14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has just announced yet another stable release for their Steam Linux client, in the wake of the big announcement regarding the impending launch of SteamOS.
The new Steam update seems to have happened quite fortuitously, but a closer look at the changelog will reveal that there is nothing in there to connect it with SteamOS.
Valve usually pushes a few Beta updates before upgrading the stable branch of Steam, and then it is just a collection of all the changes made so far.
The changes that involve the Linux platform consist only of bugfixes. For example, a bug that caused Steam to hang on startup for some users has been corrected and another bug that prevented Big Picture on Linux from becoming active again sometimes after a game exits, has been fixed.
Also, the Steam developers have corrected a problem that prevented the tray menu from not responding when transitioning out of Big Picture mode, and a regression that caused Steam to exit instead of performing a restart after actions that required Steam to restart.
Highlights of the Steam for Linux update:
• The application is no longer showing “[unknown]” user names for players in the current game lobby; • Downloading Steam cloud files via HTTP is now working properly; • Setting the display resolution in the Big Picture mode before login properly no longer restarts the Big Picture mode; • The Big Picture language settings panel has been added; • A subsequent login problem caused by canceling when creating an account has been fixed. • A number of changes specific to other supported platforms have been integrated.
Users don't have to reinstall the application in order to get all these changes. A message prompt will be offered and users just have to accept it.
You can also download the Steam installer from Softpedia if you don't have the client.