Remember back when they had just Portal out for OSX, some people could play TF2 on OSX by moving some files around.

Personally, I think they're playing with L4D2 because it's more stable. TF2 is getting content updates every few weeks, while L4D2 is still new but relatively stable. Maybe just for the sensitive stage where they want to make sure it works just fine (with an acceptable framerate, which is probably the hard part) they want a game that doesn't push new hats to the client every other week. Once everything is smooth, I imagine it's trivial to move the rest of the Source engine games over.

Yeah, with the Linux side of things they probably have more freedom to release things in an earlier stage like "we have this mostly working, you might want to play around with it a bit though before it's completely awesome" and the community would be fine with that. At least more freedom than you'd see on the OSX or Windows side of things. Gamers can be a pretty picky bunch, but I imagine (or hope) that Linux users will be more likely to be happy to use less-than-stable software if it means they get to use it sooner. Whether or not Valve will use that availability, we will have to see.

nah, Gabe just looked at the consumer preview for Windows 8 and started Steam & Source on Linux as a reaction before he even realized it.

if you're in the US, I can throw you an invite if you don't have it.

At least they'll be better than the ones using console controllers.

It's rude to interrupt a correction with semantics.

There are some people who's adblock behavior is kinda on principals rather than "block everything unless it breaks"

Early after I made my Slashdot account I had adblock on but didn't pay it any mind, and then I saw the "thanks to you contributing positively to this board, you are eligible to turn off ads"

I felt it was such an honorable and honest system that I disabled adblock for Slashdot and didn't opt-out of the ads. It also made me disable it for other sites I appreciate, like Hulu or even Google.com. Reddit has a "Thank you for not using AdBlock" graphic in place of an ad sometimes. I think it's what Google was saying some time ago: adblockers aren't ruining free websites, people will eventually use them to block out annoying or undesirable ads while choosing to support the websites they would like to support.

Not that I'm saying this behavior is in the majority, but it might grow with the usage of AdBlockers.

Disagree, mod points are given to people with good Karma and therefore are obviously less likely to be wrong.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but Xbox LIVE silver accounts are unpaid and "let" you buy content on the store.

Dunno about you, but my walled garden sure keeps that pesky rabbit out.

I will now list everyone surprised by this move:

This. Having played free WoW servers before (and idling in their official IRCs), I've seen how time of the day gets blurry when others aren't as constricted to the same schedule as you are.

Not only that, but there are OTHER insomniacs in OTHER time zones, meaning interaction can depend more on "when they happen to be awake" and not "what time they're usually up"

Great, you HAD to mention Splashup. Now Google is going to buy them too. Way to go.

Facebook chat plugin is buggy and possibly breaks when Facebook updates something with their chat network. XMPP is a built-in protocol and will be more stable and supported.

the first thing I noticed is that XMPP doesn't keep losing connection and trying to login.

though I don't think it might be an issue to everyone, but on the facebook chat plugin it would query who is online and who isn't at time intervals, resulting in mass signings/signouts at once depending on the time of day + size of friends list. I'm not sure if the xmpp system is any better but I assume it will be more real-time.

I should hope not, if ALL of the internet humor comes from there I'm going home.