Steam in Linux Today

So Linux has come a very long way since the first time I used it. The first version I had a taste of was SuSe 9.1 and since then there have been thousands of improvements made to SuSe and all the other distros out there. Well today I'm happy to announce that I've reached a new milestone in completely leaving Microsoft Windows behind.

About 30 minutes ago I successfully installed Valve's Steam application on Ubuntu 8.10 in Wine (Windows Application Emulator). I had tried this many times in the past but each time got hung up somewhere along the way, whether in the installation or the running of the app once installed, but today I was able to install it and open it without any problems and I'm now installing Counter Strike Source inside of Steam. As I write this it's at about 5% completion for the download and should be done within the next hour or so.

It still disappoints me that you have to run it inside of the Wine and that it doesn't natively run, but there were plenty of rumors abounding this year that Valve was porting the source engine to run under Linux and with it the Steam Application. So, as the year 2008 nears a close, I am glad to see that the Linux Gaming community is finally starting to gain some ground and I hope that next year will be even better as Valve releases (or at least prepares to release) Steam and other Source Engine based games natively onto Linux. And in the mean time, I will just use it in Wine and patiently await it's arrival.