Despite the push Valve have been making the past year to bring gaming to Linux, the release of penguin-friendly games has done little to grow the Linux audience on Steam. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS is running on more than 12% of Steam users machines.
As part of Valve’s continuing efforts to port their back catalogue over to the open source operating system Linux, escaping the clutches of Microsoft, the developer today released the beta version of Left 4 Dead 2 Linux.
Valve have also started hosting four new community-made campaigns.
Everyone has been tinkering with virtual reality as more Oculus Rift developer kits arrive on people's doorsteps everyday. Their testing ground: Team Fortress 2. Valve are hot on the case with fixes and patches, the latest primarily aimed at the VR mode. Also, the Linux version of Team Fortress 2 has has “Improved performance and stability", which can only be a good thing.
You might have watched a grey, mercurial bar trickle along the bottom of your Steam client early this week, and not for the first time wondered what it was playing at. Well, that will have been TF2 patching in the latest promo items, a couple of new crafting recipes and a notable fix or two - especially notable for those who identify as penguin.
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Earlier this week I called Linux a dumb operating system for jerks because I'd had a bad time with Ubuntu, which in hindsight is like saying wheels are a terrible idea because you saw a car crash. Ubuntu isn't Linux, it's just the damp towel around Linux's waist, the gaudy umbrella in its cocktail, the lens through which its light shines, the hole in the cubicle wall through which its genitals protrude. Ubuntu is a contentious facade wrapped around the innocent Linux, and I didn't make this clear enough in my previous article. A few people got in touch to point this out, offering friendly advice and helpful direction, taking me softly by the hand and whispering gentle wisdom in my ears. So here are the four biggest mistakes I made when installing Ubuntu, that you might avoid doing the same.
A new Steam client update has been released, that adds official support for Linux and some much needed improvements.Now you can send your friends messages while they’re offline, receiving them when they next log back in. It’s like instant message magic. A bit. 
I’m not entirely sure if Valve are making a statement with their latest Steam sale: today of all days you can now buy cheap Linux games. Titles on offer include Defcon, FTL, Red Orchestra, Amnesia, and World of Goo.
You may remember that Valve released Half-Life for Linux and the Mac a few weeks back, including the classic version of Counter-Strike with it. Well, now Counter-Strike: Source is now available for both operating systems too and I’m sure we’ll soon be seeing games like Half-Life 2 and Day of Defeat: Source (both already available for the Mac) also making the leap to Linux.
Speaking at the Ubuntu Summit in Copenhagen last year, Valve engineer Drew Bliss said that Valve were interested in developing for Linux and were “now looking into doing Steam for Linux and supporting as many of our Steam games for Linux as we can." Valve had just launched beta applications for a Linux version of Steam.
Last night, Valve’s co-founder and MD Gabe Newell took to the stage at the 2013 DICE summit to explain some of the thinking between Valve’s eye-catching announcements and initiatives. In a thirty minute talk titled “A View on Next Steps", he covered Valve’s hardware plans, the growing Steam economy, and why Valve are working on Linux. Much of what he says would feel like sci-fi five years ago. Here’s what we learned.
It may have taken 15 years but both Half-Life and Counter-Strike 1.6 have been released for Mac and Linux users.
When rumours abounded and rebounded about a future Steam Box reveal yesterday, we speculated about an appearance at GDC or E3, in March and June. But no - try today. Today is the day we find out what the Steam Box is.
It’s a Steam-based modular PC, designed to be played on large, high definition TV displays. The computer is in “development stage" at modular tech company Xi3 thanks to an investment from Valve.
Valve have delivered an early Christmas present to Linux users in the form of an open beta to the Linux client. 
After making more than $5 million in the THQ Humble Bundlle (which a portion of will have gone to charity) THQ are considering developing for the Linux OS.
It's a great day for Linux users: as Valve and Nvidia tempt them out into the light of gaming with a plate of Steam for Linux closed beta seasoned with a significant Nvidia patch. The limited access beta will let the lucky few allowed in to play Team Fortress 2 and a number of other games on a platform previously limited indie games.
More after the break.
Steam for Linux is soon to be in external beta and doing very well thankyouverymuch. Gabe Newell had it designed as a nuclear bunker of sorts, for Valve to shelter in should the worst happen - i.e., should Windows 8 mark the first point in the deterioration of the PC as an open platform.
If you snoop around the Steam Content Description Record Database for long enough, you find some odd things. Broken bits of unreleased games, swooped into corners by tired janitors. Shiny new packages containing indescribable new wonders, still full of foam peanuts and packing tape. And, if you’re very lucky, the first wiffs of what’s coming to Steam. Today, that’s the Steam Linux Beta.
Activision have let loose the minimum specs for their latest shoot-fest, Black Ops 2, and whilst using the same engine as the previous iterations it will be making use of more recent tech (with a jump to DX11) whilst also lopping off its base by losing support for Windows XP.
Everybody knows that one factor in creating a good gaming experience is throughput. Ask me what one factor in creating a good gaming experience is and before you even finish the question I'll be on my feet, slapping whatever it is you're holding out of your hands and bellowing "throughput". So when the Valve Linux blog writes that "one factor in creating a good gaming experience is throughput", I'm all like "yes, obviously" before quickly scanning the rest of the article to find out what that means. Turns out that it means Valve have managed to get Left 4 Dead 2 running faster in Linux than it does in Windows. Only about 4% faster, sure, but that's impressive considering how early into Linux development Valve are.
Windows 8 is a “catastrophe": so said Gabe Newell at Casual Connect conference in Seattle this week and his voice has echoed about the internet ever since, bounced from the homepages of myriad tech and games blogs. Such is Valve’s fear of a closed platform that the company plans to support Linux as a “hedging strategy". But Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman worries that Steam is ideologically incompatible with open software haven Linux.
Valve's Gabe Newell slammed eyeballs at yesterday's Casual Connect videogames conference in Seattle, reports All Things D. "Your eyes are troublesome buggers," he said, sighing with what could only be sheer ocular disdain. He was talking about the future of wearable computers, which is almost indiscernible from having a mental breakdown. Valve's $70,000 "system" allows him to peer around rooms and overlay information on to objects, a bit like new Sherlock Holmes does it. Gabe also championed open OS Linux while taking a swipe at Microsoft's latest OS, branding the closed-off Windows 8 a "catastrophe for everyone in the PC space". Ouch!
