This is amazing!

I'm really chuffed about this.

This is definitely a way to get people switching their socks off!

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... inux&num=1

I was linked to this page from: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... nux#Ubuntu

Very interesting. I heard about them hiring a while back. This will definitely be good for Linux in general.

Linux is certainly getting more attention recently. EvE Online introduced a Linux (and OSX) client with the latest big patch, and other games are doing similar things.

Linux deserves all the attention it can get in my opinion. There's never been a better time to switch now that Windows Vista is out.

It would be great to see if there is any benefit, performance wise, to using Linux over Windows when playing games. I wonder if the latest incarnation of OpenGL is up to scratch? I wonder if maybe there's a Direct3D equivalent out there somewhere...

Steam is a brilliant bit of work and although it arrived with a very bitter aftertaste, Valve have done an extraordinarily good job of making it generally just, how can I say, uber. It's just the best, really. The more games on there, the better. Steamworks is really going to drive this also...

Valve are on a roll.

*Starts singing Queen - Don't Stop Me Now*

Don't forget SteamCloud

Yeah, Steam is a fantastic peice of software, though it's early days were marred with problems, it is now incredibly stable and functional (espcially with everyone having BB now). I really look forward to the day I can log into Steam and buy any game I want. Unfortunately, it looks like EA are not going to be too happy about that, and I think a few others aren't going to be as co-operative (probably MS).

This should in theory end up with better game performance right, being all native Linux code...
(and less windows crap in background)

The problem comes with the fact that Linux gets less support from driver makers, and Drivers can make a large difference to performance, especially graphics drivers.