Valve to begin Steam Linux beta next week

Valve is set to begin the beta for the Linux version of its digital distribution platform Steam next week.

The Valve Linux Steam team will start by running an internal beta on the service, extending this to a private external testing period for 1,000 users later in October.

The external beta will include testing for Steam itself, one Valve game and support for Ubuntu 12.04 and above. The testing period will not yet include Big Picture or additional Valve games.

Whilst Valve did not reveal which game this would be, the company previously said that Left 4 Dead 2 would be the first game rolled out on the operating system, making it likely this could be the title in question.

The studio said the beta would be ideal for existing Linux users to test out to see where Valve is on running its games on Linux, and recommended that new users to the OS wait for a subsequent release which will have more features and improvements implemented to the user install experience.