I said I got Steam and TF2 working in Linux, and here's my evidence. WARNING... a Heavy Weapons Guy load of screenshots (apparently the board has a 12 inline image limit. A limit I would normally support happily if I hadn't found out after doing all this work!). Click for higher res versions.
First, evidence that I'm running Ubuntu:
From this screenshot, you can see that (1) my real name is Shawn Boles, (2) that I like the color pink (sue me), and (3) that I have a Powerpuff Girls Z themed wallpaper. Long story short on 3, I always name my computers after a female game or cartoon character... with my Phenom Tri Core Processor, I've tried to have "Three" themed names and themes. My Windows boot is named "Zelda" (Triforce) with a Zelda Theme, and my GNU/Linux boot is named "PPG" with a Powerpuff Girls theme (three... powerpuff girls).
And their show is one of the best shows since
Fairy Odd Parents and
Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I digress...
You can see the Gnome About Screen, see TOP running in a gterm, and the Ubuntu Root File Tree. So there.
I installed PlayOnLinux (found here:
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/) to manage my Steam installation and WINE configuration. Installing Steam is, literally, a "Next, Next, OK, Yes, Next, Next" installer with PlayOnLinux. It doesn't take long. but you get to wait through installing all your old games again. Yay!
In any case, Install Steam through PlayOnLinux, and you get an icon on your desktop! I had WINE already installed through apt-get, so I got a Steam menu item in my main menu too. Don't know if this happens if you just use the POL system, your mileage might vary!
Moving right ahead... clicking on the icon gets you the Steam Log In Box, just like Windows... fill that out and up comes the Steam window!
I had heard that Steam Community was broken on Linux because it uses Internet Explorer (obviously a Windows Only product!) but alas, it works just fine thanks to Gecko HTML rendering technology:
One more note about running Steam on Linux... YOU MUST TURN OFF VISUAL EFFECTS. I can't say this strongly enough. WINE and Steam choke on it, and you get like 10FPS in game if you have Visual Effects on. Visual effects are neat because they give you wobbly windows, transparency in windows, etc... it's neat but eye candy...
Go to System -> Preferences -> Visual Effects, and pick None.
Now, got that out of the way... to the game!
I'm not going to walk you through installation.. it's the same as windows. Right click a game, pick Install, and follow the prompts.
To start the game, double click it in My games. Or click the game and pick Launch.
And it works! Graphics! Sound! It's a beaut!
I've expanded the screenshot a bit to show my Performance graphs, for an idea on what the game consumes with Linux. From left to right...
- Processor (on my Tricore Phenom, 100% of one processor. The graph has all three processors stacked on each other, so 1/3 is 100% one processor)
- Memory (Dark green is actually used. Light green is file cache. I use about 1G of my 2G of memory)
- Network (Barely use this, ironically.)
- Swap Space (I have 8G of swap, mainly because I don't want to have to repartition when I upgrade my memory. Barely touch this, unlike superswappy Windows)
- System Load Average (The bigger this graph, the more the computer is working to keep up.
- Disk IO (Only during loading, etc)
Pulling up the console is depressing, however:
Click on the image to zoom in; yes, the console is garbled. Maybe there's some kind of external Source console I can use, something text mode? If Steam actually outputted a console dump like every other program on Linux, instead of requiring "condump" to be typed in, I could tail the console in a regular text window... is there a way to make Source constantly dump the console? A question to the knowledgeable people around here.
Loading a map looks just fine (except the rounded rectangle around the stats looks a bit ragged...):
Click for image:
http://images.autodmc.org/d/99-1/TurbineLoading.jpg
And ingame isn't too bad... nothing some graphics tweaks won't fix. I'm getting 10-30FPS, depending on the complexity of the scene in front of me. And the textures aren't rockin... again, just some graphics tweaks. (Don't let the FPS meter fake you out... 60FPS when rendering a CORNER not a ROOM)
I was told to use the -dxlevel 80 switch in the Launch Options... but I get a LockVertexBuffer error when I do that... WINE bug FTW! But I hear of another switch that might rock...
-gl
Why would -gl rock? Because -gl used to tell Source to use OpenGL... now it doesn't do that... strange enough, it sets DirectX to 8.0 whereas "-dxlevel 80" didn't above! Figure that one out, but now I'm in the 30-60FPS range for whole rooms! Much preferable.
Also, I discover that my two monitors are not equal using Nvidia Twinview... you get +15PFS for putting the game on the main monitor... I'm going to guess you get even more for going fullscreen, but I just can't make myself.
Testing out in real ingame settings, I get FPS's that go down to 15 or so when there's a whole bunch of people on the screen, but I think I can configure that away.
So! There you go! TF2 on Linux! I still need to configure my gamepad to work, or else I have to relearn key positions and that will make me so, so sad. I need to figure out how to get a working console. I'll get back to you guys as I tinker on how things work out!
EDIT: Somehow a whole section of my post got eated by the Internets. So... onward!
Steam Friends and Steam Chat work fine... with a few caviats:
First off, because Steam uses the Windows Tahoma font, most of the text looks like a Smoker strangled it. Secondly... sometimes the text box won't let you type in it! I resized the window, tried to type, clicked Send a few times... eventually Steam will recognize your first amendment rights and let you send. 75% of the time it works out of the box, but be prepared. Thirdly... sometimes what you type doesn't appear untill the other person replies, no soap! I think this is because the window isn't redrawn until text comes in and wakes Wine up? Maybe? Fourthly, beware of minimizing Steam windows:
Click for image:
http://images.autodmc.org/d/79-1/WineMinimizingGlitch.jpg
OMG! I minimized the chat window and brought it back up, and I get this: a 50px square bit of window and nothing else. When I try to drag the 50px square... the "volume" of the window is still there and not being redrawn by Wine, so you get a copy of the background pixels... and if you drag a window over it you get window hash. Hmm! Looks like when Windows hangs a program (except that all my other windows work just fine, unlike Real Windows
). There's an easy fix for this:
Click for image:
http://images.autodmc.org/d/85-1/FixSteamMinimizeBug.jpg
Right click on the bit of window that does appear. Although it might not be drawn, these windows do have an upper-left command icon, which brings down the old school Windows 3.11 Command Menu. From here, click "restore" and POP! Steam redraws the window and everyone's happy!
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