I've been using Linux forever (back to the mailed Ubuntu CDs days).
I installed this begrudgingly after fighting edge cases with Waydroid on Arch. It's the first "batteries included" distro I've actually liked. I usually hate the "omakase" approach, but the setup here is pretty much how I would've done it myself.
Side note: GNOME + Waydroid is the best experience I've had with a desktop OS on a tablet. Finding tools like scrcpy included out of the box was a nice surprise, too.
I've been using linux since the days of downloading slackware on a stack of 1.44mb floppy disks. I gave up on linux gaming around 2007. I've revisited it this year, but it still sucks. it's just not worth it.
just relax, install windows and late the escapism take over.
I also started my Linux journey with a turn of the century Slackware install. Linux has come a long, long way since then, but I learned a lot back then. Distros like Bazzite are practically "turn-key" now.
In any case, I would rather use those hard earned skills hand configuring Slackware today than to put with the shitshow of Windows pop-ups, forced account creation, telemetry collection, UI changes for the sake of change, advertisements built into the OS, random OS corrupting BSODs, etc..
Ah sorry, it was lutris (the name escaped me). I've done all the combinations of wine and wrappers to wine. All of them have a sort of unstable relationship with the calling environment. alt-tabbing out of games never works, there are freezes and game crashes when you try to switch in and out of games a fluidly as you can on windows.
I believe you that steamos is better, but it's also a single task environment where you're not checking your email between rounds of halo.
I'll give proton a try, though i believe that was in play when i was laddering with lutris.
The iGPU in Panther Lake has me pretty excited about intel for the first time in a long time. Lunar Lake proved they’re still relevant; Panther Lake will show whether they can actually compete.
Yeah, I’ve been noticing an alarming number of casks marked to be depreciated… at the same time gatekeeper has gotten so restrictive it won’t let me (easily) open a video files that I downloaded from the internet
Yeah, I noticed the same on my Macbook. I mainly use it for theater stuff (Qlab) and remoting into my main Windows desktop environment. I just stopped doing some of the workflows on Mac and do them on Windows because I didn't feel like trying to figure out why macOS wouldn't let GIMP open an image I downloaded from the internet. So dumb.
- try the usual tricks (holding alt and right clicking, i guess), no
- drag and drop file into Code, no
- right click>get info, lo and behold: the entire file contents displayed in the Get Info preview pane for me to copy
I'm actually getting a Windows laptop to do some testing on and i might just abandon Mac for the most part after that. Eating up five minutes of my day to figure out how to edit a file i created myself is just too much sometimes
I ran into this exact same thing recently with CSVs downloaded from my own app. I tried a few different filetypes and was baffled how seemingly any filetype I downloaded triggered Gatekeeper regardless of the app I set to open it (including stock apps).
I eventually found on Reddit that setting the default via the Get Info dialog was the only path that worked, so now I can click a CSV and open it in VS Code without needing to send Apple my passport and fingerprints. I keep seeing mixed opinions whether it's a bug that Get Info associations work differently vs the right click context menu, or if it's a deliberately obtuse garden path like the Settings/Open Anyway routine and "working" as intended.
Either way I hate it but it would be slightly more forgivable as a bug (assuming it was then fixed).
Huh? JSON? Did you insert executable preamble bytes and chmod the file to execute or something? Where is this file? Can you post a link?
My work issued MacBook is incapable of running unsigned binaries enforced by the MDM kext, and I do all sorts of development all day long. Occasionally I have to resign a precompiled dylib if it was compiled on a coworkers machines, but that’s it. I have never seen anything like you’re describing.
So to summarize: Valve provides source code for what they distribute, in compliance with the GPL, but this person went on a personal crusade to demand they open up their private GitLab to the world?
There appears to be some interesting history here, but this takes the cake as the weirdest README I've ever seen in a git repo.
The writing is impenetrably wordy and filled with excessive bolding and parentheticals. It goes completely off track and turns into an extremely long rant that implores the reader to "abstain from procreation", among other things. There are hundreds of links and hundreds of quotes mixed into long-winded sections about the author's self-importance.
Does anyone have a link to a more down to earth, less self-important, and more importantly concise explanation of what's going on?
From what I understand from this repo, the problem is that the official Valve source code release contains PKGBUILD files with build steps that reference a private Gitlab repo that's internal to Valve. So while there is a public release of all source code available for download from Valve's website, these sources cannot actually be built because they want to clone a repo that cannot be accessed.
(In other words, even if you download a tarball of all SteamOS code, you cannot build it, because the build script insists on downloading source code from a Valve-internal remote, instead of looking for it locally.)
So to fix this, the author of this repo did two things: they created public mirrors of all individual git repos that are referenced by the PKGBUILD scripts (presumably by extracting the tarballs from Valve's release and running git init/add/commit/push), and then they created a "master" repo (linked here) that has only the PKGBUILDs, which the author fixed so they reference their own public mirrors instead of Valve's internal GitLab repos. See [1], for example, which contains the build instructions for the Steam Deck's DSP driver. The referenced git repository ([2]) is an inofficial mirror of Valve's internal repo, created from the source code release from the Valve website.
So no, it's not a "personal crusade" to demand Valve open up their "private GitLab to the world". It's a serious grievance about Valve releasing an "open-source" software that cannot actually be built from source, and a request for Valve to provide a public GitLab mirror themselves, such that their PKGBUILD scripts will actually work.
I agree that the author has a confusing writing style, but I do understand their frustrations and concerns.
oh no, this again.. I remember checking out HoloISO when I was looking for SteamOS at launch… did a quick lookup on the creator and yeah, turns out he's a racist furry (literally)..
> These public repositories (@gitlab.com/evlaV) are an unmodified 1:1 public copy/mirror of Valve's latest (currently private) SteamOS 3.x (holo) GitLab repositories
Then define public and state what's wrong with this repo which conflicts from your definition of public.
For me this looks like a fine public resource and after a short glimpse it looks like that you should be able to even build this effing source code from this repo.
Edit ps. If you edit your own content then please leave a note about what you have changed please
The linked repo isn't the official public resource. Valve provides the source packages for what they distribute (aka GPL compliance) but this person wanted them to open up their private GitLab instance to the world.
As far as I can tell, they wrote a script to download the source packages they provide and then try to reconstruct them into a GitLab repo.
Well based on the paragraphs in the README it's not actually being updated anymore, it only reflects SteamOS as of August and the author quit running their process to update it.
> (April 1, 2024): After over 2 3 years (and 2 Steam Deck model releases - LCD and OLED) Valve still hasn't publicized their private GitLab repositories nor fully complied with the GPL. I decided to (finally) release the relevant portion of my automated "bot" project, aptly titled srcpkg2git. This/These software/tools haven't been updated/modified much since 2022, but should allow users to easily access and even mirror Valve's SteamOS private repositories (as I've demonstrated with these public mirrors (@gitlab.com/evlaV) the past over 2 3 years).
Yes indeed. That's hardly public what we can get...
If I understand this correctly, Valve provides the src packages for the packages they distribute. This person wrote a script to download the src packages and extract them. The README misleadingly claims it's a "mirror" of Valve's private git repos, which is not accurate.
The author wants them to open up their GitLab instance, showing their internal development. That's not required under GPL.
Valve appears to be complying. This person wanted access into their internal development systems, though.
The rest of the README is tens of thousands of lines about capitalism, abstaining from procreation, and withdrawing from society with hundreds of links to videos and hundreds of quotes. It's very strange. These are not the writings of a healthy person, sadly.
That is not for desktops. I would assume they meant a proper steamOS desktop release. We haven’t seen one in many years and the previous one is basically useless for most people.
Many of us have been waiting for a proper release for a LONG time. Bazzite is nice but I want to see what valve does next.
my guess is it will be mostly the same as for the SteamDeck but with
- Game Mode becoming getting a not Steam Deck specific desktop version, which I would love to see, e.g. last time I installed Bazzite+Steam Game mode, the Game Mode will default to 1080p even if your GPU can render 4k ...(easy to fix in the options menu, tho. But not very convenient.).
- slightly different defaults, tweaks, builds (e.g. AFIK not to long ago if you tried to put SteamOS on a desktop with RDNA3 graphics it didn't work. But they seem to more or less just use a standard linux graphic stack, so it's probably was just something on the line of "as it's not expected the parts needed for RDNA3 wheren't compiled in/shipped in the SteamOS for SteamDeck image)
There's nothing stopping you from installing it on a desktop with the right hardware.
I have a Ryzen 5 5600 and a 7600 xt in an sff pc, installed steamos directly from the recovery image. It supports the GPU, controllers, even the super fast sleep/wake.
Valve has specifically taken down the (desktop) steamOS download page and only kept up the recovery page because it just isn’t a viable desktop OS if you want to play modern games consistently (as well as other shortcomings). They explicitly discourage its use for desktop on the recovery page IIRC and emphasize it’s for handheld hardware.
The amount of tinkering and driver patching and just general work it requires to get it to play games properly (especially if the person is not AMD CPU/GPU) now makes it a non-starter except for people who explicitly want to make it work.
It can run. It generally runs poorly and with major holes in it.
What you are saying just doesn't align with my experience. I've done no tinkering and definitely no patching and have been able to play several modern games (Cyberpunk, Spiderman 2, GoW: Ragnorok). I expect it's not the same for Nvidia based pcs or ones with exceptionally old or new AMD hardware, which is why I specified the hardware I'm using.
Telling me that the computer I've been gaming on for the last 7 months "isn't viable" for gaming based on CYA language on the downloads page is annoying and unconstructive.
You don’t have to argue with me about it. Feel free to dismiss my opinion. But I encourage you to go do a cursory search online about this and see what comes up.
I never said it can’t be done, just that it’s ill-advised given the limitations and specific hardware requirements to make it work stably/consistently. You yourself said “with the right hardware,” which is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Valve doesn’t stand by it as a desktop OS currently. Whenever it comes up, people almost always instruct folks to go to bazzite. What I am excited for is what they have planned for the steam machine because it’s hard to imagine that an updated version of steamOS built for desktops isn’t coming.
I don't think there's anything concrete at the moment, they're just working on improving hardware compatibility, you can hear it directly from Valve at the 5:05 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuJi1-Csrds&t=305s
I have a SFF pc with an AMD GPU and AMD CPU both with better specs that the new Steam Machine just waiting for them to release a standalone installer for SteamOS :(
I just use vanilla debian and Steam works great. Just set it to launch steam on login and set your system to auto-login, that should get you most of the way.
Have you tried Bazzite? It’s basically a drop-in replacement. It’s based on Fedora’s Atomic stuff instead of Arch, but if it wasn’t for the logo at the start, I’d be hard pressed to notice I was using it and not vanilla SteamOS.
I did try using Bazzite but I had weird issues with stuttering/throttling on the RX 7600 which made most games totally unplayable (I confirmed the same hardware worked fine on a windows install). That was a while ago though, it's probably worth me trying again.
Normally I just use regular Fedora/Arch/OpenSUSE for gaming on Linux and never see any issues (albeit that's on a 6800xt at the moment) but I want that consolized experience.
Interesting they went with the 8 Gen 3 instead of something like the X Elite. From what I’ve seen, the 8 Gen 3 actually outperforms the Elite in emulation and running PC games. I wonder if that factored into the decision.
Couldn’t agree more, if you’re pitching Linux to a non-technical user, you need a gentler off-ramp, not a cliff dive. LibreOffice is a UI time capsule..more archaeology than productivity. Most millennials would think they’d accidentally opened a flight simulator.
I was confused about this because last time I used LibreOffice it wasn't that bad. Turns out, it's really just a normal UI? I guess the biggest difference is it doesn't conform to Microsoft's design but to call it a time capsule is a bit dramatic.
I think by default after fresh install it suggests the "old" layout akin to Office 2000, but you can just select "tabbed ribbon" and then it really isn't half bad.
You know we are living in crazy times when people actually actively ask for the ribbon interface instead of making fun of Microsoft for it. It's one of the worst things ever conceived in UI design.
Both have their issues but having 50 uncategorized icons (I just looked up default libre office ui screenshot and counted...) is something only a power user can love. They can keep their classic ui as an option.
Categorized ribbon is an improvement for most people. Especially new generations who simply can't enjoy the effect of shared conventions with other software.
I’m relieved to see I’m not alone. I expected my comment to be downvoted because speaking against LibreOffice triggers some people
> LibreOffice is a UI time capsule..more archaeology than productivity.
I agree. Seeing the comments here claiming the outdated UI is a good thing, actually, brings up one of the big problems with a lot of open source and/or Linux soecific software: The resistance to UI change is huge among die-hard users so the projects tend to get stuck in whatever UI language they had a decade ago when they started
When I introduce people to open source versions of different software I find myself starting with “The UI has a steep learning curve, but…”.
It would be so much easier if we could give people apps that were targeted at familiar UI patterns of today, even if it angers a vocal minority who want every UI to look like it came out of the 90s or early 2000s when they first discovered their love of computers.
>The resistance to UI change is huge among die-hard users so the projects tend to get stuck in whatever UI language they had a decade ago when they started
Oh, worse: stuck in whatever weird, half-baked UI decisions that were made because someone had a great idea that they did not test at all, or because they hated the industry standard approach that everyone else uses. It's no secret that Blender adoption exploded when they added normal menus, and then made right-click select an optional function, and then finally added an auto Maya-like interface option.
But that's one instance where we lucked out. Not just because they fixed it, but also because the thing that needed to be fixed was in users' face and obvious.
I don't think it's that people want a certain nostalgic UI. It's that most of these applications are built by volunteers, for free, and are already understaffed. From an individual's perspective, it's much more important, and possible, to fix bug #155 or implement a new feature than to try to overhaul the entire UI. In order to do that, you'd have to get everyone on board and everyone would have to agree with the changes. A lot of projects are too flat as organizations for this to go smoothly.
I'll grant that it's personal preference and OP should do what his customers prefer, but what you said is a good thing. UIs have sucked for some time now, so something which deliberately uses an older style is generally far superior.
Thanks for sharing Aerospace, can’t believe I overlooked it! It’s like finding out someone fixed half the things that make macOS feel like a beautiful prison .Somehow it makes the whole OS feel less… Apple-managed.
I thought the same thing when I saw the M5 in the news today. It’s not that I hate macOS 26, hate implies passion.. what I feel is closer to disappointment.
The problem is their philosophy. Somewhere along the way, Apple decided users should be protected from themselves. My laptop now feels like a leased car with the hood welded shut. Forget hardware upgrades, I can’t even speed up animations without disabling SIP. You shouldn’t have to jailbreak your own computer just to make it feel responsive.
Their first-party apps have taken a nosedive too. They’ve stopped being products and started being pipelines, each one a beautifully designed toll booth for a subscription. What used to feel like craftsmanship now feels like conversion-rate optimization.
I’m not anti-Apple. I just miss when their devices felt like instruments, not appliances. When you bought a Mac because it let you create, not because it let Apple curate.
Usually there's an accessibility option of some kind that disables animations; at least it exists in android and I feel like it existed in iOS (though I haven't used that in ages). I'm surprised Mac doesn't have something similar.
I just want shit to work, and most modern devs function many levels above the OS most of the time. Stuff I write is gonna run in a browser, a phone or a containerized cloud env. I don’t care about how configurable my OS is I just want to do my work and sign off.
I installed this begrudgingly after fighting edge cases with Waydroid on Arch. It's the first "batteries included" distro I've actually liked. I usually hate the "omakase" approach, but the setup here is pretty much how I would've done it myself.
Side note: GNOME + Waydroid is the best experience I've had with a desktop OS on a tablet. Finding tools like scrcpy included out of the box was a nice surprise, too.