Several sites, including OS Technix, are reporting that Arch will be collaborating with Valve. A heavily modified in-house Arch distro is used by Valve for SteamOS.
In an exciting development for the Linux community, Arch Linux has announced a new partnership with Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform and Steam Deck. This collaboration will see Valve financially support two major projects for Arch Linux: an improved build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave.
[...] By providing freelance backing, Valve's support allows Arch Linux to work on these critical projects without being hindered by limitations in volunteer time. This will significantly accelerate progress and enable the Arch Linux team to tackle ambitious endeavours that would have otherwise taken much longer.
The collaboration will lead to the development of a robust build service infrastructure. This infrastructure will involve servers for building software, potentially similar to continuous integration systems. The system will likely manage compiling and distributing software, simplifying the process and reducing the need for custom setups for different devices.
The introduction of a secure signing enclave marks a significant advancement in security for Arch Linux. This enclave will leverage code signing to provide a higher level of assurance that packages downloaded from the official repositories haven't been tampered with. Users will be able to cryptographically verify the origin and integrity of software packages, making it much harder for malicious actors to distribute compromised software.
There is speculation that Valve might publicly release SteamOS in the future or that native support for games on GNU/Linux will improve greatly.
Previously:
(2021) Valve's Upcoming Steam Deck Will be Based on Arch Linux--Not Debian
(2015) Steam Now Has 1500 Linux-Compatible Game Titles
(2015) Valve's SteamOS Dreams Beginning to Look Like Reality
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After the initial announcement by Valve of a new console machine with its own controller and based on its own rebranded Linux, many were very excited. However, after moving in "Steam Time" for awhile, that excitement died down. That all changed this week at GDC as Valve made official announcements of many "triple a" games coming to SteamOS, with a large sale on Steam for them to boot.
There were also many vendors takes on Steam Machines announced (although many seem overpriced), as well as a new VR headset system, the official announcement of the controller, and a small fifty dollar device called the "Link" to let you stream your games (or even applications) to a tv from a computer. With all these announcements, excitement seems to be building again for the chances of SteamOS and the future of Linux gaming (which has always been a sticking point for consumer desktop adoption).
Can this finally be the dawn of a new age in the Linux world thanks to Valve?
Softpedia reports
Steam is the world's largest digital game distribution platform, supporting all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux or SteamOS, Valve's own distribution derived from the acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux OS.
[...] There are approximately 6,500 titles in the Steam library. Almost all of them are being supported on the Microsoft Windows platform, a little over 2,300 have support for the Mac OS X operating system, and 1,500 titles offer support for Valve's SteamOS and any other GNU/Linux distribution out there.
[...] Even more good news: [...] Many other games will have support for the Linux platform soon, mainly because Valve will finally release its Steam Machines gaming console / personal computer in November, which will be powered by the company's Debian-based SteamOS GNU/Linux operating system.
Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck will be based on Arch Linux:
As Ars Technica confirmed in May, two months ahead of its official reveal, Valve is about to re-enter the hardware space with its first portable PC, the Steam Deck. This custom x86 PC resembles an XL version of the Nintendo Switch and will begin shipping to buyers by the end of 2021, starting at $399.
[...] Shipping on Linux cuts manufacturing costs for Steam, insulates the company from competition with the Microsoft Store on Windows, and avoids exposing Steam Deck players to the world's premiere malware ecosystem—which also runs on Windows.
[...] "The main reason [to switch to Arch] is the rolling updates [that support] more rapid development for SteamOS 3.0," Valve designer Lawrence Yang told PC Gamer. Yang says that Arch is a better choice given the massive number of updates, changes, and customizations Valve needs to make in order to provide the best gaming experience on the Steam Deck.
Valve promises that the Steam Deck will run "the entire Steam library" at 30+ fps, so that means a lot of customizations indeed.
Previously:
AMD + Valve Working on New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design
Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-Like Portable PC: Starting at $399 this December
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 01, @09:48AM (10 children)
Valve isn't exactly a savory [law.com] company [polygon.com] to partner with.
On the other hand, to their credit, it's one of the rare few companies that dropped the forced arbitration BS [polygon.com]. Whoever heard of that happening ever in the land of corporate dystopia? Kudos to Valve for that, if not for the rest.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01, @10:09AM
Those articles are ridiculous. They act as if companies are supposed to be altruistic and selfless, taking only what they need and making no profits. If that's what you want, go ahead and make your own profit-free game distribution store - you'll be able to undercut those price-gouging, rent-seeking, monopolists right?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 01, @12:36PM (6 children)
Yes and no. Tech companies suck. Tech companies that have found a perfect middle-man position to wriggle into and take free money forever really suck.
But. Valve is doing something important in this space, which is turning PC gaming from something that depends on another awful ugly greedy middleman company, who thinks they get to call the shots on all home computing into a slightly less powerful force. When capitalism is a force that works for the consumer this is how it does so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday October 01, @01:22PM (5 children)
Also, if you want a much better source of games, you should be buying from GOG and pretty much nowhere else. And/or contributing to and/or using Open Source games.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01, @01:35PM (1 child)
That sounds great in theory. In practice, when gaming on Linux it's so much easier to use Steam and Proton than it is to spend hours trying to configure Wine to get the game working.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 01, @06:57PM
This is because Valve has done a lot of the heavy lifting for you, which goes to show that Valve is doing valuable things. It does suck that GOG doesn't have a Proton equivalent and/or configs for WINE for their games, but GOG is quite a bit smaller than Valve.
I experienced this directly when setting up kiddo's machine using MX Linux. It's much simpler to just get the game on Steam and use Proton. Even though I had the game on GOG, the game didn't function perfectly with default settings using PlayOnLinux. Generally, if it "just works" with PlayOnLinux (WINE frontend), then I am golden. Otherwise, I really don't want to take the next several minutes, hours, and/or days to get the game to run perfectly.
There are some games that support Linux natively, but those are still kinda few and far between. Not quite as few as there used to be, but Proton+Valve is a double-edged sword in that regard.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 01, @03:56PM
My problem isn't that this isn't a good idea. It's a pretty great idea overall.
But you can't solve systemic issues by expecting incredibly high standards of technical competence and (I don't know a word how to describe this?) moral independence from the population at large. People just can't all live up to that expectation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Tuesday October 01, @05:55PM (1 child)
Using only actual fully OpenSource games is pretty limiting to make that a non-starter for most.
I love GoG, but GoG doesn't offer linux builds of games even if they exist. Nor do they actively support Linux the way valve does so there is a bit of a conundrum there.
I also tend to buy multiplayer games on steam, because its generally easier to get into games with my friends that way than to have to worry whether gog users and steam users can cross-play or whether there's special tricks required to do it, or deal with version mismatches due to deltas in the release schedules etc. (where Steam gets an updated binary a few days before GoG ...)
So I mostly use GoG for Good-old-Games :) that are single player and run on windows. In a perfect world I'd shift more to GoG but its not a perfect world, and I'm pragmatic.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 01, @07:01PM
I'm more or less in the same boat as you. I don't need to spend a long time getting something working on WINE, when I could have the game installed and running via Steam in a tiny fraction of the time. Also, Steam is well organized. Even assuming you have a front-end like PlayOnLinux, which does compartmentalize things a bit (like Proton), it's just more clunky.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday October 01, @01:27PM (1 child)
neat, but these forced arbitration clauses should be illegal anyway
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 01, @04:01PM
It's only a scant few countries where they are legal.
I was researching that specific question recently, and there's some odd cases like China where the clauses are legal, but the arbitration committees are run by the government, which raises the question of "What's the difference?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday October 01, @11:07AM
I believe Arch is a fine distribution and deserves support. Yet, the projects mentioned are solved problems. I hope they will not code their own, rather implement existing solutions (such as OBS aka Open Build Service) for use in Arch.
The NIH force in strong in open source.
(Score: 3, Informative) by namefags_are_jerks on Tuesday October 01, @01:29PM (1 child)
Personally, I use a proprietary system to play proprietary games (a Playstation), and keep my Free Systems free ..of licencing daemons, backdoors, spyware, and other shit.
(Score: 4, Informative) by vux984 on Tuesday October 01, @06:07PM
Missing out on so many mods, paying for basic multiplayer, not to mention a much higher average price, and a comparatively limited library for games seems like a step in the wrong direction to me.
And that's without even considering the controller-first/controller-only situation of the Playstation.
I get buying a playstation if you care enough about the exclusives; I have a Nintendo Switch myself for that reason. But I can't imagine giving up my gaming PC for consoles.