Last month, Valve mentioned that a private beta for the long-expected Linux adaptation of their Steam service would be kicking off in October, and despite the potential for Valve Time anomalies, it appears to largely still be on track, with the publisher inviting applications from gaming-oriented Ubuntu users.

The private external beta will include:

• Steam
  
• One Valve game
  
• Support for Ubuntu 12.04 and above

It will not yet include:

• Big Picture mode
  
• Additional Valve games

For existing Linux users, the external private beta is a good release for seeing where we are in running our games on Linux.

The one game is still expected to be Left 4 Dead 2, as Valve has previously boasted having the game running natively on Linux with better performance than its windows equivalent.

Penguin-powered pundits can try their luck over at Valvesoftware.com by filling out a survey that will presumably evaluated your Linux cred.