Hooray! Your Linux box just got slightly more awesome with the addition of Portal to Steam’s Ubuntu-friendly collection, if you’re in the beta. Portal is Steamplay compatible so if you, like practically everyone else on Steam, already own a copy you may be able to just go ahead and install it without coughing up USD$9.99 for it.

In less substantiated but maybe more exciting news, sequel Portal 2 has been spotted haunting some parts of the Steam Linux store, as spotted by Gearburn. We haven’t seen it ourselves, unfortunately, but even if it’s complete moonshine you can probably expect it to be true eventually, as Valve seems hellbent on getting every Source engine game running on the alternate OS.

Source: PCGamesN

Thought owning your own Portal portal-gun was cool? You were wrong, buddy: WETA Workshop just sent Valve their own fully-sized, fully-functioning Portal turrent — minus the shooting and death, naturally. Hooked up to a computer, the turret identifies targets, flashes and “fires” its guns, and even delivers the mournful “goodbye” on shutdown. Delightful. Also: jealous.

Owners of Portal 2 may have noticed a voucher for 75% off Portal 2 appearing in their Steam inventory this morning, and that’s because Valve would like you to go out, grab a friend, and get them ready to help you out with what they expect to be a wave of new user-created co-op maps.

Valve has just opened up the Perpetual Testing Initiative to co-op map, you see, allowing users to now create and play their own co-op experiences which – given how amazing and delightful Valve’s own co-op campaign was – is a great move. They’ve also included a new ‘Quick Play’ mode to auto-generate a list of the top-rated maps, which is tops.

Source: Press Release

Caution! If you haven’t finished Portal 2 not only are you a bad person, but also there might be spoilers herein. You have been warned!

An anonymous NASA tech has ensured that Wheatley is actually going into spaaaaaaace. This very, very anonymous tech has secretly laser-engraved an image of Wheatley on to the side of the Japanese HTV-3 resupply craft, which is headed to the ISS this Friday. While it’s not officially endorsed by NASA, we like to think that in the future all spacecraft will be branded in the same way.

Source: Portal 2 Blog