I have bean using Steam for Windows for a few years & have recently decided to install it on a mini PC I have put together for my kids. I have installed Ubuntu 13.04 AMD64 on it. My thought was to use this PC rather than to buy an additional game console.

Great plan except:

1) One Steam account can only be used on one pc at a time. It does not matter if it is entirely different games and not online multi-player. So it looks like I will need to create a new account &, I assume, buy the games again.

2) Of the 3 games & 1 program only two works. I spend enough time fooling around with computers, I do not want to use up hours trying to troubleshoot a commercial game I have paid for.

3) Steam support is a misnomer. I had to register yet another separate "help" account. The only advice I got was to do "steam --reset" & download the games again. Great. Except I have already done that. Sounds like Windows advice of old: just re-install & restart. A week has passed, no further reply/help.

4) The games will not start without the steam client. So if the game fails to load via the Steam interface I cannot start it directly to see what the error messages are.

5) Steam will not start if the network is not available.

From my point of view this gaming experience is not viable. I have decided to ditch Steam for linux & I will buy them a Playstation 3.

I would be interested to hear if any of you have had a different experience.

Regards,
Stefan

It's only restricted for online-stuff, run it in off-line mode.

I have about 10 games and they all just worked (debian testing/sid).

Yeah, I've noticed that as well.
Most people who try to help you on those steam channels are all rather uninformed windows-users (who don't really care).

... run the whole client in a terminal?

1 members found this post helpful.

When Steam appeared in the non-free repositories I had to give it a go.
I played Team Fortress and I have to say it seemed to work well. However, I have two monitors and due to the way these are connected (and, no doubt the NVIDIA driver and other settings) Steam will only play games on the smaller of the two which somewhat spoiled the experience for me. If I could play TFC on my larger monitor I'd probably do so quite often but, as it is, I've left it all installed but haven't got around to playing again.
If I could sort the display problem out I might consider buying some of the cheaper games also.
So, for me it's something that looks promising but until either I make changes to my system or Steam starts to work with my set-up it's not something I'm going to use much.

i bought gone home and played on linux and aside from the controls everything was good.

i bought swapper and stanley parable on sale but havent played them yet (they promise linux versions soon).

I did not know about that option. I will try it out.

I use debian stable & testing on my own desktop pc. I used Ubuntu for the kids' pc since I thought Ubuntu would be well supported by Steam.

I will try it. Thanks.

Regards,
Stefan

Since now Steam goes Visibly in the direction of Linux, e.g. with HL1, it will attract more gamers and playing on Steam.

Valve just joined the "Linux Foundation" as well:
http://www.zdnet.com/valve-renews-li...ry-7000023939/
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-...nux-foundation