While Steam Linux Beta is in progress, there is already a list of games with Linux support – mostly indie games which already support that OS. Earlier, there even were system requirements for Linux present on Steam Store pages for those games, but they were taken down quickly. Thankfully, some people have snapped screenshots and we can get a look at those requirements. The most standard requirement is Ubuntu 12.04, although some games, like Amnesia, promise support for some other version of Linux as well.

Things look quite interesting when comparing Serious Sam 3 requirements. The minimum requirements for RAM are 2GB, like on Mac OS (1GB on Windows), as well as faster CPU – 2.8GHz dual core (2.0GHz dual core on Mac and Win versions). On the graphics side only DX10+ GPU from AMD and NVidia are mentioned in requirements, as well as the latest drivers. Windows version still supports last powerful DX9 GPUs, so it’s likely that GPU manufacturers simple didn’t bother to improve Linux drivers for older models. As for recommended settings – while they ask for less powerful GPU than on Windows, early benchmarks from Panos on ubuntuextreme here and here show that Serious Sam 3 performance on Linux lags behind at the moment, but is improving with newer beta and drivers versions.

With all that, future of Steam and gaming on Linux looks quite interesting. When open Linux beta starts and more benchmarks appear we will see how viable Linux is for modern games in terms of performance. Is there anybody eagerly awaiting Steam on Linux, what’s your take on it? Leave your comments.