Stupid question from somebody who still thinks linux is some kind of fancy soda:

Are the games ported to linux only those already known from the HiB and Valve games or are there more to speak of.

I still remember the end of Loki games, so I'm wondering if this is actually something people are investing money in.

Even fewer really. A lot of games that were in the HBs that have linux versions aren't on the list. (which you should be able to easily browse from the steam tab or on the website) Bastion, Legend of Grimrock, Shank 2 and most of the others I have aren't on. Some of the better games that are on are SPAZ, Serious Sam 3, Psychonauts, and Trine2. Though I don't think Psychonauts is up for purchase, but it is in my library from the HB. I haven't tried installing it.

All that Loki stuff is a way back and I think Steam has more muscle to get something productive done, and I Linux is in a better place than it was then.

That said I don't think there will be much backward movement. If Linux becomes something more viable and desirable for games, then I'm sure we will see other games heading the cross platform road, but if it doesn't have a linux build today, it probably won't get one tomorrow.

I run Arch. It works fine. It just doesn't have many games worth playing right now.

Soon, though. Soon.

If you don't mind me asking, but do you get a weird issue in which your cursor elongates, turns black, and reverses itself when you run Steam?
It doesn't happen on other distros from what I've seen, only on Arch.

Other than that, Steam on Linux seems kind of buggy.
I had one time where running it crashed X for me.
But that was a one time deal and it works just fine overall.
No games, though.

Yep. It's a known issue because it has to do some voodoo with the mouse for some reason. The solution is different depending on what cursor theme you have. I have Human and I fixed it just my symlinking /usr/share/icons/Human/cursors/left_ptr to 'arrow' in the same directory. See the Arch wiki for a more in depth explanation.

Alright. I remember when a friend and I got into the beta early on, and we spent about four hours of Googling trying to fix it before we gave up.
Since then, I've just kind of ignored it so I didn't bother to check the wiki.

Thanks.

Mouse stuff is quirky under Linux. I don't exactly know why, but just hiding the blasted thing is difficult, and it seems to keep changing. I had a program I made where I needed it gone and its no where near as simple as it is under windows. The guys that make OpenTK figured it out which worked for me, but then that solution stopped working. Then when playing SPAZ the menus have two cursors, and Shank 2 it never goes away. I'm sure there is some reason for it, but it's freaking annoying something so basic has to be so complicated.

Doing a necro to point out the game count is rising. 2 weeks ago the count was 41 game, and in the last two days its jumped to 60. Many of them are all DLC for the same game, but several notable indi games have been added. Chances are people already have some of them, (most can be bought here) but its a good increase in the game count in a relatively short period of time, which is encouraging if one finds the venture a positive thing.

There are still some fairly large omissions form existing linux games, and the obvious total lack of AAA.

I genuinely hope that the advent of Steam on Linux inspires GOG to speed up the process of catering to Linux gamers by an extreme amount. As great as Steam is, I still love GOG more for its stance on DRM and regional pricing as well as other factors. GOG and Linux, in terms of philosophies, seem like a pretty great combination. With Linux already having over a third of the market share that Mac OS has on Steam despite not even being out of beta, it goes to show that there is a market for games on Linux.

I only quickly looked at this, but Steam gets points for allowing me to at least browse the "Windows Only" games I have through the Linux client, which Desura doesn't allow (or didn't allow, I haven't checked recently..).

Also didn't have any problems with my quad-monitor setup, but I didn't exactly test it to any great length (launch, quick look around and closed).

Well since the topic has been re-raised I would point out the game count is up to near 100 now. Though to be fair at least three games are padding the catalog with slews of DLC entries.

Half-life 1, and Counter Strike were just added, and before that a few more of the indies you would expect to see. Anomaly probably being the newest. That still leaves some curious omissions like Bastion. I'm also wondering where left-4-dead is, if only because they said they had it running months ago.

I'm not planing on buying much, but guess I've decided to be semi-supportive of the initiative in hopes that it brings more gamage to my side of the world.

Perhaps ive made deal with the devil, but hopefully it will atleast save me truckload of time:

Installed Ubuntu 12.10 and tried to install older specific versions of PostgreSQL + PostGIS -> couldnt find exactly what I wanted and the stuff I did find didnt actually work in the end despite all sudo's and nautilus'es i could pull out from my and my friends sleeves.

Gave up, tried to install newest version, but that too wasnt ment to be.

So after some 16h of googling and terminal wizardry (granted, toddler level), I uninstalled and put win8 in the machine and managed to install the correct versions on the comp I had wanted since beginning.

Ubuntu seems very promising and I believe it has lots of potential - but the constant root right/chmod type stuff is still very much there if you arent happy with what the software center offers you. Maybe kids will have time to pick it up and will do fine with the terminal - unfortunately may day has only 24h and week only 7 days. Simply dont have time to fight with different repos and missing libraries -> the apple-like "It just works" is very tempting for busy adult.

----

On topic - I did install steam on Ubuntu as well, didnt have time to try out any games but I was happy with the little I saw

Lets see how the Steambox is going to turn out and if i have to start schooling my kids to do all the linux/ubuntu hocus-pocus for me.. ;)