10 years ago Steam released for Linux

oh wow. so i am using linux since ten years now. i read in an article of the steam release from an german indie game blog. the title is burned in my brain: Sudo apt-get install steam that made me curious. so i installed and dual boot WIN7/ubuntu 12.04. and steam right on it to get a feel. use the terminal, experiment with some different distros over the years. after a few days/weeks/months is started to realize i just use the ubuntu. then my WIN partition vanished on purpose. it was/is very exciting to use. still. for everyday since the switch.


Last edited by entmiener on 25 April 2024 at 10:22 pm UTC

Whom here remembers happypenguin.org ?
That was awesome some 15 years ago...

I loved happypenguin.org. It covered a lot more of the open source engine / free games. Kind of wish Liam would cover more of these gems. Seeing another 'AAA game works with Proton' is getting a little boring. We get it, Proton is awesome and for the most part just plays anything.'

I'm loving the 'retro computer build' series! I have a stack of Retro systems that would have a hard time running most kernels, though I could likely get a 10 year old kernel on there... I should find a copy of Mandrake...

Amazing to see how much gaming on linux has grown since then.
I've used linux all my life that I remember; playing BZFlag as a kid blew my mind. Then got hugely into Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory which worked amazing on linux, and then got really into linux gaming with the Live Linux Gamers distro. It was a live distro that came with maybe 10-20 games preinstalled (still playing Urban Terror today!). Made a few other stops along the way before I finally joined steam in 2014.

So many hours spent troubleshooting games, getting them to work under linux or solving weird issues. It's mindblowing to me these days that you just click install on regular ol steam and then click play, and boom - it's working. It's the case with so, so many games that I'm used to it now. Never thought plug & play would become the norm but I'm so happy it has.

Thanks for 10 years steam!

Nice! For me, the start of legit Linux gaming was with Loki Software in the late 90s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Entertainment

I still have Corel Linux with Civ:Call To Power, Heavy Gear II, Quake III, and a few others.

Truly, though, Steam coming to Linux has been the best thing to happen to desktop Linux since Ubuntu and Canonical. Valve as a company and Steam as a platform are such a cool part of modern computing. I love that they continue to buck the broader tech trends while still keeping current and moving things forward. The Steam Deck is a marvel. I look forward to what Valve will do with their next 10 years of Linux gaming.

I still remember seeing Quake in a game store in 1999.

Before Steam it was very difficult to get games running under Wine. I remember breaking my system many times, especially in the early 2000s, trying to compile the right libraries and still not being able to get most games working right.

Cedega existed to try and make it easier to run Games (and software but that was an even worse experience) and even that only worked slightly better than manually trying to get games working.

In the end, I mostly just played Blizzard games because those were the ones that worked mostly out of the box with Wine.

It is really impressive today that I can play just about any game I want without having to do anything to make it work under Linux.

Ten years ago, I was using ubuntu, but I wanted to play some PC games during my lunch break, and I happened to see that steam had entered the linux platform, so I registered to join this platform. By now, I have over 4000 games and I don't use a single OS anymore, but steam has always been a must for me.

I'm starting to feel old. I remember a time before Steam for Linux, back in the dark days even before the first set of Humble Indie Bundles, it's truly crazy how far Linux has come overall as a platform for gaming. 10 years ago today, Steam for Linux left Beta and released officially and what a difference it made!
Linux Gaming is no longer a thing that people will constantly laugh about. It's here, it's a thing and many people now with a Steam Deck likely don't even realise they're using Linux — that's just how good it can be.

Dark days?

I have to disagree with it.

Many companies tried hard to release more games for Linux before HIB. I think about Linux publishers (LGP, Loki, Runesoft, etc.), porting houses (Eon Games, IGIOS, etc.), porters (Ryan Gordon, Frank Earl, etc.), and companies that are well-known for just one game (Cipsoft, Laminar Research etc.,). We had companies with a long history of releasing games for Linux. Many of them were ignored like Kristianix games, InterAction studios, and so on.

We didn't have a good website that covered all the information about all commercial games for Linux. I must admit that it was hard to track all these companies before 2010.

On the other hand, some users felt that the Linux market was a joke. They had to choose between more expensive games from Linux publishers or indie games. When some users didn't want to accept it, they were forced to go back to using Windows.

It wasn't a perfect situation, but we constantly saw new games released for Linux. These companies and programers had to deal with users that wanted just Steam for Linux.


Last edited by gbudny on 15 February 2023 at 2:34 am UTC

Some of the breakthrough moments were dxvk release and Mesa gaining full OpenGL and Vulkan support. Valve contribute directly to both so it's really good they put their weight behind Linux gaming.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 February 2023 at 5:25 am UTC

Without this occurring a decade ago, they would have missed a major opportunity with the Steam Deck. Nor would desktop Linux be mine, and many other PC building gamers daily driver. Since we can play the vast majority of our favorite games on Linux. Just think what the next decade will bring.

As I read the comments, a few things make me feel weird:
1. Most of you are Linux users for a long time, while I use Linux since 2020 and play on it since 2022.
2. Despite only recently starting gaming, it was nowhere near an OOB Just Works experience. I dealt with forcing games to use Nvidia GPU, any Vulkan application freezing due to a driver bug, Apex Legends stuttering even with GPL and mod problems with HOI4. I even patched Proton (only a week ago!) so Paradox Launcher would well behave.
3. In 2 Steam accounts around only 5 games were purchased in total (and only 1 pirate game which I can't acquire in a different way) while everyone else here has hundreds if not thousands.


Last edited by mr-victory on 15 February 2023 at 7:42 am UTC

I still remember seeing Quake in a game store in 1999.

Before Steam it was very difficult to get games running under Wine. I remember breaking my system many times, especially in the early 2000s, trying to compile the right libraries and still not being able to get most games working right.

Cedega existed to try and make it easier to run Games (and software but that was an even worse experience) and even that only worked slightly better than manually trying to get games working.

In the end, I mostly just played Blizzard games because those were the ones that worked mostly out of the box with Wine.

It is really impressive today that I can play just about any game I want without having to do anything to make it work under Linux.

Yeah, those were the days alright. Some games like City of Heroes though ran better under Wine in Linux than on Windows for me. When I discovered that I would always reboot into Linux before starting a session of crime fighting.

There is this strange sense of nostalgia and adventure whenever a game requires fiddling with Wine to function these days. Digging through stack dumps and logs, hours spent digging through forums and Microsoft documentation... Ok, it wasn't great. But it was educational!

As I read the comments, a few things make me feel weird:
1. Most of you are Linux users for a long time, while I use Linux since 2020 and play on it since 2022.
2. Despite only recently starting gaming, it was nowhere near an OOB Just Works experience. I dealt with forcing games to use Nvidia GPU, any Vulkan application freezing due to a driver bug, Apex Legends stuttering even with GPL and mod problems with HOI4. I even patched Proton (only a week ago!) so Paradox Launcher would well behave.
3. In 2 Steam accounts around only 5 games were purchased in total (and only 1 pirate game which I can't acquire in a different way) while everyone else here has hundreds if not thousands.

Welcome! Glad to have you amongst us!

Regarding 2, yeah things are relative for us old-timers, our lives were so miserable back when that things like nVidia driver bugs and the occasional launcher misbehaving makes us feel like OOB experience. (especially when one remembers that was the case on windows as well back in the early to mid 00's)

There is still much improvement to be made and if a newer generation never have to learn about DLL-hell or launch date driver bugs, then that would be just swell!

I loved tinkering with WINE back I the days. Took weeks to get something working. Writing how to posts on AppHQ. Steam made things a bit boring.

Ah yes, I remember adding those Humble Indie Bundle keys to my Steam account 👴

And the rest is history...

what have been your favourite moments?

Being able to ditch multibooting Windows in 2015 i guess? ^^

launch date driver bugs

Isn't this still a thing with AMD for GPU launches and both AMD and Nvidia for new games?

Writing how to posts on AppHQ.

I went that route too😂

It's been a great ride bros. Here's to 10 more!

To me, 10 years is not that old considering I'll have my "20 Years of Service" badge from Steam in September
For the occasion I remember the first game my parents bought for me was 007: Licence to Kill with one 5"1/4 floppy disk for each graphics configuration (VGA, EGA).

Those 10 years have been really nice especially when it ended my journey, from MS-DOS 5 to Win7, to start a Linux only one (at least at home).

I think a discussion about things that happened "long ago" will just bring out the old people like me and we just can't resist talking of the "good old days".

Although not necessarily good, I think we were just less old and had more free time.
Or maybe we expected less from our computers.

I mean it was the era of having turbo buttons that slows down your PC, or just hard-resetting your PC multiple times a day because it randomly hung again.
Or opening up your crappy old VGA monitor that was getting too dark, so you could up the voltage on the tube so you could actually SEE stuff again. And then being surprised that the monitor caught on fire a month later...

I suppose one cant really get that achievement though. I didn't get that dialog though ive been from the start.