9 years to the day, Valve officially put up a limited Beta release of the Steam Client for Linux. It's safe to say it's been a rather bumpy but exciting ride.
Want to know the history of how things happened? Back in July 2021 we wrote up a detailed look into it all titled "Faster Zombies to Steam Deck: The History of Valve and Linux Gaming". Based on that we'll refrain from going over it all again, we suggest you grab a quick coffee and give that a read.
Now we're pretty much on the eve for the Steam Deck releasing (for some at least…ours comes in 2022), powered by the Arch-based SteamOS 3, we're about to see a real explosion in the amount of people carrying around a full Linux device. Exciting times ahead that's for sure.
We're also currently seeing the highest Linux user share on Steam in multiple years, fuelled by excitement surrounding Steam Play Proton and the Steam Deck. 1.13% might not sound like a lot of course, and compared with Windows it's certainly not, as it's at least 1,360,520 monthly active users based on the last time Valve mentioned their figures (January 2021).
At 10 years it will mark around nearly a year after the Steam Deck released, who knows what things will be like then.
Happy Birthday, Steam for Linux Beta.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
All starts with something special nine years ago, that was time when Vulp just started dabbling with Linux as primary computing platform (including for gaming)
Hopefully, the upcoming Steam Deck can bring us to the new height of Steam gaming on Linux
Last edited by Vulphere on 6 November 2021 at 9:20 am UTC
Steam really helped gaming on linux. Before there where a few published games for linux, then came humblebundle with some more. But steam helped to have more much ports. Even more, when they release proton, that helped to be able to play many windows games... With wine it's not easy to make it work.
And moreover, apart for the steam store, valve helped improve wine. And now, with vulkan, we have extra performance even on windows games. Translating directx9 to opengl it's difficult and needs many cpu cycles.
Really valve it's helping for linux gaming (for they interest).
In a short time, or already is, will be better for playing windows games than windows (bloaded) os.
Ps. There it has been more than 2 years than I don't boot the windows partition, even for playing.
AussieEevee Nov 6, 2021
Kimyrielle Nov 6, 2021
I thought gaming on Linux was dead forever.
A decade later, I can play almost 100% of all games I'd ever want to play on Linux and my Win 10 partition is collecting virtual dust.
How times have changed! \o/
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me