The steam linux beta is now open to everyone. I just installed it on my openSUSE PC. Here’s how.
Update Andrew Wafaa pointed out that there’s an rpm package providing a much easier installation option that I could have found myself ¬_¬
It wasn’t entirely straightforward as there is only an Ubuntu package. These steps are unlikely to work on all setups, but they may help someone. I’m using 64bit openSUSE 12.2
1. Add tools repository
$ zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/utilities/openSUSE_12.2/ alien
2. Install alien and steam’s dependencies
Alien is a tool that can convert debian packages to RPMs.
$ zypper in alien libpango-1_0-0-32bit libgtk-2_0-0-32bit mozilla-nss-32bit libgcrypt11-32bit libopenal1-soft-32bit libpulse0-32bit libpng12-0-32bit
3. Download the steam deb package
$ wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb
4. Convert steam deb to an rpm
$ alien --to-rpm ./steam.deb
5. Install rpm
$ rpm -Uvh ./steam*.rpm
6. Run steam
$ SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa steam
The SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa was needed for me because I uninstalled pulseaudio because I like being able to play multiple audio streams at the same time.