Easily install Steam for Linux in openSUSE

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Gamers and Linux enthusiasts have been all abuzz about +Steam for +Linux since it was announced by +Valve  . On Valentines Day +Valve Linux celebrated its official release with an update and a spectacular sale of Linux titles at 50-75% off regular retail price. This sale is good through the 21st of February.

Thanks to the hard work of our community members, our very own installer has been added to the Games community repository. This installer primarily fetches the archived binary provided by Valve and installs it transparently without any needed user interaction. It installs like any other package in openSUSE. This link will take you straight to the page in +Open Build Service ; Steam for openSUSE. Simply use the "One-Click Install" and get ready for an amazing gaming experience.

I've been playing with the Steam client in beta for a while and had previously been unimpressed by its frequent freezes and failures to launch my games (I acquired the keys through my +Humble Bundle  purchases). However, as of the 14th (Valentines Day) the update pushed by valve fixed all these complaints, and i'm very pleasantly surprised and can see myself being a very happy Steam user for years to come. I would certainly recommend to anybody to go ahead and give Steam for Linux a try. My only complaint to date is how very few of my Linux titles I purchased (and have Steam Keys to) have been ported to Steam. I hate having a myriad of installers putting things in odd places, and would prefer to use Steam for all of my proprietary games. Hopefully this will only be a brief matter of time until it is resolved.

My "commercial" showing how easy it is to get Steam for openSUSE


For those of you whom are less familiar what Steam is, it is far more than a mere marketplace for games. It provides DRM (bear with me) for the games, allowing you to run the games on any device you own (I assume they are willing to allow that due to the way Steam DRM works). It also provides integrated forums, guides, and social elements making it easy to connect with your friends and find people to play with. Of course, there are also the famous Steam sales, where you can get amazing titles for a fraction of normal retail. If you are worried about the freedom implications of Steam and its games and DRM, you may be interested in this article with musings from Richard Stallman.

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