Portal Now Available On Linux 115
alancronin writes "Valve have released Portal for Linux through the Steam platform. If you have a copy of the Windows version you will automatically have a copy of it for Linux in your account. There are also rumors of Portal 2 coming soon."
Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Linux users now can do cake jokes. [xkcd.com]
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Linux 2013 = Windows 2007.
But seriously guys, you're in for a great time. It's one of the all time great games, with the most fantastically entertaining end sequences.
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You realize that the plan is to have Linux 2013 = Windows 2013 in the near future, right?
Sadly true: Gnome 3 is desperately trying to be a worse UI than Windows 8.
If Linux 2013 = Windows 2007, I'd be quite happy. That was the last Windows UI that didn't try to force some designer's idea of how it should work on you.
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There are a set of refined DEs for Linux which provide you with a better than "Windows 2007" desktop experience. KDE is the most prominent of them but MATE and XFCE are also strong contenders.
You get a refined desktop experience with Linux Mint MATE.
Re: Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately, Windows 8 == 1996:
http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/AOL-1996-vs.-Microsoft-Windows-8.jpg [obamapacman.com]
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Re: Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
http://imgur.com/4mHWB [imgur.com]
fuck obamapacman.com
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Really? I target POSIX specifically because of its cross platform consistency.
Linux is the only OS I know of that isn't POSIX compliant, so I think you're just a bit confused.
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You must be new. Cerfification does not imply functional. :(
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It felt like a long series of tutorials and the entertaining end sequences were just the start of the actual game. and then it ended. I like the direction that portal 2 took the story though.
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Well it's tutorials all the way till you escape from the shiny areas and get into the service tunnels. Then it's purely using what you've learned. But the tutorials themselves are fun.
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Slightly off the mark (it's about half-way through 2013 now) but still, nice.
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Linux users now can do cake jokes. [xkcd.com]
Hah. The guy in the chair is so me. It was beginning of 2013 when I completed Portal 1 (last year: GTA4). But seriously, if you're a Linux dude and haven't tasted the cake yet, support Valve and get Portal soon, it's an excellent game.
Re:So Jealous! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Shhh, don't say this too loud, you might hurt some Windows' users' feelings.
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And yet if the game looks the same and plays the same, then what were those functions even being used for in the first place?
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And yet if the game looks the same and plays the same, then what were those functions even being used for in the first place?
They were the delay loops Microsoft put in to ensure the Xbox ran faster on slower hardware.
Less sarcastically, it's hard to not produce a feature-complete Direct3D now because most of the work is done with shaders. To emulate it, you have to take the DirectX shaders and convert them to OpenGL shaders, and everything should look the same. This is probably why Wine's implementation of new Direct3D versions seems to run more games than the older versions with lots of fixed-function APIs.
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Did not try Portal in wine so my opinion is based on the virtually same "runs faster" situation with Audiosurf.
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And his statement was ... WTF kind of computer do you have that can't run Portal at your monitor refresh rate? Faster than your monitor refresh rate is dumb for Portal. If you're getting faster than refresh rate it probably means its not doing vsync in which case, it doesn't look the same.
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Left4dead 2 (beta) also (Score:3)
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It's ~3.5 years old.
Hey! That's fresh out of the gate in Valve time!
What's their release schedule for Half Life games again? Every eight years or so?
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Ironically, L4D was pretty much the game that got me running Windows on my main graphics PC :-P
Re:Valve is a single entity, not a plurality.. (Score:4, Informative)
In British English company names are considered collective nouns, and given that Timothy is British there does not appear to be any error here. For once.
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So you believe proper English speakers should speak in cockney slang? I don't care what the common, profane speech might dictate; I only care what is correct.
It's not slang, it's standard English. And the name of the language is a clue as to who gets to say what's what.
You can do whatever you like with the American fork of the language though. Feel free. So long as you don't claim it's genuine English.
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Unfortunately nobody cares about your very own delusional personal definition of "correct". You can define "horses" to mean "banana" all you want, but If you want to communicate with the rest of the world, you have to communicate using words that your audience understands and understands to have the same meaning too.
Alternatively, you can of course go back to your dark and cold basement and hug your computer.
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Valve are considered a team of people, so they go in the same bracket as 'they have'. Also, English has no umbrella regulating body, it simply follows general consensus. Occasionally, people with OCD feel that they are doing the language a service by pointing out the real or imagined mistakes of others loudly and publicly while insulting the intelligence of their target with vulgar language. The rest of us who care notice anyway but do not feel the need to be a total prick about it. What you are going aroun
Re:Valve is a single entity, not a plurality.. (Score:5, Funny)
...there does not appear to be any error here. For once.
The night is young.
Portal 1 is out but not Portal 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Source engine has been ported so they are very likely to eventually port all the games that use it.
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Left 4 Dead 2 is still a favorite at many of the LAN events I attend.
If that one gets ported, it will probably do well for moving some users over to 'nix.
For my part, it'll be installed in the PXE-boot gaming platform that I've got at my place.
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You mean I can now play a six year old game on Linux?
No, you could play it in Linux six years ago through Wine (just like, say, Half-Life 2, Left For Dead and L4D2). Now you can play it native, if you prefer that option.
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I do not believe you are reading between the lines.
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I do not believe you're old enough to remember LokiGames. We've been through this whole song and dance before.
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It's news because if Portal is here now then Portal 2 is probably just a hop, skip, and jump away (even though there is no Portal 2 news yet.) You act like a slashdot headline is a big thing. It isn't. It's just what nerds are talking about, maybe.
Don't clean your cake knife just yet. (Score:1)
"Released" is a bit strong a term; the port is still marked "beta."
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Steambox should ship with free games (Score:2)
Valve should consider Portal and Portal 2 along with a few other AAA titles to give away with SteamBox. That would give gamers an incentive for giving it a shot.
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What portion of the target market already has these games, have played through them repeatedly and knows every single hook and nook by heart?
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Exactly why to provide these titles, and some... besides, existing Steam aren't the primary "target market" - console gamers are. Steam users will see the benefit without a prod of free games, but you need to hook console gamers.
Not just the Portal games, of course, at least one or two other AAA titles, and maybe some smaller, indie titles.
The purpose of the steambox is to GROW their market, not provide existing users another way to play Steam games.
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Excellent news :D (Score:2)
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Does this mean that we can expect HL2 etc to follow shortly, given it's the same engine?
Yes.
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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM2OTM
Enjoy.
How has it not yet been posted? (Score:1)
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS
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No one cares about your silly political ideals.
Whiner (Score:1)
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My 7600GT is good enough for me (almost, it's maybe badly cooled) but not for Source games even though it has recent drivers, is the tech found in the PS3 and ran Left4Dead fast enough under Windows.
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It's actually a bad issue, you can buy games on Steam without any notice as whether you will be able to run them.
My card supports OpenGL 2.1 and was made by the best OpenGL vendor so I thought it would do the job, until you try to run the game and it say bullshit about gl_pixelcolorbitmaps or some shit like that.
Plays Well (Score:2)
You asked for it! (Score:2)
Because in Soviet Russia, everything made in China!
I don't mean to be a cynical bastard but (Score:2)
Great of Valve to release Steam for linux and to port their games - but bloody surprising all the Steam engine, Valve made games weren't ALL read at the actual time of launch of the product. I'm sure it's not a 5 minute task to port their engine - but once they did so, one would've thought the other products would be, somewhat trivial.
Good work but not a flying start for what some speculate may be Valves long term future.
Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
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Played it last night (Score:1)
Is Linux a game dev money sink? (Score:2)
In an ideal world, code is 100% portable, and not a single line of code ever needs to be changed when porting. The reality of software development, however, and especially game development in my experience, is that software deadlines don't generally give the programmers the luxury of testing for every single platform. Producers expectations are nothing more than "make it work", and "make it work on time", without any regard for what might really be under the hood. Writing code that is portable and ex
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