64 Bit LinuxMint (Ubuntu based Distro) findings (updated with 32 bit also)

[Sir_Ty]

As a long time Steam-er (hah!) I have about 25 games already on my account, and a desire to try them out on my Linux box which is attached to my media center. However, I have been made lazy by Windows (and more recently, Ubuntu) over the years, so I expect everything to "just work" as much as possible. Here's a two-day, first pass on installing and playing everything I have that is supported under Linux, without any "tweaking" to get things running.

Short story: only 7 of the 25 games worked. I attribute much of this to 64-bit (in)compatibility, and plan on re-running this experiment with 32-bit LinuxMint in a few days.

Steam itself: No problems whatsoever. Intalled and played just as easily as Windows. Purchased some games from the Steam sale while I was here.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - started config screen okay, Detect button set the video to medium. Had to set native resolution in the graphical options box however. Played for ten minutes, just about pooped my pants. Very stylistic. AT some point a friend started playnig another game, and the steam overlay came up, which forced the game out of full screen and into a window for about five to ten seconds, showed the popup, then it returned to full screen. For this type of game that will break immesion for sure. Better to turn it off by default.

And Yet It Moves: Does not start, no error box.

Braid: Does not start. "Failed to start game (missing executable)." Has a link "See the Steam support site for more information", which opens in the browser and leads to a page that says "Help Desk Error
The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it." (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8676-EFLX-7453&l=english)

Cave Story+: Does not start. "Failed to start game (missing executable)." Has a link "See the Steam support site for more information", which opens in the browser and leads to a page that says "Help Desk Error
The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it."

Cogs: Started fine, ran in a window initially, game played fine. No Steam pop-up problems (while running in a window, did not want to try fullscreen as none of the options matched my 720p projector).

Cubemen: Does not start. No pop-up with an error message or anything, must crash right after clicking play.

Darwinia: Worked fine.

Eversion: Does not start. No pop-up with an error message or anything, must crash right after clicking play. Tried a few things on this, because I really wanted to play it. Found the execurtable by searching my system, and tried manually running it through the terminal. Eventually got to some error message which lead me to believe that the librarys the game wanted to use could not be 64 bit. Emailed the support developer on this one, and they confirmed it would not run under 64 bit Linux at the moment, and that some of the Steamworks libraries also needed to be 64 bit, but had not been developed yet.

Galcon Fusion: A CD Key window pops up, and after copying cd key to clipboard, clicking play results in nothing. No crash window, game does not start.

Killing Floor: Worked great, right out of the box.

Limbo: Does not start. "Failed to start game (missing executable)." Has a link "See the Steam support site for more information", which opens in the browser and leads to a page that says "Help Desk Error
The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it."

Multiwinia: Poped up with CD-key, copied to clipboard, but then received "Missing Executable" error when hitting play.

Penumbra: Black Plague: Poped up with CD-key, copied to clipboard, but clicking play gives no response or error message - game does not start.

Penumbra: Overture: Clicking play gives no response or error message - game does not start.

Penumbra: Requiem: Does not start. "Failed to start game (missing executable)." Has a link "See the Steam support site for more information", which opens in the browser and leads to a page that says "Help Desk Error
The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it."

The Polynomial: Does not start. "Failed to start game (missing executable)." Has a link "See the Steam support site for more information", which opens in the browser and leads to a page that says "Help Desk Error
The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it."

Psychonauts: Failed to start game (Invalid app config): with a link to support site with the same error message as on the previous games. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8676-EFLX-7453&l=english

Scoregasm: Failed to start game (Invalid app config): with a link to support site with the same error message as on the previous games.

Serious Same 3: BFE: First start: Complaint about video driver version either not up to date or not detected. I hit okay to update driver, then just tried starting it again. Game started but was running far too slow to play (approx 1 or 2 frames per second). This is a fairly slow machine CPU wise, so I really didn't expect too much - marking this one as working.

Space Pirates and Zombies: Works great!

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP: Clicking play on this one locked up Steam. After about five minutes of waiting and thinking of Ending the Steam process in System Monitor, Steam itself closed. This is the only problem I've had with Steam itself so far. I tried it again and just had the starting game pop-up window for a quarter of a second, but then no game. Tried it again immediately afterwards and it locked up Steam again.

Team Fortress 2: Not that it is relevant to gameplay, but this took longer to download than anything else (was stuck at about 150KBs as opposed to over 1MBs on the other games). Hit play, sat there for a while, then poped up with a hand error message box "Could not find required OpenGL entry point 'glColorMaskIndexexEXT'! Either your video card is upsupported, or your OpenGL driver needs to be updated.". It's a 7950GT, which while not quite top of the line, meets the recommended video card specs on the support site (for Windows of course, it doesn't list the requirements for a Linux Distribution/OpenGL requirements). I switched from the Nvidia binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library (proprietary, tested) to the Experimental Nvidia etc etc etc, nvidia-experimental-304. Got the same error (although the error box fonts look better under the newer driver, so that's a plus!). So, it failed to play, but at least it has somewhat helpful information in determining how to fix it. Unlike some other games, which seemingly crash or disappear without any clue as to what happened.

Trine 2: Got a "Trine 2 Launcher script:
Unidentified Linux distribution.
If you have problems running the game, please see the game support web site for more info and ensure you have the required libraries installed." - very nice. No error message after that though, game just does not start. Frustrating - if they just said 'Hey you are missing library xyz' we could go and install it. But, this error message is better than nothing.

VVVVVV: Pops up with something new - a choice box with 'Play VVVVVV' or 'Launch 64-bit executable'. I do the 64-bit choice, and it comes up with the "Failed to launch (missing executable)" box as some of the other games. Went back and tried the first option, and got the same thing.

World of Goo: Worked like a charm.

[Still Spiffy]

Also on Linux Mint (x64, 14, Cinnamon) and I had no issues with TF2 besides the slow loading times and a slowish fps (until I disabled HDR).

I'm running an EVGA GTX 560 and not using the beta drivers (though I am about to switch to them).

[Mcraia]

Linux Mint 14 x64: under Cinnamon performance is bad! But when I login at Gnome Classic (fallback, no effects) of XFCE it is much better.

As for specs: one PC with PhénomII X4 840 + Radeon HD 6770 & one with AMD A6 3500 incl HD6350; both fglrx 12.11beta 9.01.12 (via xorg-edgers)

The APU-PC is playable, but on lower settings only.

Soon the HD6700 will be added to AMD A6 and replaced by GTX 660.

[Guillemvalli]

The problem on Trine2 in Linux Mint 14 x64 is that checks in /etc/lsb-release for:
DISTRIB_ID = "Ubuntu"
But in Mint says "LinuxMint".

There are two ways to solve this.
1. Edit the value in the file /etc/lsb-release
2. Edit the Trine2 launch script in ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Trine\ 2/trine2.sh
and comment lines 66 and 69, to assume that distribution is "Ubuntu"

I tried option 2 and it works perfectly.

[Mcraia]

No need to edit the script: it displays the message, but starts with the generic settings screen and plays well; well, in windowed mode on Linux Mint 14_x64, Cinnamon. In full screen it displays a black screen, with the normal sounds. Something similar to TF2, most likely related to the use of a compositing desktop environment (I can play TF2 fine on GnomeClassic/XFCE desktop).

[Wheelgun]

OP, I'm assuming you're running these games under Wine? TF2 is the only game I have available to run under LInux native Steam.

[Leaf [DG]]

引用自 Wheelgun：

OP, I'm assuming you're running these games under Wine? TF2 is the only game I have available to run under LInux native Steam.

Perhaps that is because you don't own any of the other games? All the ones he listed do have native Linux versions.

I feel like I should point out though: a number of the games that just aren't working because of a missing executeable or invalid app config are likely in such a state because they're still undergoing internal alpha/beta testing by the devs before being released to the public. I remember reading somewhere that Doublefine aren't happy with the current Linux port of Psychonauts, so they're working on improving it and probably releasing it (properly) on Steam sometime soon. The same is true for Crusader Kings II.

[Syrio Forel]

Hey thanks for the detailed post. Linux Mint 13 x64 Mate here. TF2 worked fine except for loading times and FPS as mentioned by Mr Malarkay earlier, but nothing major. But most other games from the Humble bundles that I try are getting the same "Missing executable" errors that you have been seeing - Waking Mars, Snapshot, Rochard, trying more now. They basically dont start downloading. Am also dissapointed that only some of the games from the bundle are here, but that is the Developers fault..

[Syrio Forel]

When trying to download the games that fail, the install window is blank, However when i try to install world of goo, I am able to see the install details, perhaps this is relavent.

[Mcraia]

World of Goo is ported already. Several other ones are to (AYIM, Spacechem, Trine, Steelstorm, ...) Of course, it wouldn't harm asking game devs about their efforts to port towards Steam, but it's extra (don't know how much, in general) work.

Just check the Linux store.

[Sir_Ty]

Time for 32-bit results.


Steam itself: Saw one issue with "Enter Birthdate" screen on a Mature Game, the drop down boxes had white text on a white background. Only the current Day/Year/Month actually had black text. (This was right after installing LinuxMint 14 32 bit, and it was still using the X.Org X server/Noveau open source display driver. I changed over to the Nvidia binary Xorg driver (proprietary, tested) and tried it again. Same issue. Tried with the Nvidia Experimental driver -304, same issue. Kept the experimental driver in place for the games below.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Tried to start, a window with "Amnesia: The Dark Descent Launcher" stayed open on the desktop for a while, but never did anything. I checked the System Monitor and it was not locked up, so I figured it must be waiting on me. I seem to remember a "set your brightness/contrast" type of window the last time I played this, so it's probably that. I was still using the Nvidia binary driver (proprietary, tested) so I switched back to the Xorg one, no luck. Switched to the Nvidia experimental driver-304, no luck, same issue. Had to kill launch.bin from System Monitor each time, because trying to use the X to close the window, or right clicking on it's name at the bottom of the screen and closing, did not work. (I gave a lot of work to this one, because it was working in 64 bit LinuxMint...)

And Yet It Moves: Worked both windowed and fullscreen on the first try. Looked great.

Braid: Tried to install, but it did not properly (see Flame.Leaf's comment above). I believe these games are "coming soon to Linux", but really, if they don't install correctly (they download 0 bytes, but come up as installed afterward!) then mark them as Beta under Linux or something. Marked games like this as "would not install" from this point forward.

Cave Story+: Installed okay (180mb) but received 'Failed to start game (missing executable). See the Steam support site for more information' which is a link to https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8676-EFLX-7453&l=english, which says "Help Desk Error. The specified article does not exist or you do not have permission to view it."

Cogs: Worked great! Played it in full screen mode this time.

Crayon Physics Delux: Would not install. (Was not on previous test, so perhaps this is coming soon?)

Cubemen: Worked great!

Darwinia: Worked great!

Eversion: Worked great!

Galcon Fusion: Worked great!

Killing Floor: Worked great! (You can run, but they'll find you before dawn!)

Limbo: Would not install

Multiwinia: Would not install

Penumbra: Black Plague: Worked great!

Penumbra: Overture: Worked great!

Penumbra: Requiem: An expansion to Black Plague. I didn't both playing far enough into Black Plague to find the expansion part of it, if it's there. But clicking Play here comes up with "Missing Executable".

The Polynomial: Worked great!

Psyconauts: Would not install

Scoregasm: Installed, but got 'Failed to start game (invalid app config).' Link to support site was the same old dead end.

Serious Sam 3: BFE: Took forever to load, but played. Graphics FPS were probably 10 ~15 per second as opposed to 1 or 2 per second on the 64-bit version, so it was *almost* playable. (This machine is far too underpowered in the CPU department to actually play this game, but it was worth trying.) Marked as working.

Space Pirates and Zombies: Worked great!

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP: Did not start, althought it looked like it attempted to.

Team Fortress 2: Once again, download problems. Started out strong, but as soon as I was away from the PC it dropped from 1.2MB/s to 189KB/s? Perhaps since this is free-to-play now Valve puts it on the slower download queue. I don't know for sure, but it was odd this was the only game with that problem. Moving on - after it finally downloaded - 6 hours later - tried to play. Did not start, popped up with 'Could not find required OpenGL enrty point 'glColorMaskIndexedEXT'! Either your video card is unsupported, or your OpenGL driver needs to be updated.' Reverted back to the open source driver (xserver-xorg-video-nouveau) to give that one a shot, but got the same error.

Trauma: Another new title that was not on the list a week ago. Unfortunately, would not install.

Trine 2: Worked great! (And absolutely beatiful lighting effects, I have to say most impressed with this title so far.)

VVVVVV: Would not install (still had the selection with play game and launch 64 bit executable though).

World of Goo: Worked great!

[Sir_Ty]

So, moral of the story (today at least) - if you don't want to "tweak", run 32 bit.

Thank you developers for your continued Linux support. In order to show MY support, I'm buying a copy of each game that worked in both 64-bit mode and 32-bit mode with little to no tweaking. Cogs, Darwinia, Killing Floor, Spaz, and World of Goo. I'll probably pick up Serious SAM 3 BFE if it goes on sale at some point too, but it's a little overkill for this machine.

[sir_ty2]

In case anyone was wondering, here's the new Linux-only account. Nice to have it permanently logged into Steam on this PC. Cheers!

[tomva]

I've found a way to run Cave Story+ on Linux via Steam. In the Cave Story+ data folder, you need to add certain files.
If you bought the Humble Indie Bundle 7, you need to download the X32 version from their site. Open the archive and extract the folders "lib", "lib64", and the files "CaveStory+" and "CaveStory+_64". You need to extract these folders and files to: "/home/[YourUserName]/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Cave Story+/"
(that is the default install location on Manjaro Linux)

[Dra'bla]

I can confirm tomva's workaround for Cave Story+.

I'm running latest Mint LMDE 64bit - Here's what if tested so far:

Closure - Works perfectly

Counter-Strike: Source - No problems except for very low fps - Changing video settings in-game may result in a disconnect

Shank 2 - Same issue as with "Cave Story+" - Copying the files from the HumbleBundle download (shank2-linux-update7.tar.gz) into the SteamApps/common/Shank2 folder solved this issue.


I must say i find it weird that the installation process for these games fail so hard.
There are other games i bought through humblebundle that run on Linux but aren't available in Steam as Linux Games. (Legend of Grimrock, Dungeon Defenders, ....)

But hey, Steam runs on Linux now. I should not complain :>