Valve's Gabe Newell isn't much of a fan of Windows. A few months ago he went so far to call Windows 8 a "catastrophe", so it's no surprise his company will be the first major company to support gaming on Linux. As such, Valve is looking for 1,000 Linux experienced gamers who are current Steam users to test Steam on Linux. You can sign up here.
This new Steam for Linux is based on Ubuntu 12.04, and will include Left 3 Dead 2 as the first game ported, as well as Serious Sam 3 and Valve games Portal and Team Fortress 2. There will be an Ubuntu Develop Summit later this week, where we can expect more details on Steam for Linux.
Interestingly enough, Valve originally said in 2010 it had no plans for Linux, but then last August they claimed they were able to reach 315 frames a second on a Linux port of Left 4 Dead 2 on a high-end computer. The founder of GNU and the Free Software foundation issued a statement saying introducing Steam for Linux is "unethical because they deny freedom to their users,” though he admitted he believed users are “better off” running them on an open Linux-based platform rather than Windows.
If games really do perform vastly better on Linux, it will be interesting to see where the beta takes PC gaming.
Source: ArsTechnica
