In an unsurprising move, Steam has replaced the Linux icon of "tux" with their own SteamOS icon. I completely understand why they did this, but it does make things confusing.
I can see plenty of people getting confused about what the icon is for, as it's so close to Steam's own icon. At least Tux was a clear separation to the Windows and Mac icons. I hope people don't get confused by it, but I can guarantee people will be.
They do need their own clear SteamOS branding of course, as they need to constantly keep it in gamers and developers minds. The problem is, how long before SteamOS is the only "distribution" supported on Steam? I hope game developers and Valve don't become that silly, but there are some problematic developers out there already. At least as long as Valve keep the Steam Runtime working as it is now, other distributions shouldn't have any problems.
For those that don't have the new version:
Looks like that little saying going around of "No tux no bux" is going to have to be tweaked?
I'm still excited to see what happens with SteamOS and Steam Machines, and what would happen if they fail miserably. I hope they don't of course, but they obviously won't be an overnight success. I will eat a tux teddy live on air if they are an overnight success (please don't hold me to that).
Well, at least it still says "SteamOS + Linux" right? Let's hope there's never a hint of Microsoft style "embrace extend extinguish".
It's easily possible this change will be reverted though, as certain parts of the site keep breaking, like the title now being "#title_welcome_to_steam". Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I can see plenty of people getting confused about what the icon is for, as it's so close to Steam's own icon. At least Tux was a clear separation to the Windows and Mac icons. I hope people don't get confused by it, but I can guarantee people will be.
They do need their own clear SteamOS branding of course, as they need to constantly keep it in gamers and developers minds. The problem is, how long before SteamOS is the only "distribution" supported on Steam? I hope game developers and Valve don't become that silly, but there are some problematic developers out there already. At least as long as Valve keep the Steam Runtime working as it is now, other distributions shouldn't have any problems.
For those that don't have the new version:
Looks like that little saying going around of "No tux no bux" is going to have to be tweaked?
I'm still excited to see what happens with SteamOS and Steam Machines, and what would happen if they fail miserably. I hope they don't of course, but they obviously won't be an overnight success. I will eat a tux teddy live on air if they are an overnight success (please don't hold me to that).
Well, at least it still says "SteamOS + Linux" right? Let's hope there's never a hint of Microsoft style "embrace extend extinguish".
It's easily possible this change will be reverted though, as certain parts of the site keep breaking, like the title now being "#title_welcome_to_steam". Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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It has been this way for a long, long time. Visit Steam in a browser, and it's still Tux.
No it's not, that's your cache keeping the tux icon. Do a hard refresh.
Screenshot after ctrl+shift+r in Firefox: http://s1.zrzut.pl/f6GiOdD.png
Also you didn't discover anything new, maybe you just switched from Firefox to Chrome?
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/2y07g8/did_steam_just_switch_the_tux_logo_to_a_steam_logo/
Browser (PaleMoon 25.4.1): SteamOS-Icons
http://i.imgur.com/4FDoZOH.png
Steam-Client: Tux-Icons
http://i.imgur.com/PkMHF9E.png
Transitional state, maybe? :D
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Valve had it wrong from the start, they should always have placed a GNU icon before the Linux icon.
(But seriously, the Tux icon looks rubbish. It doesn't really work in two colour. The head-alone logo looks even worse. SteamOS looks gooooood.)
(But seriously, the Tux icon looks rubbish. It doesn't really work in two colour. The head-alone logo looks even worse. SteamOS looks gooooood.)
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Mountain Man May 28, 2015
They are basically betting parts of their "corporate identity" on SteamOS.You're right. Valve is only one of the most successful companies in the gaming industry. I'm sure they don't know what they're doing.
Unfortunataly I'm not sure if this company is totally aware of that.
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From a strict Marketing perspective this makes a lot of sense. Valve wants to turn its Steam application into a gaming ecosystem with a dedicated OS, controller, hardware and games. Just look at current gaming ads. In some cases you won't even see the words PC or even Windows mentioned anywhere, but the tagline "... coming to PlayStation, Xbox and Steam".
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the Tux icon looks rubbish. It doesn't really work in two colour. The head-alone logo looks even worse. SteamOS looks gooooood.)
Yeah, I always thought the Tux icon looked like a placeholder.
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If you have a functional Linux OS Steam games should work on all. Most of the bugs I've come across have not been specific to non Ubuntu, non Debian and non SteamOS distributions, and when I have informed some developers of this with a detailed report of testing various distributions with the same parameters and re-creating the bug they say "we only support Ubuntu, Debian and SteamOS".
That ignorance has to stop, and I think Valve is making matters worse, they are enforcing this attitude.
The fact that they aren't calling it Steam Linux is a testament to them not caring one bit for Linux as a whole.
That ignorance has to stop, and I think Valve is making matters worse, they are enforcing this attitude.
The fact that they aren't calling it Steam Linux is a testament to them not caring one bit for Linux as a whole.
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I will go right on saying, "No Tux no bux"
I haven't tried SteamOS in a while but I'm hoping it is not possible to boot up and play without seeing Tux or "Linux" branding of any sort. It would actually be bad for them in the long run not to emphasize SteamOS is a Linux distro. People and companies see the "Intel Inside" badge, for example, so the hardware manufacture benefits along with Intel.
I haven't tried SteamOS in a while but I'm hoping it is not possible to boot up and play without seeing Tux or "Linux" branding of any sort. It would actually be bad for them in the long run not to emphasize SteamOS is a Linux distro. People and companies see the "Intel Inside" badge, for example, so the hardware manufacture benefits along with Intel.
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MichaelTunnell May 28, 2015
I don't care because Tux only expressed "support for Linux" but at the same time didn't advocate for Linux. This kind of adovcates for the platform under a different name.
Here is an idea to chew on . . .
What if the goal of this was to make people think "SteamOS? What is this? Oh is this like the officially sanctioned platform for Steam?" This could cause Developers/Publishers to focus on the platform more since it signifies that Steam for Windows is no longer the main platform and that SteamOS is now THE Steam platform.
This means it gets new games being developed for Linux and even gets new users interested in what SteamOS, maybe even so much so to see what it was made on.
On the other hand, Linux has a very bad reputation for being hard and confusing and "just for nerds", this focuses on the gaming rather than focusing on fixing an arguably "unfixable" reputation.
I think this could be a good thing in the long run especially considering Linux was meant to be foundational not a retail product.
Here is an idea to chew on . . .
What if the goal of this was to make people think "SteamOS? What is this? Oh is this like the officially sanctioned platform for Steam?" This could cause Developers/Publishers to focus on the platform more since it signifies that Steam for Windows is no longer the main platform and that SteamOS is now THE Steam platform.
This means it gets new games being developed for Linux and even gets new users interested in what SteamOS, maybe even so much so to see what it was made on.
On the other hand, Linux has a very bad reputation for being hard and confusing and "just for nerds", this focuses on the gaming rather than focusing on fixing an arguably "unfixable" reputation.
I think this could be a good thing in the long run especially considering Linux was meant to be foundational not a retail product.
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If you have a functional Linux OS Steam games should work on all. Most of the bugs I've come across have not been specific to non Ubuntu, non Debian and non SteamOS distributions, and when I have informed some developers of this with a detailed report of testing various distributions with the same parameters and re-creating the bug they say "we only support Ubuntu, Debian and SteamOS".
That ignorance has to stop, and I think Valve is making matters worse, they are enforcing this attitude.
The fact that they aren't calling it Steam Linux is a testament to them not caring one bit for Linux as a whole.
No this is the only way to go and SteamOS only improve that. Developers do not need to waist there time and money to test other distributions. No normal company will ever install all Linux distributions to test all bugs. They will install and test only one ore two. Even if bug is common to all Linux distributions developer do not need to waist it's time to check it out. That's why when you buy the game it is specified which platforms it is supporting and developers need to focus only on those platforms.
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That Linux "is just for nerds" is FUD. There are plenty of Linux distributions that are very easy to use. What pisses me off is that people didn't learn Windows right of the bat either, and it does have a learning curve. It's also incredibly unfair to judge Linux that it's Windows. People don't do that with Mac OS X.
Please stop furthering this line of thought that is based on misinformation and fear. If you don, you only end up hurting Linux.
Please stop furthering this line of thought that is based on misinformation and fear. If you don, you only end up hurting Linux.
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Well, I'm not pleased, but I'll forgive them if they actually, you know, sell a bunch of Steam Machines.
Based on current pricing I'm not holding my breath; hopefully there will be "Steam Sales".
Based on current pricing I'm not holding my breath; hopefully there will be "Steam Sales".
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Mountain Man May 28, 2015
The fact that they aren't calling it Steam Linux is a testament to them not caring one bit for Linux as a whole.So the fact that the Ubuntu and Debian home pages don't say one word about Linux means that they don't care about Linux as a whole?
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So the fact that the Ubuntu and Debian home pages don't say one word about Linux means that they don't care about Linux as a whole?Debian also has a version with the FreeBSD kernel. You can't really call the whole distro Debian Linux or something like that if the Linux part is optional. I think that's probably why they dropped Linux from the front page. Ubuntu did it purely for business reasons though, just like Valve.
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ElectricPrism May 28, 2015
Popularizing and gaining the acceptance of the Linux Brand isn't that important or relevant in the gaming world.
On the other hand Valve has handcuffed their brand & reputation to the success of SteamOS/Linux in order to convince game devs and gamers to be part of the Linux Community via SteamOS / Steam Machines.
Quality over quantity - I would rather have the entire steam library run on SteamOS/Debian/Ubuntu with minimal bugs than have every game randomly crash if you're using X distrubtion.
On the other hand Valve has handcuffed their brand & reputation to the success of SteamOS/Linux in order to convince game devs and gamers to be part of the Linux Community via SteamOS / Steam Machines.
Quality over quantity - I would rather have the entire steam library run on SteamOS/Debian/Ubuntu with minimal bugs than have every game randomly crash if you're using X distrubtion.
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[quote=adolson]
I was under the erronous impression that Samsung will be putting out Ubuntu phones. Ignore that statement of mine.
Worst case scenario - they'll drop official support for Ubuntu, which they won't, especially if Samsung ends up buying AMD.I guess I'm out of the loop here. What is the connection between Ubuntu and Samsung/AMD?
I was under the erronous impression that Samsung will be putting out Ubuntu phones. Ignore that statement of mine.
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Kimyrielle May 28, 2015
I get the idea that Valve needed to brand SteamOS. But at least they could have given SteamOS a logo that's not virtually identical with Steam as in the gaming platform. People seeing that will think "Ok, that's a game for Steam". A tux holding the Steam logo would have been nice. Or something that indicates that this is an actual platform. Oh well....
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No this is the only way to go and SteamOS only improve that. Developers do not need to waist there time and money to test other distributions. No normal company will ever install all Linux distributions to test all bugs. They will install and test only one ore two. Even if bug is common to all Linux distributions developer do not need to waist it's time to check it out. That's why when you buy the game it is specified which platforms it is supporting and developers need to focus only on those platforms.
I did not say that developers have to bug test every distro.
What I was saying is that the bugs I've come across I have tested on multiple distributions on my PC, Ubuntu, Mint, Funtoo, Debian, Arch, Opensuse, etc, and discovered that most of these bugs are not related to non Ubuntu, non Debian distributions.
I delivered a bug report with no demands. I only asked if they look into it if they had the chance, on the distros they support, but they didn't seem like they intended to do that.
The fact that they aren't calling it Steam Linux is a testament to them not caring one bit for Linux as a whole.So the fact that the Ubuntu and Debian home pages don't say one word about Linux means that they don't care about Linux as a whole?
That is not the same. Debian and Ubuntu has no problems associating with Linux as a brand or what you call it. Valve obviously has it seems now, and if they really wanted to improve gaming for Linux they wouldn't go down this path.
Valve keeps building on the FUD that Linux is just for nerds, which is bullshit.
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philip550c May 28, 2015
I agree that it's very confusing. It looks like it's just part of the "SteamPlay" logo rather than something separate. Having said that, however, a good marketing campaign could convince people of just about anything. It will be up to Valve to do that and also convince people that they want/need Steam Machines.I also thought it was part of the steam play logo. Didnt buy audiosurf 2 because I thought it just had mac/windows support.
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Wait people, stop!!! And take time to look at the Steam about page : http://store.steampowered.com/about/
Also, Valve did told the developers to test their games on Ubuntu, and Steam OS is like 95% Debian, so there is absolutely no doubt that the games are going to work on these distros. Also, if you haven't read the news, as it is now the buzz on Steam Machines is totally gone and Valve will need a major marketing campaign if they don't want it to become a huge failure, which if you don't have realized it yet, would be very bad for us.
But I don't like that logo either.
Also, Valve did told the developers to test their games on Ubuntu, and Steam OS is like 95% Debian, so there is absolutely no doubt that the games are going to work on these distros. Also, if you haven't read the news, as it is now the buzz on Steam Machines is totally gone and Valve will need a major marketing campaign if they don't want it to become a huge failure, which if you don't have realized it yet, would be very bad for us.
But I don't like that logo either.
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