Does anyone know why SteamOS is based on arch rather than Debian?
Just got a steam deck and immediately checked out the desktop mode, and I was somewhat surprised to see KDE and pacman as opposed to GNOME and apt, I have nothing against the former though a strong preference for the latter, anyone know why Volvo went in this direction?
Arch rolling gives up to date packages quickly. The most important part for Linux gaming is quickest pushing of GPU and performance related kernel code, so that the most optimal balance between battery life and performance is continuously achieved, because Linux gaming is still in its infancy. Every new update or package possibly giving this benefit matters to Valve, and they need maximum amount of time to optimise and push updates.
There is no GNOME hate angle, unlike what a lot of idiots here want to claim and spread the toxicity for it. KDE people, Snap haters, systemd haters are extremely vile people. Valve does not care about working with UI, since they can design a launcher for any Linux distro themselves, hiding the ugly terminal and filesystem well enough for casual gamers.
Arch gets faster driver updates, KDE is faster at developing Wayland protocol implementations.
Edit: Valve gets their desired stability by turning Arch into a point release distro through image based releases. And, the system is practically unbrickable since it’s immutable. So, in summary it’s the best of both rolling release and point release models. By best, I mean for gaming.
I understand your comment if you have an Nvidia GPU and/or if you don’t do any gaming, but if you have an Intel or AMD GPU and you play games, Wayland is just better. VRR, HDR, Fractional Scaling, Nvidia Reflex (for all GPU brands), in GameScope (wayland compositor made by Valve) you can have FSR, upscaling, on all games. It’s even better than on Windows. And if you use Bazzite, all is set up for you out of the box, you don’t need to be an experienced Linux user to use all of the above tech. Just like on the Steam Deck.
I suspect KDE because most PC gamers are Windows users and KDE is closer to that while Gnome is closer to macOS (both in design and being restrictive).
I believe SteamOS is also immutable and uses a rolling release model. It’s probably logical to make a custom version of Arch. They can make it immutable and still get the latest packages. Fedora Silverblue (or another immutable Linux distro) wouldn’t be as quick to release packages and was probably in alpha when the decision was made.
I suspect KDE because most PC gamers are Windows users and KDE is closer to that while Gnome is closer to macOS (both in design and being restrictive).
For what it’s worth, when I moved from macOS to Linux I found that KDE Plasma customisation made it less frustrating to get the appearance and multitouch gestures closer to what I was missing on a Mac.
ElementaryOS sounds like a perfect fit for you, if you haven’t tried it already. Superb gesture support and consistent UI across all built in apps
That said, a lot of the gesture support has been implemented in Gnome and KDE now anyway, particularly partial gestures which previously had very poor support IIRC
I know this is silly and I can make KDE do this but at some point, my workflow became a mouse to the top left corner to get an overview and get all the windows so I can swap programs. It started with Gnome 3 years ago, and as far as I know, macOS copied hot corners in a way that’s worse in that it requires changing settings.
The other part of my workflow is pressing a remapped CAPS Lock control or whatever and tilde for my terminal to come out guake style. I use ddterm in gnome.
If I can’t switch windows and call up a terminal guake style, I’ll retire.
The macOS version of it also sucks because you can’t close windows from “Mission Control” or whatever they call they call their Gnome clone. Put an X on each window whereas Gnome lets me do that and clear old shit out the way when I need to.
macOS does have a setting to remap the caps lock key and game has to recognize game sometimes. They stole the good ideas from Gnome. But if I can’t hit CAPS Lock+tilde and have a real terminal slide down, your operating system is dead to me.
I’m sure I can get there on Windows if I cared to but I’m too busy deleting Candy Crush or whatever.
I stand corrected. I didn’t really use macOS until a few years ago.
I originally got a MacBook because my work life is all Linux and I was working from home and needed that psychological separation. Like, “This computer is for work. MacOS is for watching basketball.”
You can get the switcher in KDE, but you can’t get a real equivalent to gnome’s view. In gnome you can press super to get the overview, but you can also type to open programs. There’s no way to do that in KDE afaik. It’s the main thing keeping me from KDE
They only support Ubuntu as downstream Distro, while they preinstall it on their number 1 supported platform, SteamOS. They control the complete software stack and even hardware.
They dont support Arch on whatever hardware, they support SteamOS on the Steamdeck.
More embedded Linux BSPs use Arch since it’s more easily stripped-down. Development of the Steam Deck would have started from the hardware up, not from a server/desktop distro down.
Add comment