Porting TF2 was a nice touch (and I have it installed on my Linux partition for a quick lunchtime game whilst working) but I need quite a few other games to be ported before I could consider using it more often.

Give it a few years though; I think there'll be a slow trickle of games for a while, but it'll start to ramp up as some of the bigger studios realise there's a market there.

Have you spent much time with Linux TF2? Any idea if it's more or less stable than the Windows / OS X builds?

It's not quite as stable yet. First time I played it ran flawlessly (and at the same speed as it does under Windows). Since then I've had a few issues like excessive screen tearing and missing audio, but they're not too bad for what is still considered a beta.

Just for rough specs; both my Windows 7 64-bit & Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit installs have their own SSD (Samsung 830), on an i5 2500k/8GB RAM/nVidia 560TI machine. TF2 is installed on both the SSDs.

Interesting, thanks! I use Windows mostly, but I dabble in Ubuntu every now and then as well, and I might have a spare computer soon, so I though I'd give it a try. Didn't want to bother with it if it wasn't ready for prime time though.

62 games is an impressive number.

Sadly, there still are a few dealbreaker apps that prevent me to switching to Linux.

There's also the massive back catalogue Windows has, my girlfriend loves playing random PopCap games and other casual-friendly stuff that are not yet click-and-play in Linux - was going to say "not available" but Google has an installation guide for Wine, but not yet available to mainstream users.

62 games isn't impressive at all. Most of the games I bought (indie, mostly) have Linux versions that work fine in Ubuntu, but they aren't on Steam!

I expect they'll probably arrive soon, since all the Humble Bundles have been Linux-friendly for ages, but they don't have the games available now. They're probably trying to get the client more stable, I guess.

I really don't follow the Linux news, I'm comparing to 2007 which was the last time I had a Linux desktop (SuSE with KDE), where the only available games were Frozen Bubbles and some half-baked sim game clones.

Seeing mainstream support (Steam and others), and 62 titles shows Linux has gone a long way, and of course the rise of web gaming is a huge boon.

Oh, things are much better now. All the games I buy nowadays (mostly indie, as I said) run on Linux, which is where I play them (or don't, as I don't have time). Steam on Linux is fantastic, since we'll probably see adoption from authors who otherwise wouldn't consider it, but there are fantastic games available for Linux nowadays.

Just not on Linux Steam, yet.

In 2007 you also had all the old Quake1-3 mods, as well as UT99 and UT2003. Also Doom 3.

Probably still the best games on Linux imho...

You're right, I forgot.

I don't like First Person Shooters (even the original Wolfenstein gave me motion sickness, and I don't have great motor skills), that's why I forgot about those.

I've always liked turn-based strategy games, or real time strategy games (at medium or slow speeds, I get destroyed on online matches), puzzle games, point-and-click graphic adventure games, etc... and I distinctly remember searching for those and not finding much back then.

I definitely need to give Linux another try, but I don't manage to convince myself to set aside the time (it might be a good investment, though :) )

The Humble Store has a number of Linux games: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a favourite of mine, not sure how easy it is to get a copy of these days though.

DEFCON, Darwinia: http://introversion.co.uk/

Wesnoth is a great turn-based strategy game and has an unusual amount of polish for a FOSS game.

SpringRTS is a really fun RTS, if you can look past the many bugs in the launcher/lobby: http://springrts.com/

Try Warzone2100. It's quite fun RTS.

Ah, gotcha. Wesnoth and OpenTTD are probably the best Linux has to offer in that area.

The steam client has two different counts for the games: 62 and 43. When you click the number 62 you get a search result with 43 entires. My guess is that this is due to DLCs being excluded and Crusader Kings having like 15 DLCs.

Once they get their own games running on Linux (especially Dota2 & CS:GO), I'm set.

Oh God, I pray they don't make DOTA2 available on Linux. The only thing stopping me from wasting my life there is that I have to reboot to Windows to play.

DOTA2 is based on their Source engine, just like TF2 which is already ported. Your productive days are numbered, I'm afraid ;)

I was afraid of that :(

Have you tried Heroes of Newerth? It works great under Linux. ;)

Oh shut up :P

I feel the same way about LoL. I've kicked the habit recently.

Just looked through the list. A quarter of the listed games are Crusader Kings II and all it's DLC. It's a good game, but...

As a mac user, I don't see a good reason to get a Linux box for steam as most the Linux games are also for OSX. This is important to me as I am completely open to the next generation of consoles. Nintendo is automatically out but I have been considering going back to windows if the next generation of playstation and Xbox do not excite me. If the Linux steam catalog was at least in the ball park of the windows catalog I would consider it.

It's still in beta and they are probably restricting the number of entries for now. My guess is that when the client if officially stable you will see much more games made available.

Any idea what would be the ratio of games available if you considered the Mac platform instead of Linux Steam ? This may give us an indication of how much "conversions" we can expect in a couple of years.

Exactly, I don't think Valve and genuinely recommend switching to Linux when most users would have to give up more than 50% of their games.

Do the updates need to happen in the games themselves (with the original developer involved) or is this something that Valve can fix with virtualization? If it's the former (and I suspect it is) then I'm sure they'll have a tough time getting older games moved over.

It's the former.