Steam Client For Ubuntu Enters Closed Beta

6th Nov 2012 is a memorable day for Ubuntu/Linux users. It is the day that Valve has started the Steam For Linux closed beta testing. For many gamers out there, casual or hardcore, I’m sure they are familiar with Steam. Who wouldn’t be? And for Linux users, particularly those who use Ubuntu, many would be delighted that Valve has released their Steam client primarily with Ubuntu support.

With the release of Steam For Linux (even in closed beta), you know how this translates into games for Linux. I mean REAL GAMES for Linux. In time, we’ll have great games running natively on Linux. Hah! How about that.. .

So, if you use Ubuntu just grab the package here:

http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb

or for those console fanatics you can do

wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb.

Initially when you log into your account you will get a warning that the Steam client for Linux is on closed beta and you need an invite before you can proceed. Clicking on the OK button will close the client. It did for me, but it may be different for you.  So you go ahead and test it.

What you could do is lock Steam to your Launcher, if it is not yet there. Then right click for the quicklist to come up then choose any of the options. If  everything goes well, like it did on mine, the warning should be gone and you are now automatically logged in to your Steam account. You can log in as a different user, just like you could on the Steam client for Windows, if you have more than one account.

Here’s what the Steam client looks like on Ubuntu 12.04

The 2 games are from a recent Humble Indie Bundle I bought. I have more Steam games listed on Windows. I guess for now those games can’t run on Ubuntu. Also, the games that are being beta tested does not appear. Obviously I am not lucky enough to get into the 1,000 beta testers chosen by Valve. Supposedly, the games that can run on Linux can be installed via console command. Something like this – steam -dev steam://install/440 – would get you Team Fortress 2.

SPAZ, or Space Pirates and Zombies, is reported to run successfully. Rochard, even though it is in my games list, supposedly won’t run. I have yet to try it. But the more eager Reddit people marked it as X. A more thorough list of games can be found on this here page on Reddit.

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Notice: This article was published on November 7, 2012 and the content above may be out of date.
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