Steam for Linux

Steam for Linux

phschm 22 nov, 2012 @ 13:19
64bit nomultilib gentoo
The survey was seriously lacking in detail, I filled it as fairly as I could. It seems 64bits with multilib/wine support is being assumed, but what about nomultilib builds, that is, with IA32_EMULATION off when compiling the kernel? By the way, the point of an open system is to be able to customize everything, mine is very lean, how will dependencies be sorted and how self sufficient the games/programs will be (standalone?)?
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RobotMenace 22 nov, 2012 @ 13:28 
Well 32 bit libs are a must for this ATM.

Yes the point of an open system is that you can do with it what you want (within reason), but you can't expect to run stuff without their dependencies.

What next, "I want gnome, but not gtk?"
blackout24 22 nov, 2012 @ 13:29 
If your build can't execute 32 bit applications you're simply out of luck, since the client is 32 bit only and some of the games.
cybik 22 nov, 2012 @ 13:49 
phschm, sorry to say, but 64bit systems will need the 32bit emulation for now; most of the programming is done for 32 and Steam would cater to the biggest market.

Gentoo multilib'd here.
hasufell 22 nov, 2012 @ 14:38 
refer to the wiki article https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Steam the forum thread https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-930354.html or even use multilib-portage if the emul-packages do not suffice
http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/multilib-portage.git;a=blob_plain;f=doc/portage-multilib-instructions;hb=HEAD

as valve people already explained: static linking is mostly not an option, cause GPL does not allow it

It's no big deal really. More problematic is that useless stuff like cups and pulseaudio are dynamically linked instead of using dlopen.
phschm 22 nov, 2012 @ 15:29 
Of course, as expected even, just had to make it clear as the option was not on the survey. Actually that is why Steam could not do anything about Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines not working on 64bits with 4GB or more of RAM, would otherwise be a very easy fix. Though agree that cups (cups, seriously?) and pulseaudio are more of a concern, none of which I have installed.

By the way, about why I went nomultilib, it is simple, since I can compile all I need (even firefox which coincidentally is dropping win64 nightly, forcing me to have to check waterfox) then I just compile them for 64bits and save memory that would otherwise have to be spent loading redundant 32bit libraries, and disk space, and a leaner kernel. As of now I can run a full non composed KDE desktop with nvidia binary modules loaded at around 240MB of RAM, which is less than the lubuntu I use at work (also nvidia binary, both 64bits) and allows me to run without swap entirely.
Fernie 22 nov, 2012 @ 21:42 
Ursprungligen skrivet av phschm:
As of now I can run a full non composed KDE desktop with nvidia binary modules loaded at around 240MB of RAM, which is less than the lubuntu I use at work (also nvidia binary, both 64bits) and allows me to run without swap entirely.

Impressive. However, that's simply not worth it these days, since you can purchase 32GB of RAM for about $200 AUD.
oneinfiniteloop 23 nov, 2012 @ 10:26 
I'm hoping that there will be a native x64 client (there are some signs of introduction of multiarch in ~/.steam/)
Meyithi 23 nov, 2012 @ 11:13 
I've been silently rewarding developers by buying games that have 64bit builds and don't need any 32bit libs for a few years now (amnesia-ttd, world of goo, dungeons of dredmor etc.) but now since steam is 32bit nobody will bother :/

I'm having a love/hate relationship with Steam at the moment, I'd dreading the damage it could do and see signs already, client auto-update skipping package manager, nobody will bother packaging 64 bit games for example, leads to bad precedences, meh...
phschm 23 nov, 2012 @ 18:12 
Ursprungligen skrivet av The Baconator:
Impressive. However, that's simply not worth it these days, since you can purchase 32GB of RAM for about $200 AUD.

3 points:
1 - If the motherboard can handle it, mine caps at 4GB for DDR1600 and I don't otherwise need to upgrade.
2 - Maybe it is due to my HPC background, but I shiver every time the wasting of resources is obvious.
3 - We don't use linux to resort to the lowest common denominator, that is why there are all those different distributions, each with its own goal and ideas. Also, again, the point of an open system is to be able to customize it, as in, using the system properly.

Ursprungligen skrivet av ltodoto:
I'm hoping that there will be a native x64 client (there are some signs of introduction of multiarch in ~/.steam/)

A native client would be useless by itself. Not like the first step is not important, or the example, but the content would also have to be, hence my question concerning dependencies from the opening post.
Ursprungligen skrivet av phschm:
The survey was seriously lacking in detail, I filled it as fairly as I could. It seems 64bits with multilib/wine support is being assumed, but what about nomultilib builds, that is, with IA32_EMULATION off when compiling the kernel? By the way, the point of an open system is to be able to customize everything, mine is very lean, how will dependencies be sorted and how self sufficient the games/programs will be (standalone?)?

Most (all?) of the games on the Windows Steam version are 32bit.

I suppose this is what Firefox discovered. The AMD64 architecture was predicated on this idea of running 32 bit code as well as 64 bit. It sounded good, but in practise because of libraries and so on, it didn't really work without this "2 installs of everything" idea that most OSes have adopted.

Then people running 64bit discovered they didn't have plugins - and the plugins were closed source or not ported etc etc.

Unfortunately, since 32 bit works far better than 16 bit backward compatibility did, it's survived far longer. Not only that, clearly there are plenty of 32 bit OSes sold even to people with hardware that could run 64 bit.

End result, game developers target 32 bit. Rather than targeting 64 bit and losing a big %age of potential customers or targeting both and having twice (or more) the maintenance work, bugs and issues for, and I'm sure they will all agree with this, absolutely no benefit at all to us or them.

Maybe one day things will run out of memory, and of course, anything you've got the source code for and the willing volunteers might get ported. But game developers are not willing volunteers, they run businesses and their sales figures don't really rely on supporting 64 bit - because 32 bit works.

I recall John Carmack saying there would be a 64bit version of Rage and extra levels with higher textures and a different rendering engine for download, which would also include development tools - but it never happened (unless I missed it)

So, I doubt you'll see Steam on linux using 64bit anytime soon although there seems to be some tentative support for a ubuntu12_64 folder, perhaps it will happen one day.

I imagine your best bet for a system that doesn't have 2 sets of libraries and everything would have a been a 32 bit system :-) (Something I would have used for this install I did for Steam, precisely because it's 32 bit, unfortunately the wubi 32 bit install appears to have a very broken ntfs.3g)
Senast ändrad av axeolin; 23 nov, 2012 @ 20:43
AlenL 24 nov, 2012 @ 2:13 
FWIW, SS3 will ship x64 bit binaries for Linux when libsteam_api.so becomes available.
Ursprungligen skrivet av AlenL:
FWIW, SS3 will ship x64 bit binaries for Linux when libsteam_api.so becomes available.
That's great news. There are already games on Steam with x64 support, like Amnesia for example. Are they currently DRM-free?
phschm 24 nov, 2012 @ 17:20 
Ursprungligen skrivet av axeolin:

Whyle I do understand what you said, the problem is deeper than that, a vicious cicle actually. The more software is distributed towards the lower common denominator, just because it works, the less users will ask questions, rather, the more they will ask the wrong questions. Which in turn pushes for even more simplification. Steam has a very good shot at changing it if they can sort the dependencies well enough so users would start asking why they need such and such, better yet, if not showing x32 content for x64 users unless they opt in for it then they will start asking the right questions.

By the way, for whatever is it you deem sacred, dont blindly install the dependencies, even on windows it gets ugly, just look at all those Visual C++ Redistributables, none of which is uninstalled when the game is removed (or at least hinted so the user could sort in case they were needed elsewhere).
Meyithi 24 nov, 2012 @ 18:20 
Ursprungligen skrivet av AlenL:
FWIW, SS3 will ship x64 bit binaries for Linux when libsteam_api.so becomes available.

Awesome news, how to get a copy without having to install multilib for Steam though?

Ursprungligen skrivet av phschm:
Whyle I do understand what you said, the problem is deeper than that, a vicious cicle actually. The more software is distributed towards the lower common denominator, just because it works, the less users will ask questions, rather, the more they will ask the wrong questions. Which in turn pushes for even more simplification. Steam has a very good shot at changing it if they can sort the dependencies well enough so users would start asking why they need such and such, better yet, if not showing x32 content for x64 users unless they opt in for it then they will start asking the right questions.

Well Valve have targeted Ubuntu, who still advocate 32bit heavily and as they are from a Win background I suspect that they don't see an issue with having to multilib. All I can do is do as I have done, refuse to buy x86 builds of games and carry on buying x64 builds IF the developers will bother, as mentioned above what's the point if Steam itself requires multilib?

Also, Id happily install a x64 build of Steam and be limited to x64 builds of games, and I guess many others would as well, hell it may even prompt more developers to release x64 builds. Will it happen though, doubt it :/
Michael 26 nov, 2012 @ 7:54 
Ursprungligen skrivet av phschm:
Ursprungligen skrivet av axeolin:

Whyle I do understand what you said, the problem is deeper than that, a vicious cicle actually. The more software is distributed towards the lower common denominator, just because it works

You make little sense with your argument. "Just because it works" - think about that phrase. If it works, it works doesn't it? That's the criteria met and your turn of phrase is as though they should have some other goal shows clouded thinking.

There's nothing "lowest common denominator" about 32bit.

What you'd need to do is to show some compelling technical reasons why game developers should care. (I'm sure they have some of their own, for future games with bigger datasets)

But before you list what you think are advantages or improvements that 64bit has over 32bit, you need to remember, these reasons need to be compelling technical reasons why it makes a real, pragmatic difference to an actual application you want to be ported.

Theoretical ideas about why it's better won't work (and I'm sure you'll find that Valve have already looked at it and reached the conclusion they didn't need 64bit for their existing titles - it might have even had some disadvantages - especially mentioned already the fact that would require double the support)
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Datum skrivet: 22 nov, 2012 @ 13:19
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