Just a year after Valve released a Mac version of its popular Steam gaming service, Gaben and Co. are bringing Steam to Linux, according to a Linux blogger who has been to Valve HQ to see the progress of the port.

Michael Larabel of Phoronix says Valve has been working on Linux versions of Steam and the Source engine for some time, but the project took off recently after Gabe Newell himself stepped into a lead role.

Larabel got to test a beta version of Steam, running on Ubuntu, and he said that it works with one game right now: Left 4 Dead 2. L4D2 is a great test case, though, because it uses a recent implementation of Source.

Valve intends to port the rest of its back catalog to Linux once L4D2 is done, making them, in Larabel's opinion, "the most Linux-friendly game company."

[geek.]

A Linux-based operating system with built-in hacking tools is being billed as the work of Anonymous, but representatives of the hacker group say that Anonymous-OS is not their work, and could even contain malware.

The custom Linux distro, based on Ubuntu 11, comes with dozens of preinstalled hacking and security apps, as well as notorious DDoS tools like slowloris and HOIC (High Orbit Ion Cannon).

According to the @AnonOps Twitter account, though, the OS -- which has now been downloaded over 20,000 times -- is "fake" and "wrapped in Trojans."

Its creator has denied those accusions, arguing that "in our world, in Linux and opensource world, there is not virus."

That's not exactly true, though. In fact, Anonymous' own slowloris DDoS tool was recently hit by the Zeus trojan.

For now, it looks like aspiring hackers would better off not downloading Anonymous-OS, and getting the security apps they need from a trusted source instead.

[geek]