Valve announces Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 support for Ubuntu Linux

Steam on Linux has been a possibility for quite a long time now, by using a Windows to Linux “conversion” program like Wine. Although Valve had yet to bring official support for Steam on Linux, until today. The announcement is sure to be welcomed with open arms by the Linux community, although this is the first very small step in moving towards a scenario where all games can be played on Linux distributions.

Using a “porting” process with the OpenGL coding, Valve have managed to get Steam to run on the Linux Ubuntu operating system. The process is very similar to the way they also managed to get support for Steam on the Mac OS X platform. In addition to Steam, they have ported the source engine game Left 4 Dead 2 to work on Ubuntu with a high frame rate – i.e. not much loss in performance versus Windows.

The success of the Steam client running on Linux is a small step, but the success of Left 4 Dead 2 in combination is something much bigger. In the short term it gives the potential for all source engine based games to bring Ubuntu support as well, famous titles like Counter Strike, Counter Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2 and many more could all be brought over to Ubuntu.

Valve have stated they won’t just stop at Ubuntu, they will work on other Linux distributions too – like Linux Mint. However, they are taking it one step at a time, and Ubuntu is first since its the most popular gamer Linux distribution. There are still many optimisations to be made with the Ubuntu porting process that could see performance match that of Windows.Thanks to SteamPlay, gamers with L4D2 on Windows can play it on Ubuntu without additional purchases.

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