Quoting: "Hamish, post: 6068, member: 6"Sad that they do not have most of these games on the Linux Desura. Of course they did not give out Desura keys for the HIB release of Amnesia even though that one is available on the service, so in general Frictional does not seem very inclined to Desura unfortunately.

It seems that many devs have been shying away from Desura for assorted reasons.

Quoting: "Hamish, post: 6068, member: 6"I hope they have done some more bug fixing work on this before they declare the port ready for the big time.

Fingers crossed. Hopefully that's included in icculus' [URL='https://twitter.com/icculus/status/263302735632416770']recent tweet[/URL] about prepping Linux games for Steam keeping him busy.

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[URL='http://ttt.badking.net/info']Trouble In Terrorist[/URL] town is a nice example of a game mode. People use it for posting and setting up stills and machinima (though I imagine that Source Filmmaker has taken away some of that audience).

There are also community models supplied that mimic non-source games as well.

I haven't spent a lot of time in it, but Mim and I have had lots of fun when we've played around.

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Quoting: "berarma, post: 6228, member: 131"I'm concerned about depending on the distributor and/or being online to play my games.

Well, it's more that you need the Steam client to download/install the games to begin with, and that's tied to your Steam account. For the ones that don't make use of the Steam DRM, you don't need Steam running to play them, but if you uninstalled them, and then for some reason weren't able to access your Steam account, you wouldn't be able to access those games anymore either.

Most Steam games (including those that do make use of Steam's DRM can run in an "offline mode" that you can activate whilst Steam is online (so if your connection drops out unexpectedly, and you weren't already in offline mode, you'd need to wait until you could connect again before being able to enable offline mode).

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Quoting: "berarma, post: 6218, member: 131"As for the DRM-free games on Steam, where can I read more about it? Does that mean I can buy games on Steam and play them anywhere? Can I see if a game is DRM-free before I buy it?

Basically, the situation is that for game developers, making use of Steam's built in DRM is optional. Some (but not many) developers such as Kot-In-Action have distributed their games on Steam in a way that doesn't require the Steam client to be running. This isn't something that's shown on the Steam store, so unless you're looking at a specific game and are willing to search forums or contact the developer to find out whether they've done that, there's no convenient way of finding out - if there's a community maintained list somewhere, I'm not aware of it.

So far as Steam goes, your best bet (if having DRM free games is important to you) would be to try to by your games directly from developers who offer DRM free copies in addition to Steam keys (this is done by most developers using the "Humble Store app", such as Frozenbyte and the guys who made FTL).

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Quoting: "motorsep, post: 6031, member: 154"Where have I ever said "SS:BR is Steam exclusive now" ? :confused:

Right here: "So now since Steam is on Linux too, Linux binaries are only available on Steam Linux."

Those words are pretty ambiguous, and could easily be interpreted to mean that "Linux binaries are only available on Steam Linux". Pit was asking for clarification in case that's what you were saying, not trolling you.

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Quoting: "motorsep, post: 6022, member: 154"Hmm.. I wonder why I was asked if I want to make Linux version available for SS:BR customers...

I imagine it's so that it will be available when the beta does go live (it makes sense to organise these things beforehand) ^_^

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Quoting: "motorsep, post: 6019, member: 154"I am not 100% sure, but I thought it did.

The closed beta isn't live yet ;)

Game developers packaging their apps for the Linux Steam client have access to an internal version from what I understand (that's where talk of TF2 running so nicely under Linux is coming from :3 ), but that's the limit of its availability outside of Valve so far as I'm aware.

Also, weren't you always shipping Linux binaries in the Windows version of Steelstorm on Steam?

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Quoting: "Hyeron, post: 6002, member: 223"I dunno. I thoroughly enjoyed my GNU/Linux learning time, even though you could have heard me cursing my DSL modem all the way to Canberra. I think it has more to do with preconceptions and good will than becoming a novice again.

It's definitely a preconception and expectation thing. If you're not expecting to go through that transition of moving from being an experienced user to an inexperienced user, then it can be hard to have a positive experience migrating from Windows to Linux (it sounds like you were prepared for that, which is great :) ).

I wouldn't suggest that anybody who needs stuff to "just work" consider migrating to a new OS, whether it be from Windows to Linux or from MacOS to Windows or whatever, since things won't work the way they're used to, and that's a big hurdle that takes time and patience to overcome (it's not a downside of any particular OS, it's just a power that pre-learned behaviours have over us). In a lot of ways, it's really positive that these hurdles exist, because if they didn't, everything would be the same and there'd be no reason to try new things.

Quoting: "Bumadar, post: 6008, member: 93"If they install Open Office of Libre Office they suddenly end up in an application that is not even close anymore to what they know, there is no 100% guaranty that documents made at work can be viewed exactly the same at home.

Except that the whole purpose of Libre/Open Office is to be functionally identical to Microsoft Office (down to reproducing bugs as I discovered whilst writing an example macro for a LUG presentation). Sure, it's not 100%, but Libre/Open Office experience is definitely close enough to Microsoft Office that migration should be easy. The only major difference at the moment that I know of is Office's new(ish) "ribbon" replacement for the toolbar.

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Quoting: "mcinsand, post: 6000"Don't anyone try to tell me that Windows has better hardware support or is easier to maintain. I know better!!! For technical and time demands, Windows just doesn't cut it.

I don't think Bumadar was saying that Windows is easier, just that the Linux experience is different.

One thing I've learned from watching people transition to Linux is that experienced computer users don't like becoming novices. IMO, Bumadar has raised a really important issue. Usually it's the patience and friendliness of individuals within F/OSS communities that helps people through that bumpy transition. If the ratios of experienced to inexperienced Linux users shifts dramatically, that'll have a noticeable impact both on the kinds of experiences that new users get, and on the kind of interactions experienced users have with the broader community.

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 5997, member: 6"To be fair, the assumption of large user growth might be nothing more than hot air.

Sure, it's speculation. It seems a pretty safe assumption that there will be a lot of curious people though, not to mention people who previously dual booted reassessing whether Linux is appropriate as an exclusive desktop OS.

Edit: It's interesting [URL='http://steamcommunity.com/actions/GroupList?sortby=SortByMembers&filter=ogg']to note[/URL] the rate at which the official Steam for Linux group has been growing without much promotion (it hasn't been featured in a Linux blog post yet, and people who aren't already interested in/following Valve's Linux efforts would be fairly unlikely to hear about it). It passed the official Skyrim group this morning.

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