roll out Alpha and Beta to all platforms, but it was never said they would be simultaneous.

Mike

I wouldn't think Linux users would have to wait much longer than 2-3 weeks after the initial alpha release to join in, and that's in the worst case.
Don't worry, there are several of us Linux users on the forums ready to harass Uber until they release the Linux version.

Don't worry, we will take care of you linux guys. There are so few that we can pretty much special case it. We're really going to need a lot of help from the linux community because the driver situation seems atrocious so far.

Well, the cooperation between NVidia and Valve improved the NVidia drivers a lot. For ATI/AMD... Mildly put: from what I remember that's really a different story.

And since I spend most of the non-professional life with my Linux laptop then I will gladly provide feedback .

Yeah, we'll be looking for hardcore linux people to help us work through the issues. We just don't have any experience shipping on linux so it's been harder than I anticipated. However, we are building it simultaneously so it's not like we can't give people builds.

One other issue is that Steam doesn't seem to support 64-bit on linux.

Fortunately, there has been some progress even on the ATI side of things:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02 ... es-nvidias

(Disregard the typically hyperbolic slashdot title)

Steam itself is not 64-bit, I think, but looking at the version of Kerbal Space Program I have from Steam, Steam downloaded both the 32-bit and the 64 bit binary, and I'm told it runs the 32-bit one by default (though that could just be developer's choice.)

I'm not sure why you would need a 64-bit version of Steam though. Not like it is doing some major number-crunching behind the scenes or anything.

(I'm on 64-bit Linux Mint 14 Nadia)

Because all their SO's are 32-bit, which makes it very hard to compile into a 64-bit client.

Yeah there is no 64 bit Steam client available, and it would be pretty pointless tbh

SO's ?

I expect the ratio to change at retail favouring windows even more, but right now I think linux stats are looking pretty healthy (13% if your poll is anything to go by). Linux desktop is niche so the market is mainly indie games, a AAA title will get a lot of early support.

What trouble are you having with (graphics?) drivers? I don't have any experience with linux graphics drivers, everything else I've done has either just worked or worked after a slap round the skull. Is it too naive to think that the game and a dependency list are all that's needed for a bare-bones release? I admit I'm no expert, most of the complex software I've installed has been from a repository or magic "./configure -> make -> make install". Thinking about it I'm probably the baseline dummy on linux, good luck

LOL, more like completely dishonest title. NVIDIA's closed drivers have always been the best, and likely always will be. The article makes me sad the guys working on nouveau are busting there asses to climb a mountain, but as time goes on it looks like the beast in unconquerable. BTW the only reason the open amd drivers are better is because they are using what used to be the closed code from AMD.

I remember spending the better part of year messing with 3D acceleration in Linux when I was in college. The endless headaches, and days spent looked in my dorm room trying anything to make it work. In the end I bought NVIDIA card and most of the drivers for the leading distro's at the time worked out of the box. This was pre-gallium

http://distrowatch.com/

They have a great list one OS popularity. It may help you narrow your focus when attempting to tackle the beast of Linux support. Most people I still know running Linux desktops are running Mint. It is slick, simple, and has driver support that works out of the box.

Thank guys Glad to hear that the rumours were wrong, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Also, I'm fine installing stuff without steam (I don't even run Steam, and as I'm not a Ubuntu user, I also don't intend to, as Steam seems to be pretty tied into Ubuntu). You can give me a tarball, preferably containing something distro-neutral, to unpack, deploy and run, for all I care.

Distro-neutral means it should be compiled against a pretty pristine Linux (preferably LSB; you can find LSB SDKs for building and testing), possibly deploy to /opt, and it should not make assumptions about the existence of distro-specific tools, package managers, init systems and the likes.

nortyspock: .so files are the equivalent to .dll on Windows. Shared libraries.

Sorry, bad capitalization.. .so files.. Shared Objects.. Linux equivalent of dll's, basically.

Thanks for clarifying.
Want to believe Valve release 64-bit Steamworks SDK soon.

PS: Probably you could manage that by some other way.
There is already few games (like FTL or Amnesia) which doesn't have any steam integration on x86_64, but it seems Valve deal with it.

I'm think problem is: Uber use some Steamworks functions for user authentication. E.g After you run PA from Steam your account will be linked with your Ubernet account.

Games such Kerbal Space Program or Amnesia doesn't use Steamworks API, so only problem with x86_64 is there is no in-game overlay.

I can also help test Linux version.
Both the regular version and if desired, the Steam version.
However, since the Steam version may not give full resources, I want the regular one, so I can have huge amounts of units.

I run an Ubuntu type (Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE).
Hex-core cpu with 12 threads (i7 980X Extreme)
24 GB ram.
Geforce GTX 580 with very current Nvidia drivers.
(I can also test with dual 1080p monitors, if desired)

So I should be able to stress test it and already know a few others in the Alpha group to test multiplayer cross-platform.

Well I won't mind if the Linux Steam version of PA will be delayed as I will start with the non-Steam first anyway. I plan to decide which version to use after it goes to full release.

Worst case scenario: I'll see how WINE handles PA . SupCom and SupComFA actually worked smoothly in my case under WINE:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=4051

This is quite a valid question not just for alpha or beta but retail.
Linux while being fully capable of being a gaming platform (yes gfx drivers can be deep but nvidia agree reliable and ati have vastly improved thanks to steam)
The issue is developers intent. Take Rage, take UT3 both were said to have Linux client, from 2 enginehousesa that had a long history of providing linux clients before it was cool todo so. guess what... They decided to drop it. Yes Linux gaming has become a lot more feasible in terms of interest recently BUT it still isn't given that a game will come with Linux support.

Its fantastic if you do release a Linux client and against my better judgment I have paid for alpha more to help but there is still some doubt.I helped a lot in closed beta for et:qw as well as in HoN (which I still do)