Steam Linux Runtime is based on Debian Stable releases. It’s literally the Why Not Both? meme.
Where does valve use Arch? because i thought steamOS was a fork of Debian , and i am kinda confused by the meme
SteamOS before 3.0 was based on Debian, but with 3.0 they decided to move away from Debian and now use (immutable) Arch.
The Steam Deck runs Arch
The Steam Deck runs Arch
And Debian and Ubuntu (depending on the Steam Linux Runtime version)
Totally why not both
In a world where Valve controls 90% of what is running on a device with immutable / containerized images, yeah I think Arch makes a lot more sense. A distro focused on rolling release is a lot less likely to hang you up when you choose to update.
Debian is great, but depending on where you are in the release cycle it can be a pain in the ass to stay up to date and, frankly, the last time I ran it, shit like apt/dpkg configuration and so many /etc files and structures just felt like mis-features or too complex for their own good.
Can anyone explain anything in this meme? I don’t know the anime, I don’t know the symbols, all I recognize is the steam logo.
I don’t know the anime either, but the steam logo is walking away from the debian logo and then staring into the eyes of the arch logo. OP is saying that valve made the right choice by ditching debian (I thought they were using ubuntu, but that’s just a debian derivative with a bad UI on top) for arch as the basis for steamOS. For a gaming platform, I agree. You want the latest updates and software versions for gaming purposes (and proton/wine purposes), and they can hire employees to ensure they have tackled arch’s bleeding-edge instabilities before rolling the updates out to the general population.
You know every time I think I understand enough about Linux to consider moving over an innocent post like this sets me back to square one.
Nah you’re overthinking it. Grab a beginner friendly distro like Mint and just start using it. All this is fanboy talk that can be interesting but doesn’t affect 99% of users.
Yeah, it’s not like most Windows users understand a lot about Windows, including how to install Windows, or what an operating system is.
A concerning amount of Windows users say they’re PC users.
They’re technically right, the best kind of right. That said, I too hate Microsoft leaning into this Apple marketing bullshit and trying to monopolize the term personal computer for Windows.
Although, you could argue that some of the modern computers that only support UEFI booting and no longer have BIOS booting support aren’t actually PCs since the PC bios is a pretty big part of what traditionally defined a PC compatible system
Valve’s use-case for choosing a gnu+linux distro is likely to be different from yours. Therefore, commentary about Valve’s needs and choices may or may not be relevant to your use-case.
If you’re new, I recommend mint. Because of ubuntu’s questionable choices at times vs debian’s steady hand, I recommend the debian edition of mint, LMDE. It’s a rolling distribution that requires fewer total reinstalls. Debian’s low-effort stability and security works for nearly all use-cases. Mint adds user-friendly settings, updates, and package management.
Cinnamon is mint’s desktop environment, what they add on top of ubuntu or debian. Like xfce, it’s lighter-weight and more responsive than plasma or gnome on lower-end or aging hardware, but it’s prettier than xfce without rice. Although if you wanna rice and make it pretty, check out a tiling window manager.
Let Valve handle the complex stuff and hire employees to stress-test the latest packages in Arch and just use what they package for you in proton. Start with a debian derivative. If you start wanting to tinker around because you’re getting comfortable, or for some reason desperately need a newer version of a package, you can try software from other package management schemes like guix or flatpak that run on top of your stable debian system.
When you’re comfortable with using the command line tools and managing the gnu operating system, you can try a more command-line centered and manually assisted distros like arch and gentoo
This is, uh, pretty far into deep lore. Just use mint, you’ll be fine.
It’s really not so bad. You would likely be fine with a beginner-friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint. Personally I use Ubuntu because it tends to be the most supported by application developers and things generally just work, it’s kind of boring stable IMO to the point where I almost want to start distro hopping and trying out something other than Ubuntu.
Though I’d recommend trying it out in a VM first to get a feel for it, and then also trying to live boot it from a USB and see how you like it.
Nothing about what he said would prevent you from using a casual user focused variant like Ubuntu. The biggest challenge you’ll potentially run into is drivers and/or having hardward that just doesn’t play nice with linux. I’d suggest just giving an install a try and see how it goes. The experience has come a long long way in the past decade.
but that’s just a debian derivative with a bad UI on top
What is, Ubuntu, or the pre-Arch based SteamOS? I ask because Ubuntu has so many different variants that you can pick a UI that works for you.
True, but the desktop environment that they develop in-house is what I grade them on. Not the color themes and backgrounds that they put on desktop environments produced by other projects. You can install other desktop environments on any linux distro. Ubuntu only produces Unity.
That’s true, but you could always just install Kubuntu or Xubuntu and still get a great experience, it’s literally just Ubuntu with a different DE so you would still get the full Ubuntu “experience” imo, although yeah I do see your point. Though, I do think Ubuntu has actually moved back to GNOME and killed off Unity.
They even link to the alternate desktop environments on their site
Ubuntu doesn’t use unity anymore, their default UI is a GNOME shell with some extensions. It works pretty well imo. Not that different from gnome itself
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I don’t understand the purpose of this comment, aside from downvote farming.
I was joking!!!
Why?
Historically the in-group for several niche topics is hostile to outsiders, and the poster was very friendly and inclusive, so the sarcasm of “no don’t do that” should be a little funny.
Also, the idea of “for the crime of being X they will be sentenced to the punishment of remaining X” is also funny to me.
SteamOS (the operating system for the Steam Deck) is based on Arch Linux (the blue A), so that’s what’s going on in the bottom panel.
The red swirl is for another Linux operating system, called Debian. I don’t know what OP is referring to by Steam ‘leaving’ Debian in the top panel.
Versions of SteamOS before 3.0 were Debian-based.
The SteamOS running on “steam machines” when they were a thing were debian
Says on google lens that the anime is Ao-chan can’t study.
If I had a nickel every time I see meme that is just some anime characters with linux world logos slapped on them…
All image macros are are random pictures with text on them
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There are internal talks to go back to Debian, very likely the public release is delayed until then.
Why tho. Arguably arch definietly shouldnt be their first choice of os but why bother changing it so soon
Do you have any source for this?
I’m afraid it will have to be a “a friend that worked on the deck told me”. 100% understand if nobody believes
Do you have any insight as to what pain points are driving this? I’m just legitimately curious
This is quite old (way before OLED), so might not even be still a thing, but I remember that arch was updating too quickly and things were breaking all the time, so it took a lot of effort to get stable releases for steamOS.
Didn’t I read somewhere they were considering using NixOS instead of messing with unstable Arch and forcing it do stuff it wasn’t made for?
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Just out of curiosity, do you think that licensing your posts under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 makes it illegal to use them to train an AI? If so, why do you think that? I post GPL licensed code online, so I’m interested in this topic.
If you write code, you might be aware of the AI coding assistants out there. Most notable is probably Github’s Copilot. Well, that AI assistant has an ongoing case against it to answer the question you’re asking. So, just like you add a GPL (or other) license to your code, creative commons licenses are for text and media that aren’t code and I add it to my comments.
Whether they will have an impact has yet to be determined, so we’ll see if creative commons with a non-commercial clause is for naught or not.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"This technically makes your comment more permissive to use, not less. At least if we keep the software analogy.
You do realise there are different software licenses, right and that they aren’t all permissive? Also, the license I’m using is permissive for non-commercial uses.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"But the default licence is closed-source. Of course company training models don’t care, but in that case the CC signature is not more enforceable.
Anything you write should be proprietary by default. So I don’t think you have to add this license to your comments just to achieve your goal. But it makes sense if you also want to give some extra rights to people.
If AI reads your code, but the output is something entirely different, why would that be illegal? Isn’t that the same as a human reading something? I’m curious what the courts will decide, though.
I don’t want to help Microsoft, but some of the arguments made in that article are strange. If AI means the end of software licenses, that means the end of copyright, which is a good thing. When AI gets better, we might be able to feed it leaked or decompiled source code and get something that we can legally use. That’s not the current situation, though. At the moment Microsoft uses libre, copylefted software to improve their proprietary program and that’s bad. But I don’t think we can do anything about it other than telling people to not use it.
My stance is just staunchly anti-commercial and I would rather see a non-commercial AI be allowed to use my text than a commercial one. Whether copyright law will reflect that is hitherto unknown - at least in the EU and the US, I think. Japan has already made a ruling that copyright doesn’t exist for AI - or so I understand it. IANAL
If AI reads your code, but the output is something entirely different, why would that be illegal? Isn’t that the same as a human reading something?
That line of reasoning is logical, however copyright has never made any sense to me. “Likeness” can be copyrighted. Copying a copyrighted work is not allowed, but coming up with a solution that is nigh identical to another in a “clean room” is legal. Using old black and white mickey mouse is now public domain, but adding color suddenly makes it illegal. Learning something proprietary on the job and using it immediately at another employer is illegal but wait a year and it’s legal even though the old employer never updated the solution.
It makes no sense to me and doesn’t seem logical at all 🤷 Laws are like scientific models: attempts at making sense of the world. Some are better than others.
Anti Commercial AI thingy
Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11
#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell #!nix-shell -i bash --packages xautomation xclip sleep 0.2 (echo '::: spoiler Anti Commercial AI thingy [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) Inserted with a keystroke running this script on linux with X11 ```bash' cat "$0" echo '``` :::') | xclip -selection clipboard xte "keydown Control_L" "key V" "keyup Control_L"You are right, laws can be pretty crazy sometimes. Especially the copyright law. Thanks for explaining.
Lmfao. “Added with a script” 👹
Switching to Nix could certainly simplify a lot of things. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went that direction soon.
The ironic part here is that NixOS and Steam don’t really play that well together: Nothing is where pre-built binaries expect it to be on NixOS, including
ld.so, so pre-built binaries simply won’t run without patching. NixOS can do that for Steam… but as Steam is also downloading binaries, essentially being its own package manager, those binaries then run into the same issue.OTOH you can just run the whole shebang in a chroot, exposing exactly what Steam expects (couple of libraries and the graphics drivers) which is what NixOS does and I never had any issues.
Another hurdle would be that NixOS is not end-user friendly. It just hasn’t been a focus, Valve would need to write a graphical configuration/package management utility. NixOS also doesn’t tend to go easy on disk space and network bandwidth which might be considerations, OTOH probably not an issue if they manage their own release channel. Things like flatpack also aren’t an issue they get the same treatment Steam does.
What anime is the yuri one from?
Ao-chan can’t study. It drove me insane for a bit because I could have sworn I watched it. I didn’t but I think maybe I saw this scene somewhere.
*it hit me that I definitely saw this scene somewhere, probably a pretty high number of times without context.
tank u
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Of course it’s gay, I use Arch btw
Hey, that rhymes. That’s sublime.
context?
SteamOS 1 and 2 were Debian based, but SteamOS 3 (the version that launched with the Steam Deck) is Arch based.
SteamOS
Are they upset they didn’t get hit with the xz backdoor?
Neither hit the backdoor. Arch didn’t patch OpenSSH and the library wasn’t linked as a result.
If they wanted backdoors, they would use windows
😄rolling for the win
SteamOS isn’t rolling release, though.
But arch tho
Contains anime, bad post
Yuri though, so good post
I know your thoughts.
To the grinder with you
ah fuck now i want to play RA2 again.
Yuri enjoyer spotted instant upvote
I think you mean Linux + Anime, good post.
Making a proprietary operating system is not the right decision. It’s unethical to take away people’s ability to control their own devices.
How does Valve prevent you from controlling your own device? Their version of Linux isn’t locked down, you can fully customize it like any Linux afaik.
Their system (and the Steam client) is proprietary, which means you can’t easily see what the software does or change it. If you can’t control the software then you don’t control the device. People deserve to have the 4 essential freedoms. This is why Windows is bad and it’s the same with SteamOS.
SteamOS is only bad when you expect it to support a variety of hardware. They promised to release it as a standalone and it’s still not there yet, too bad.
You are correct about Steam client though. Even if they keep the internals closed, the GUI part alone would be worth forking. I wish a chrome-less version would exist.
Steam Deck is a computer, so its users deserve to have full control over it just like their PC or smartphone.
You are correct about Steam client though. Even if they keep the internals closed, the GUI part alone would be worth forking. I wish a chrome-less version would exist.
If people can’t easily modify it, then its developers have power over users. You have to trust that they will not abuse that power, but they already do - with DRM for example.
You can install whatever you want on a Steam Deck afaik, so I dont get what you are trying to say here.
That SteamOS is unethical, similar to Windows.
Then you can just install something else on it?
I get that it sucks when a device is locked, because you might need to install a different OS for a multitude of reasons, but as long as you are able to install whatever you want I dont blame the manufacturer.
You have full freedom to install Windows, SteamOS, or even Temple OS on your Steam Deck if you so fancy.
That does not make SteamOS or Windows an ethical OS.
Can you explain what parts of SteamOS are not controllable in a way that makes it more restricted than Arch, which it is based on?
with DRM for example
[If the account owns the game - allow user to download and run the game] is a DRM sure… But it’s kind of fair, no?
Can you explain what parts of SteamOS are not controllable in a way that makes it more restricted than Arch, which it is based on?
Valve won’t release the source code and I don’t use it, so it’s hard for me to tell which packages are proprietary and which are not. Steam client for sure is proprietary and it comes with the OS. Arch by default is Free Software (other than proprietary blobs in the kernel) and you can audit what each program does and modify it. With SteamOS you can’t do that, because Valve keeps secrets from you on your own device.
[If the account owns the game - allow user to download and run the game] is a DRM sure… But it’s kind of fair, no?
To play any game you have to install and run the proprietary Steam client and be logged in to an account. Even to play singleplayer games. Even if you bought a physical disc. There are stores that don’t do this: gog.com and itch.io. They provide an optional client for convenience, but you can just download a game’s installer from the website and install it on any PC any time you want. In case of Itch the client is Free Software so anyone can see what it does and modify it.
Valve won’t release the source code
That doesn’t mean you can’t control how it works. Most people don’t need sources of their Linux distros to use them as they want. It would be cool to have the source, but you wouldn’t expect them to have an official maintained repo since they spend much more resources on actual hardware that needs this distro.
Steam client for sure is proprietary and it comes with the OS
Yeah it seems to also be the only thing that is proprietary in SteamOS too.
To play any game you have to install and run the proprietary Steam client and be logged in to an account.
Are you clueless or what? There are too many ways to do what you want with SteamOS. You can use offline mode, desktop mode, play pirated games in any mode, install any controller software you like. Finally, install another Linux distro on it, or Windows. But people buy Deck because of SteamOS mostly since it creates the intended (and expected) experience.
Wanna know why we aren’t seeing many enthusiasts creating more handheld frontends for platforms like Deck? Yeah, not at all because the platform is locked behind DRM or other bs. But because the best experience most people expect is already available and it becomes better with updates.
Just because they made steam start on boot. Doesn’t mean you can’t control your device…
Steam (and other parts of SteamOS) is non free software, it can do anything on your system and there is no easy way for you to change that or even know what it does. Valve developers put themselves in a position of power over you. They keep secrets from you on your own device. This in itself is unethical, but they also abuse their users with DRM. How can you say that you have control in this case?
DRM is what publishers and developers want. If Valve didn’t have DRM they wouldn’t be anywhere near as big as they are today. The influx of developers happened when Steam released their DRM for the public.
Yes, but those aren’t the companies that would have replaced Steam if they weren’t successful. It would’ve been a company like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, or Blizzard who would’ve taken over the game distribution market. Valve is a saint compared to any of those companies. As much as we wish for everything to be DRM free it would never happen. At least not with the current market. Also, the average person doesn’t care about DRM. They don’t understand the implications of what makes an ethical market. They just want to install a game and hit start.
Valve is an enemy of freedom. It doesn’t matter if they abuse us less than other companies. They are still an unethical company.
As much as we wish for everything to be DRM free it would never happen.
If you don’t fight for it, then of course it won’t happen. Also I’m pretty sure you could say this about any difficult problem: Free Software, privacy, global warming, wars. You could say that we will never solve those issues, so why bother doing anything?
Also, the average person doesn’t care about DRM. They don’t understand the implications of what makes an ethical market. They just want to install a game and hit start.
An average person doesn’t mind running Windows either. But we still try to build a better world for ourselves and we try to convince others to join us.
They are not DRM free. They verify your ownership before letting you download games.
They are DRM-free. I can send you a copy of those games and you can run them on your computer. Without you having to log in anywhere or install an additional proprietary application. Without anyone verifying anything. Isn’t that amazing?
By that definition Steam is DRM free too. I can download tons of my games, pack and send them to you and they’ll work. My rough estimate is that about half of all games are like that. Half of the remaining games rely on Steam environment for community or multiplayer functionality.
Steam OS is easy, you can install literally any other distro. With regards to steam itself sadly we don’t live in a fairytale land where everything can be FOSS, there aren’t enough people motivated to work for free. Steam drm is great it makes publisher executives happy, while being extremely easy to crack.
Steam OS is easy, you can install literally any other distro.
You can say the same about Windows. You can replace it with another OS, but that doesn’t make it ethical.
With regards to steam itself sadly we don’t live in a fairytale land where everything can be FOSS, there aren’t enough people motivated to work for free.
If everyone had this attitude, there would be no Free Software at all. It took 40 years of hard work to get to where we are right now. I don’t understand why you think that anyone has to work for free. Free Software is about freedom, not price. Itch.io is a store that has a Free Software client (and it’s optional - you don’t even have to use it). Valve could do the same, but they don’t want to.
Steam drm is great it makes publisher executives happy, while being extremely easy to crack.
Yes, it’s great that publishers can abuse us and that you need a proprietary app on your system and be logged in to an account to play singleplayer games. Thanks Valve.
Not other parts of steamos, just steam
Also the Linux kernel and possibly some drivers according to the FSF: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html. But I don’t know how to verify that last part.
