Valve made the right decision : linuxmemes

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 92 points 3 months ago

Steam Linux Runtime is based on Debian Stable releases. It's literally the Why Not Both? meme.

[-] tallricefarmer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 months ago

Where does valve use Arch? because i thought steamOS was a fork of Debian , and i am kinda confused by the meme

[-] russjr08@bitforged.space 47 points 3 months ago

SteamOS before 3.0 was based on Debian, but with 3.0 they decided to move away from Debian and now use (immutable) Arch.

[-] Artyom@lemm.ee 20 points 3 months ago

The Steam Deck runs Arch

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

The Steam Deck runs Arch

And Debian and Ubuntu (depending on the Steam Linux Runtime version)

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[-] themoken@startrek.website 51 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] Ashyr@sh.itjust.works 37 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] anindefinitearticle@sh.itjust.works 55 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] wahming@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 18 points 3 months ago

Yeah, it's not like most Windows users understand a lot about Windows, including how to install Windows, or what an operating system is.

[-] backhdlp@iusearchlinux.fyi 7 points 3 months ago

A concerning amount of Windows users say they're PC users.

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 8 points 3 months ago

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.

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[-] anindefinitearticle@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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

[-] melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

This is, uh, pretty far into deep lore. Just use mint, you'll be fine.

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[-] cholesterol@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[-] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

Versions of SteamOS before 3.0 were Debian-based.

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[-] olutukko@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago

If I had a nickel every time I see meme that is just some anime characters with linux world logos slapped on them...

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[+] Inui@lemmy.ml 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] sirico@feddit.uk 11 points 3 months ago

Bazzite is prob the reason they don't have to

[-] Railcar8095@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago

There are internal talks to go back to Debian, very likely the public release is delayed until then.

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[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 21 points 3 months ago

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

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[-] lemmeee@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 7 points 3 months ago

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

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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"

:::

[-] Miaou@jlai.lu 7 points 3 months ago

This technically makes your comment more permissive to use, not less. At least if we keep the software analogy.

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[-] lemmeee@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 4 points 3 months ago

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

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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"

:::

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[-] gramgan@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago

Switching to Nix could certainly simplify a lot of things. I wouldn't be surprised if they went that direction soon.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.