Technology

Valve to test Steam on Linux next week

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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.

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Crunchbook

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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.

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End Piracy, Not Liberty

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Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. The intent of the bills is to stop the illegal downloading of copyrighted material… the outcome will be far different.

SOPA and PIPA would allow the U.S. government to order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China and Egypt. Do we want to model our country after totalitarian regimes?

SOPA and PIPA would kill jobs by legislation and litigation. U.S. Internet companies would have to monitor everything users upload or link to or risk expensive litigation. It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation”.

While SOPA and PIPA claim they will stop piracy, they won’t even accomplish that. Nefarious sites will just change their names while law abiding companies will suffer with constantly attempting to stay in compliance with mandates given them.

When you add it all up these proposed laws will censor, stifle the American economy and fail to achieve the claimed outcome. How could anyone support these pieces of legislation?

Contact your representative now! [Link courtesy of Wikipedia]

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