Linux

Valve to test Steam on Linux next week

According to the Valve Blog, Steam for Linux will be released next week… kinda.

On the negative side it is planned to be an internal beta but here is hoping for a leak. For those not familiar with Steam, it is a games marketplace application for Windows, Macintosh, PS3 (kinda) and soon Linux. The marketplace manages customers digital rights and downloads of games and also provides an online community.

Sometime in October, Valve will release a closed beta for 1,000 external players. Next month’s external beta will support Ubuntu 12.04 and include one game along with the steam client.

From the official Valve Blog:

“For existing Linux users, the external private beta is a good release for seeing where we are in running our games on Linux,” reads the blog entry. “We will be using a sign up page for the external beta. Information about the sign up will be announced in a future post.

“For those new to Linux, we recommend waiting for a subsequent release where more features are implemented along with improvements to the user install experience.”

Earlier this month Valve also launched the beta for Steam Big Picture Mode, which brings PC gaming into the living room and gives a controller-friendly makeover. While Big Picture Mode will not be supported on the initial Linux Beta, it does make me wonder if they are building on Linux as a potential future platform for a console.

Valve to test Steam on Linux next week Read Post »

Crunchbook

Sure it’s not #ShowYourDesktopFriday or #ShowYourLinuxDesktopFriday but I had someone ask me to share a shot of my old laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS w/ Openbox. This started as a Crunchbang Linux install when they used Ubuntu as a base. I have just been upgrading it to the LTS release as they come along.

This laptop is a Gateway 5300 that boasts a700MHz Pentium III CPU and 256 MB of PC100 RAM (Max amount). At idle this system uses around 61MiB of RAM w/ synergy running in the background.

I normally run this machine as a second monitor with Xchat running on it. Though it can also run MapTools pretty well when I need a spare machine for a game map.

Crunchbook Read Post »

Netbook or Ultraportable?

Here is a quick peek at my new Lenovo Thinkpad x120e. It has an 11.6″ screen, full sized keyboard dual core AMD e350 1.6 GHZ APU with a Radeon HD 6310 on the chip. The thing is a beautifully simple matte black all around which helps me to avoid annoying finger prints.

Some other features are that it has a full sized keyboard at it’s ultra small size and boats 1366 x 768 resolution. It’s performance completely blows Netbooks out of the water and is comparable to other larger laptops. For the size/performance and simple beauty of the machine I feel like I got a good deal.

On the software side I have it running Ubuntu 11.04 for when I am working on personal stuff but I also can boot into Windows 7 where I have a meager install just for work to keep that end more secure.

Netbook or Ultraportable? Read Post »

Here are my Desktop and Netbook with Ubuntu 11.04 Unity Desktop.

Here are my Desktop and Netbook with Unity:

My Desktop

My Netbook

On both:

  • Removed some of the icons I don’t use.
  • Whitelisted some notifications/applets.
  • Added launchers for ssh quicklaunch, ETQW and some others.
  • Added submenues to libreoffice and file launcher.
  • Added Conky.
  • Added theme, transparency and changed size of launcher.
  • Added Reddit Lense
  • Removed Desktop Switcher (Not shown)

Shading is off on Desktop screenshot for some reason!
UPDATE: Confinity now let’s you easily perform all the tweaks that I have.

Here are my Desktop and Netbook with Ubuntu 11.04 Unity Desktop. Read Post »