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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3 States, 3 Winners

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With Newt Gingrich’s win at the South Carolina Primary it shows voters that the GOP nomination is still anyone’s game. While Gingrich came through with a commanding lead in South Carolina, he still trails Mitt Romney by five delegates. The current delegate count is: Mitt Romney (31), Newt Gingrich (26), Ron Paul (10) and Rick Santorum (8).

The only candidate that has not one a state is Ron Paul. Yet Ron Paul’s strategy has kept him ahead of Rick Santorum who has won a state himself. With the nomination still in contention I don’t see any of the current candidates dropping out yet. Considering a candidate has to accumulate 1,144 delegates to win the RNC convention, we still have a long way to go.

The next Primary to take place is Florida where 100,000 voters have already voted early from a potential field of nine candidates. It will be interesting to see if any of the five candidates that have withdrawn from the field will earn an appreciable amount of votes. It is also worth noting that Florida has been penalized and will only bring the winner 50 delegates as opposed to 100.

Closely following Florida is the Nevada and Main Caucuses where another 28 delegates are up for grabs in Nevada and 24 in Maine. In the case of Nevada the delegates are divided proportionally as opposed to a winner take all scenario like Florida. In Main the delegates of the Caucuses go to the State Convention and are not bound to vote for a candidate but take the popular vote as a guideline. The Nevada and Main Caucuses have the potential to nearly nullify any gains made in Florida, if candidates place well enough.

My take on this, it’s too close to call and can be anyone’s game.

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