Survey results for Linux gaming on Steam

steamValve published their monthly statistics on the Steam gaming platform.The February 2013 Hardware & Software survey results show that the adoption of Linux has doubled in the past month (click on the “OS Version” stats to see all Operating Systems, not just Windows).

While Ubuntu is obviously taking the largest part of the Linux pie, the total percentage of Linux Steam gamers is now somewhere between 2 and 3 (Slackware being hidden in the “Other” platforms). This means Linux as a gaming platform is about to overtake Apple’s OS (at least, for Steam). Who said that Linux users are freeloaders, not interested in anything that is not open source and gratis?

How are we doing as Slackware community? If you look at the Slackware Group page on the SteamCommunity site, you will see that we are about to pass the 100 members mark. I think that one month ago, that number was 13. So, the group is expanding fast, and it is good to see that Slackers are die-hard gamers too 🙂

I updated my steamclient package to the latest officially released version 1.0.0.35 yesterday.

It’s still a 32-bit Steam client of course, and all Steam games are 32-bit, so either you have to run 32-bit Slackware, or install my multilib package set on top of your 64-bit Slackware  (multilib installation instructions here). The good news is that you do not have to install anything else to use the Steam client and play games. All the dependencies that I used to add to the steamclient directory are no longer needed. The necessary libraries are now all part of the “steam-runtime” included with the steamclient package.

It is highly recommended to have a NVIDIA/ATI powered graphics card inside your computer and use the proprietary binary graphics drivers for these cards!

Only if you want to be able to watch the game demo-video and promotional content in the Steam Store (inside the Steam client), you need to have the flashplayer-plugin installed. For 64-bit multilib systems that means, grab the 32-bit flash player plugin package, and use convertpkg-compat32 (part of my compat32-tools) to convert that package into a “compat32” package which can be used on a multilib Slackware64. Note that Adobe releases regular security updates for the Flashplayer, so be sure to check for updates to my package. You can keep an eye on the repository RSS feed if you don’t want to miss out.

Want to try? Install the steamclient, get Team Fortress 2 for free and start playing this adrenaline-powered multiplayer online game. And become the newest member of the Steam Slackware Group!

Have fun, Eric

Steam client for Linux is out of Beta

steamThe Steam client for Linux is finally out of Beta! This is being celebrated by offering large discounts on all 54 Linux games which are currently available on the Steam platform. So if you wanted to play the Original Half-Life natively on Slackware, you only have to shell out a measly few bucks. If there is enough interest I will open up my Half-Life Dedicated Server “Eindhoven Aliens” from time to time when I am online and willing to get slaughtered. Which reminds me that I still have to write my blog article on how I setup that HLDS – it was not trivial.

I updated my steamclient package to version 1.0.0.27. Join the Slackware group on Steam Community if you use it.

Cheers, Eric

Steam games in Slackware

steamValve is updating its Steam client for Linux regualarly, fixing the issues which are reported by lots of interested Linux gamers. I was a bit behind with updating my Slackware remix of the client binaries but I have overcome the flue and pushed an update, bringing the steamclient package for Slackware to the latest version, 1.0.0.22.

I did not have to change a lot to the “steam” script which is part of the original debian/ubuntu package. Basically I had to ensure that Steam and its games will be using ALSA instead of PulseAudio since we do not use PA in Slackware. I also added a ‘hack’ which causes the steam startup script to execute a file “${HOME}/.steam4slackware” if it exists. You can add extra definitions of environment variables into that file if you run into sound issues. The default definition of “export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa” may not be enough for you, perhaps something like adding “export AUDIODEV=hw” is needed for your system. Using “${HOME}/.steam4slackware” allows you to leave the steam script unmodified.

Another script which is present in the debian package and which is called every time Steam starts, is “/usr/bin/steamdeps”. Originally this was a Python script which checks (using apt) if you have all required dependencies installed, and will attempt to download and install any missing packages… that was too unfriendly to my liking, so I changed that script’s content to only display a message on standard output (which means you won’t even see that text if you start steam from the desktop menu). If anyone comes up with a decent Slackware alternative for “steamdeps” I”ll consider adopting it.

Gameplay

I have only played two of the available Linux games a lot so far. The Linux Steam client allows you to play the Linux Beta of Team Fortress 2 for free (and of course TF2 will remain free even after the beta) but I found that I am no longer so fond of fast-action, multi-player shooter games playing against hordes of unknown people. I like to team up with people I know… perhaps my age shows 😉

Luckily Valve published a new Beta game last week: their very first game Half-Life is now available as a native Linux game in Steam, and if you already own Half-Life (not the Source version, but the original game) in Steam  then you will get the Linux Beta of Half-Life added to your game inventory automatically! If you bought a CD of the game in the past (before Steam existed, like I did) then you can import its CD key into Steam and it will cost you nothing. Playing Half-Life brought back fond memories. I have been in Deathmatches with my son for hours this weekend (he is a Team Fortress 2 guy but was hooked  to HL and its interesting choice of weapons immediately).

Half-Life is of course an old game which every modern computer should play effortlessly. TF2 is built around the Source engine and is newer, but still my PC’s have no issues with it. I remember that Half-Life had measurable level load times, but on my current quad-core desktop, the load times are merely fractions of a second.

Sound works, in all games so far. I verified that I could use my microphone in Steam (View > Settings > Voice) by explicitly selecting the ALSA device instead of PulsAudio, but I have not yet tried in-game if the voice functionality actually works (I don’t like it when other people talk during a deathmatch, so I hesitate using voice myself).

Caveat: For some people (as seen on Google+), sound stops working when Steam updates itself (which can happen everytime you connect the client to the Steam platform) or even segfaults on startup. A hint from Valve’s developers on their bugtracker, indicates that you could try running “steam” as follows (must be done on a commandline):

STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam

PulseAudio

One of the dependencies of this steamclient is the pulseaudio library. Installing that is no problem of course, but it had an undesired (at least for me) side-effect: I also have Skype for Linux on my desktop and KDE will autostart it when I logon. For some reason (probably because of the desktop autostart files “/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop” and “/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio-kde.desktop” which are installed by the pulseaudio package), Skype will see the pulseaudio sound system and grab that instead of using the ALSA drivers. There is no way around that except stopping Skype, killing the pulseaudio processes which have been started by Skype, and then starting Skype again. You can of course delete the above two files, but I found out that the following change to “/etc/pulse/default.pa” will also give Skype back its sound. This change tells PulseAudio to use ALSA for its output:

# Following two lines explicitly enabled to make PulseAudio use ALSA - Eric Hameleers
load-module module-alsa-sink device=dmix
load-module module-alsa-source device=dsnoop

# Commented-out because of two explicit load-module lines above - Eric Hameleers
#### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
#.ifexists module-udev-detect.so
#load-module module-udev-detect
#.else
#### Use the static hardware detection module (for systems that lack udev/hal support)
#load-module module-detect
#.endif
# End commented out - Eric Hameleers

If an application (like Skype) grabs the PulseAudio sound system, it will now be able to produce sound in your desktop.

Voice in Half-Life dedicated server games

half-life-logo I also saw on-screen messages about Half-Life not being able to use my microphone when I play Deathmatch on a HLDS – Half-Life Dedicated Server. The game tells me “Unable to initialize voice codec voice_miles. Voice disabled”. The miles codec is an old codec which is not very efficient, and Steam games switched to the speex codec which uses less bandwidth and apparently has better voice quality. The issue must be fixed on the server side

Add the following line to your “server.cfg” file:

sv_voicecodec voice_speex

Clients connecting to the server should now use the speex codec instead.

I setup a HLDS dedicated server on my Slackware LAN server / build box. That was not trivial at all, dammit! There’s lots of confusing information in Steam’s own knowledge base. Ten years ago I ran a half-life dedicated server on the Internet, but that was before the Steam era, and setting up a server was painless back then.

I have been playing Half-Life with my son on that server which is a lot of fun. I would like people to discover the joy of playing this old-skool game against their friends. So in one of my next blogs I will document how I have setup that server, so that you can repeat it.

Perhaps we will see a “Slackware” server appearing in the game tracker sometime!

Cheers, Eric

 

Packages for LibreOffice 3.6.5, calibre and steamclient, and lots of movement on the horizon

Yes, I finally got rid of the flu – but it took a week. I lost some weight (and I am not overweight so I am looking starved now), I still have a bad cough and my lower back muscles are strained and painful because of the continuous coughing. Otherwise I am fine.

I had a bit of a Slackware backlog which I am getting rid of now, thanks to my automated build scripts (creating these packages took time, not effort).

LibreOffice

The Libre Office developers had published their 3.6.5 release last week, and I finally felt good enough to build packages. I did a quick examination and it appears that the opening/saving of password-protected files is finally working! Other bugfixes are documented in the release notes. That shows a fairly long list, let’s hope 3.6.5 is going to be rock stable for everyone. It is the last 3.x release before moving on to 4.0.0 in February.

These LibreOffice 3.6.5 packages have been built on Slackware 13.37. They can be installed on Slackware 14 as well, but there seem to be some dynamic linking errors, so I assume that some functionality is broken. I have not yet found where that happens, though. If you find any issues on Slackware 14 please tell me.

The next series, 4.x ,will be compiled on Slackware 14.0 and that will be the end of the library errors in any case. Modifying the libreoffice.SlackBuild script for the 4.x release required real effort! I am running LibreOffice 4.0.0_RC2 here on the desktop machine and it will be worth it, I promise. I will wait with making my new packages public until the official stable 4.0.0 release, so be patient for now please… Those who are still on Slackware 13.37 will have a good fallback choice with LibreOffice 3.6.5.

Downloads are available here, as usual:

Remember, you can add more functionality by installing extensions. LibreOffice extensions are available from http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center

steam

Steam client

I also updated my steamclient package with a re-packaging of Valve’s latest binary release (a debian package for Ubuntu actually): 1.0.0.22. I am going to write a separate blog entry about Steam this weekend so I am not lingering here too long. Rest assured that the new package will rid you of the annoying “outdated client” errors and works like a charm (mostly).

calibreico

Calibre Ebook Management

And I am again in line with the weekly updates of Kovid Goyal, developer of Calibre. I still maintain an up-to-date version of my custom-built package because I think it is an important tool for anyone with an E-Reader who does not want to tie his hands to a commercial ebook management & library system. Calibre acts as my family’s library and using OPDS protocol, I do not even need a cable to download new books onto the reader. I just use the wireless network.

The Event Horizon!

The blog’s subject hinted that more is coming.. Indeed I already have my packages ready for KDE 4.10.0 but I am not yet releasing them yet… I am waiting for the official announcement next week (and maybe other packagers will find bugs in the meantime). It is looking cool and I am running it here with no issues. In fact I played several hours of Half-Life Deathmatch against my son (there’s a Linux Beta of that too, since this week on Steam – well worth the 10 bucks), and neither the new KDE nor Steam nor Half-life crashed. Also imminent is a new release of IcedTea, the build framework for OpenJDK which I use. That means, there will be a Slackware package for OpenJDK “7u12” or somewhat like that, very soon.

And last but certainly not least, the VideoLAN developers (who are currently partying at FOSDEM, Brussels) will have to come up fast with a fix for a critical vulnerability in the VLC player, which was divulged yesterday… I guess that you should not be opening ASF files in the meantime.

Eric

Steam for Linux Beta opens to everyone

 

The Steam for Linux beta program has just opened its doors to the general public.

When I looked, there were 48 games in the Steam catalogue, paid-for ans well as free-to-play. Part of opening up the Steam for Linux beta is moving their bug tracker to Github, which allows for a better interface than the old bugtracker which was used during the closed-beta phase.

Here is the official announcement:

An Early Holiday Gift!
added by Frank @ 01:13AM on December 20, 2012

The Steam for Linux beta program is now open to the public! In order to participate in the beta, you must download the latest Steam Linux client (found here) or upgrade your existing Steam for Linux client to the latest version. In addition, we will now track Steam for Linux client bugs using GitHub. This provides a better interface for tracking bugs than the forums used in the closed beta. The Steam for Linux repository (currently empty) is public, allowing anyone with a free GitHub account to create a new issue and edit or track it and search the existing bug database. The repository contains a readme file (README.md) detailing how to create a new issue (it describes the same format used in the closed beta). The team will continue working through existing issues in the forum but it is strongly recommended that any new issues be entered using GitHub’s issue tracking interface. The sub forums will remain open so that people can join/continue existing discussions about the Steam for Linux client. And last but not least, we now have a steam installer package repository. There is a mailing list for announcing updates to the steam installer package. To subscribe, use the public mailman page located here: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/steamrepo. Here’s the change list for this release:

  • The Steam for Linux client closed beta transitioned to an open beta.
  • Linux – Fixed excessive CPU usage by the Steam client when running Team Fortress 2
  • Linux – Fixed overlay crash when starting Cubemen
  • Big Picture – Improved back navigation behavior throughout user interface
  • Big Picture – Added discount timers and other user interface to store

Remember, my Steam Client package for Slackware can be found here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/steamclient/ . I will have to look into the new installer repository to see if I have to update the download link for my own package but that may have to wait until the weekend.

This LinuxQuestions.org thread is still being used for discussions and bug reporting.

Cheers, Eric