Half-Life Fallout: Valve Launches Linux Blog - Half-Life Fallout

Yesterday the Valve Linux blog was created by the Linux team at Valve Software. They've elaborated on how the development for Ubuntu and a successful port of Left 4 Dead 2 has been launched on it. Below the jump is a quote from the blog post.

Quote

That is absolutely fabulous.
I want to get rid of windows so bad.
I don't want to support it and i don't want to have to reboot to play my fav games.
Thank you valve.

Nachiketh, on 17 July 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

this is momumental news, finally, people will be able to have more reasons to move to linux. Ubuntu is a great start since its so popular, I guess the next step is for Valve to push a linux cross platform solution for all gnu/linux systems.

Great stuff, even though I am not a linux user, you can't help but appreciate this...

A lot of desktop users are bashing Windows 8 and predicting that it will be a total failure (desktop version). I tend to disagree simply because Microsoft's channel partnerships are so strong that people end up using it whether they like it or not. For example people hated vista but ended up buying laptops with it pre-installed. And of course the lack of viable non-MS alternatives.

If game developers get behind Linux I think it will be a huge boost to the platform. The PC gaming community is not huge but it's sizable. And importantly we tend to be opinion leaders in our communities when it comes to all things computer related. So if we get comfortable using Linux as our primary OS there's no doubt we will influence other non-gamers to do so too.

the only way for linux to finally be a true desktop contender is to have competitive office applications & games. Having a big name developer backing it up will help.

People are still angry at vista, but given time, Microsoft is the one to usually get it right. Think about it, you are still using vista, just a flashier version of it. One thing that Microsoft realised is that it is attempting to create a unified OS under various systems and metro is the interface that they shall all be ruled by.

The push back from the community will certainly help linux, but valve needs to go further, by committing to the platform, releasing the source SDK and push developers to support linux. Having L4D2 on linux is great, but other than proof of concept, most people have already played it on Windows and wont change because of that.

I am looking forward for this to be released and see the kind of affect is has on the Linux market. I enjoy Linux, more specifically programming in that environment, so to be able to easily take a break and load up Steam will be a very welcome dent in my productivity.

Humbug, on 17 July 2012 - 05:48 PM, said:

That's why i hate it. Not because it sucks. Because they want to force me (and the world) into it. !@#$ that!
I have dual boot, but i hate when i have to boot into windows.
I love valve taking this step.

suicide_mission, on 17 July 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

Wrong. Many people already have ubuntu on their computers, but they have dual boot to do stuff that only works well in windows, like L4D2.
It would be awesome if it works native ) It's a great start. It's also the latest source game, so there is probably more to come.

We shouldn't really worry about L4D being their first game to be ported. They have to start somewhere and obviously the first one will be a slow learning experience for them, the other games will follow I'm pretty sure. What we really want to see in the future is development for new games running parallel for windows and Linux. So both versions can be released approximately at same time.