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?
Gaming support is still very much a work in progress all up and down the software stack. Stable distros like Debian tend to ship older proven versions of packages so their packaged software can be up to 18mo behind current releases. The NTSync kernel code that should improve Windows game performance isn’t even scheduled for mainline merge until the 6.10 kernel window in a few weeks - that’s not likely to be in a stable Debian release for a 12-18mo.
TL;DR: Gaming work is very much ongoing and Arch moves faster than Debian does. Shipping 12-18mo old versions of core software on the Steam deck would degrade performance.
It’s pretty common to use debian unstable as a base. stable is not the only release that debian offers, and despite their names they tend to be more dependable than other distros idea of stable.
stable is not the only release that debian offers,
Did you mean to say “branch” rather than “release”? Debian only releases stable. Everything else is part of the process of preparing and supporting stable.
Testing branch may work well or it may not. Its goal is to refine packages for the next stable release so it has an inherent strive towards quality, but it doesn’t have a commitment to “quality now” like stable does, just to “quality eventually”.
Testing’s quality is highest towards the start of each release cycle when it picks up from the previous stable release and towards the end when it’s getting ready to become the next stable. But the cycle is 2 years long.
In my experience, Debian unstable has been less stable than “pure” rolling release distributions. Basing on unstable also means you have to put up with or work around Debian’s freeze periods.
SteamOS, which is what is on the Deck, used to be Debian-based. The creation of the Deck led to an environment where a rolling distro was a better choice.
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.
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
Games need to live closer to the bleeding edge than a lot of other software.
Also, for wine/proton, and the other customisations built into the deck, it makes sense to pick a starting point that is more built for customisation. By that I mean there was probably less things they needed to add or remove at the start.
As mentioned, it’s also likely there was personal bias internally. But even that can be a valid reason as they need to be familiar/comfortable with the starting distro.
Not saying that Debian cannot do it, but doing it this way probably made valve’s employees lives easier.
Arch packaging is also significantly easier to work with in my experience. I’ve packaged for both for some years and I’ll take the Arch build system over wrangling dpkg every chance I can.
Totally agree. Arch is actually a really good, simple system. That’s why so many people pick it as their main distro. Once you have installed it a few times, it’s just very simple how it works. There is no magic.
The difficulty with arch is not get it up and running. It’s about keeping it up to date. Do you have selinux enabled? I like selinux and among other things that’s what fedora bundles for me. I could do everything myself but not only do I have to know the state of the art today, I also will have to know what’s up tomorrow. I have to keep up with it. That is the difficulty with arch. Selinux is just one example but probably a prominent. I bet many people running arch have not installed it.
True, I have not installed it. I ran Fedora for a while long time ago and selinux was causing tons of headaches. So I never wanted to have it on my system after that.
How is keeping Arch up-to-date hard? Because there are a lot of updates?
I found Arch to be easier to maintain than any other distro I use. Everything is managed by the package manager ( no snaps, no flatpaks, no PPAs ). Updates are frequent but small and manageable. There are really no update “events” to navigate. And everything is current enough that I never find myself working around missing features or incompatibilities. I found it to “just work”.
I am not sure how your first point relates to SElinux. SELinux is part of the Red Hat ecosystem which is why Fedora uses it. It is not new ( SElinux may pre-date Arch Linux ). Whether you have it installed or not has nothing to do with how hard the system is to maintain. Default Debian installs do not use it either. Most Linux distros don’t. Ubuntu and SUSE use AppArmor instead.
I do not use SElinux on desktop but it makes sense for a server. The Arch kernel includes SElinux support so all you have to do is install the package if you want it. Generally, Arch gives you a newer version than Fedora does.
Flatpak is another good example besides selinux. You as a user have to be up to date how to install packages. You have to install flatpak yourself. I trust that you are up to date enough, but many people lack time and especially interest in how the system works. Many people don’t care as long as it works. On arch you have the freedom to do everything but you have to take care of a lot of thing on your own. E.g. fedora makes a lot of decisions for you. You do not have to read about firewalls, you can, but you don’t have to. On arch I highly advise evryone to read what a firewall is and then decide which firewall to use and set the right settings. Arch is not bad but it’s not for the average person who doesn’t read readmes and guides and that’s ok
I feel like this is the answer. if you’ve ever had to maintain a build pipeline or repository for .deb or .rpm, it’s not exactly pleasant (it is extremely robust, however). arch packaging is very simple by comparison, and I really doubt they’d need much more.
I have only ever packaged for RPM (the company I work for has our own RPM-based distro). How does it compare? I find RPM to be pretty easy, but I have nothing to compare against.
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