We are excited to announce that Arch Linux is entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.
This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed-up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors. We are incredibly grateful for Valve to make this possible and for their explicit commitment to help and support Arch Linux.
These projects will follow our usual development and consensus-building workflows. [RFCs] will be created for any wide-ranging changes. Discussions on this mailing list as well as issue, milestone and epic planning in our GitLab will provide transparency and insight into the work. We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on this mailing list as work progresses.
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Some extra fun details from the staff discussions around this: Valve is not interested in control of the distro, but are mainly interested in funding work on projects that are chosen by Arch staff, and are already things that Arch staff wants to implement. The projects chosen are indeed things that Valve also want to be part of the distro’s infrastructure, but the process has been totally in the hands of Arch staff.
I gotta say, it’s been really cool to see Valve go through the process of considering OSS as not just a useful tool or worthwhile target, but as a robust collaborator.
First, they build and maintain their client on Linux, and build their games to run natively on Linux, learning that things aren’t actually as difficult as it’s commonly made out to be, and the things that are more difficult than they need to be can be fixed by working with and contributing to the existing community.
Then they consider building their own hardware, but try the half-way approach of building SteamOS on top of Debian, and depending on existing hardware vendors to build machines with SteamOS in mind, learning that there’s a lot of unnecessary complexity around both of those approaches to that goal.
Then they learn how to develop and build 1st party hardware with the SteamLink and Steam Controller.
Then they put the lessons from the Steam Machine project into practice by dumping loads of time and effort into Proton, knowing that they won’t have the market unless they can get Windows games to run on Linux in a reliable and seamless way.
Then they put all that knowledge and effort together to do the impossible: unite PC gamers of both Windows and Linux flavors under the banner of the SteamDeck, a fully gaming-focused, high-quality, and owner-friendly piece of kit that kicks so much ass that it single-handedly pulls a whole category of PC hardware out of obsurity and into the mainstream.
And what do they do with that success? Literally pay it forward by funding work on the free software that forms the plinth that their success stands upon.
Good on Valve.
I love that you can even edit the boot logos. Always a treat to see another one every time.
as, you can randomize them? huh, ill have to look into it
If you place multiple files in the boot video folder you can select them in the system options
Thanks; nice write up.
Valve: “Yeah, we funded Arch (btw)”
I’m just waiting for some FOSS purist to find fault in this.
FOSS purists are too busy malding over systemd, and Steam being proprietary DRM, and games being closed-source.
Steam being proprietary DRM, and games being closed-source.
Better not tell anyone about DRM-free open source games on Steam then. Wouldn’t wanna burst anyone’s bubble.
I want to give the perspective that from a technical standpoint, even free games on steam require the steam client to install and while the license to play the game is free steam is licensing your account to own the game. The game doesn’t require steam after that and usually this means the game is available elsewhere, but for the specific case of “free games on steam”, steam is still acting to manage digital rights.
even free games on steam require the steam client to install
That’s not exactly DRM though, that’s just only supporting one distribution method.
You have to use GOG’s servers to get games you purchased from them as well, that doesn’t make that DRM, it just means that’s the only distribution method they support.
To me, DRM has absolutely nothing to do with delivery, it’s all about use once you have it.
If we’re talking about Digital Rights Management, steam is acting in that role to manage your digital rights on the steam platform. They could allow you to download games without requiring an account login or client download, and they instead do not. They could allow you to download free games from the client or the website without requiring a login, and they do not.
GOG’s website is also DRM for the same reason. It won’t allow you to download games that aren’t licensed digitally to your account, including free games. GOG has DRM-free games and installers fairly universally beyond that first check, and that means you can download them from alternative sources, but downloading from GOG 100% requires interacting with DRM.
To be direct: I don’t care that Steam is DRM because it’s minimally invasive and I currently trust Valve enough to use an operating system made by them as a daily driver. There are very few companies I’d say that about.
The Steam client is DRM at its core, even if it’s acceptable DRM. I think it’s important not to allow your thinking to shift from the reality that it is DRM just because it’s personally acceptable.
I don’t mind it, I will simp for Valve all day long, and if a company requires you to log in to an account with their server to check whether your account has the digital entitlement to then allow you to access a file or not, that’s digital rights management.
When people say “DRM,” they almost always mean the check when the game launches, not the one-time license check when you download a game. Whether they use their Steam platform or a webpage, I honestly don’t see much of a difference, provided you end up with a DRM-free product at the end.
But yes, technically Valve is verifying that you own the game, but it’s not really what is meant when the average person says “DRM.”
The game doesn’t require steam after that and usually this means the game is available elsewhere
Means you can also zip the folder and archive it for later.
They do still have some basic protection. Steam’s default, loose, DRM requires you to launch Steam when you open a game’s executable.
No, definitely not. When games don’t integrate SteamWorks features such as friends lists (or were written by people who accounted for the features to just not be available instead of outright failing), they don’t need Steam.
When the games use GPLed engines, Steam integration may not be legally possible anyway.
Off the top of my head I can immediately name Krita, the painting app by KDE whose Steam release has no Steam integration and runs just fine without.
Yesnt. I certainly played games on school pcs (Like HL2, Hotline Miami 2. Other students played Binding of Isaac and other smaller or rogue-like) and only with executables I got from Steam.
That may have been earlier than Steam’s DRM. Nowadays you need to copy a steam emulator (a few DLLs) into the executables folder as well before sharing.
I use OpenRC, and play OpenTTD, OpenRA and Tux Racer.
OpenTTD is on Steam, btw
Don’t you play cdda?
Not really, I might give it a go.
Though I’m not sure it’s a game for me.
Leaving the others aside, the last one is quite unsurprising considering the meaning of the acronym…
As per Arch wiki
Arch is a pragmatic distribution rather than an ideological one.
If you’re a FOSS purist, you shouldn’t run Arch ethier way, because providing proprietary software for those who want it is one of the core principles of Arch.
You can use Parabola instead, which is basically FOSS-only Arch. This funding would likely also benefit Parabola indirectly.
Along with the recent Frog Wayland stuff, I’m happy to see Valve is gonna help linux desktop again lol.
From reddit:
Anybody remembers Linus saying “I hope Valve comes and fixes the packaging issue on Linux”? (yeah, on that ancient DebConf)
I hope Valve comes and fixes the very slowness of anything Wayland.
I just heard of Frog today, and I don’t really like it. It just seems like bypassing review. I like the competing proposal of experimental wayland protocols (merged into repository as “experimental” and iterative if 2 weeks pass without anyone opposing) much better.
After 15 years of wayland development hell, I’m honestly open to anything. Problem is I can definitely see an experimental branch being just as scrutinized. One of the core issues highlighted was that features and requests were rejected because of hypotheticals and the maintainers trying to avoid fragmentation like early Xorg.
Basic features from X11 are still missing. Everyone ended up somewhat fragmenting anyway via compositors because weston wasn’t really useful for developers beyond a demo. Wayfire started out as a Compiz redux and now its being considered by several DEs like XFCE to be the default compositor which they should standardize around.
Regardless, I really hope they nail it down in the next year because the halfway migration to wayland is seriously harming Linux desktop, especially when lots of frontend UI has been done perfectly decades ago on X11, and wayland still not properly supporting new features like HDR.
It’s stuff like this that restores my faith in humanity.
I use Steam btw
Using OSS in your product and giving the OSS devs resources to improve their software, instead of trying to take over their project? Did Valve not get the memo that big tech companies are supposed to be evil?? Oh right, they have a monopoly on video game distribution and all of their products rely on DRM.
they have a monopoly on video game distribution
People who claim that Valve has a monopoly on PC games are already wrong but you claim that they have a monopoly on video game distribution in general is outrageously false. The 2022 overall video game revenue was a bit over US$180Bn. The PC game revenue was US$45Bn. In 2023, all of Steam was responsible for US$8.6Bn in revenue. The biggest PC games (Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox) aren’t even on Steam and neither are any console or phone games.
Criticize Valve for actual things to criticize them for. Don’t spread misinformation.
And even if they had a monopoly (which I agree that they don’t), they have to actually abuse that monopoly to be a problem. Last I checked, the only requirement Valve has for games distributed on Steam is the devs can’t sell Steam keys for less elsewhere, but they can sell as many Steam keys as they want outside of Steam w/o paying Valve anything. They can also generate keys for other distribution platforms and price them however they want.
That’s extremely fair, and the fact that they’re able to maintain a dominant position in the PC games distribution market without any exclusivity agreements or anything of that nature speaks volumes to the level of service they provide for both users and publishers/developers.
I have many games I own on Steam that I can play portably from a flash drive without Steam. DRM is still on the developer.
They have a monopoly on video game distribution.
They have a massive marketshare, but that doesn’t make them a monopoly. Developers are still free to distribute their games through any other storefront/launcher, and Valve isn’t going out of its way to engage in anticompetitive practices like exclusive publishing deals with third-party studios.
“Monopoly”, other platforms are free to compete, Valve isn’t actively trying to stop them
Comment OP appears to have drank the Epic Games Kool-aid.
Comment OP appears to have drank the Epic Games Kool-aid.
The world’s biggest video game, Fortnite, is only available on Epic Games Store for most platforms. Epic’s market share is gigantic, other video game developers just don’t benefit of it because Epic promotes their own stuff first and foremost. If Epic had a storefront monopoly, it would be classified as anti-competitive behaviour.
they have a monopoly on video game distribution
Last I heard you could buy games from GOG or Epic and install them on a Steam deck produced and subsidized by Valve.
Last I heard you could buy games from GOG or Epic and install them on a Steam deck produced and subsidized by Valve.
Or get them on PlayStation, Switch, or Xbox (Earth Walker claimed Steam has a monopoly on video game distribution in general).
Or, you know, a simple installer from the dev’s website.
You might be too young to remember, but DRM existed way before Steam, and the worse ones that exist today are the ones that the Devs/publishers add, not the steam one.
Remember Windows Live Games? Ah yes. Good ol’ GTA4 on PC.
I’m interested, yet that is also obviously unsearchable.
Sorry, meant Windows Live Games
“Games for Windows Live”
They also originated loot boxes (TF2)
Man it sure is a good day to be both a Valve and Arch fanboy.
Dude this is seriously cool as fuck. Valves contributions are priceless to the future of Arch and the rest of the Linux ecosystem.
Great news! Crazy to think that Valve is hijacking/liberating the Windows gaming library. You would think that Microsoft would be doing more to prevent this.
don’t jinx it
Ha ha 😂
They kind of tried with UWP apps in the Microsoft Store, but they didn’t catch on.
Valve has enough lawyer money to keep Microsoft at bay.
alright, time to wipe my Mint test/fun build and try out Arch. I don’t do much with Linux but it’s gonna be fun getting back into it. Who doesn’t love the smell of a fresh OS install
That’ll be… quite the Leap. I haven’t done an Arch install, but the last time I did, it required a fair amount of reading since the installer doesn’t walk you through everything. It’s not hard per se, but it does take some time for the first install.
If you’re not super familiar with Linux, I recommend holding off on Arch. This isn’t coming from any form of elitism (I don’t use Arch anymore) or lack of experience (I used Arch for > 5 years), just from reading between the lines of what you said, which indicates that you’re probably not super familiar with Linux.
If you really want to do it, go for it! I think Arch is an absolutely fine distro, and I think there are a lot of good reasons to use it. I just don’t want someone who may be new to Linux to get frustrated and end up not having fun. So don’t let me discourage you, but also know what you’re jumping into: probably a couple hours of getting the base system installed, and maybe another hour or two of installing packages to get to a usable system.
Or he could try a arch distro like manjaro.
You mean endeavourOS. Manjaro has a bad record. There’s also a gaming-focused one called Garuda.
Exactly. Don’t use Manjaro, I argue that it’s less stable than Arch due to how updates are managed.
I like Garuda, but as someone who started with it it’s a maybe for a first distro. It’s beginner friendly except when it isn’t.
man you weren’t kidding hahah. I appreciate everyone’s replies but I’ll definitely just leave Mint on there for now. I didn’t get past the install process when it asked about connecting to a Wi-Fi network. I did some commands but couldn’t find any networks, I think maybe a driver issue with my Wi-Fi adapter? ohh well
I still have the USB install drive if I’m feeling adventurous! and you’d be correct, I have little knowledge of Linux, I’ve only messed with a few simple distros like PopOS, Ubuntu, Mint, and another one I’m forgetting. I can’t even get Steam to start up on my Mint distro haha
Garuda can definitely get Steam working for you quickly, though it abstracts the system more so you may or may not find it harder to fix problems due to not understanding the jargon
Endeavour just gets rid of the install headache
Garbage distro with a garbage community.
dannnnn
Care to elaborate?
https://fedia.io/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/1250293/Arch-Linux-and-Valve-Collaboration/comment/7534737#entry-comment-7534737
So the admins do their job and you had an issue
That doesn’t seem like a big deal
Punishing the person seeking help while doing jack shit to the people insulting & trolling while hiding the whole thing so others can’t see is certainly not how I want to see the moderation job to be done. But if you want to circlejerk with toxic trolls, then go right ahead.
The posts you had a problem with were deleted, what more can they do? Leaving them up just encourages that behaviour
Archinstall is super easy. Just copy a few commands from the wiki to join a wifi network and then it will take everything from there.
Until you reach the part where you want to partition and encrypt your drives.
Yo a distro collabing with a corporation this is soo fire 🔥🔥🔥
This is a great step for humanity imo
Would someone elucidate as to what this means for a normie PC gamer and begrudging windows user?
Pretty much just that Arch Linux will be more secure, stable and reliable.
And for Valve, producing SteamOS images could be easier, meaning they can focus their dev efforts on something else.
And it supports competition against a locked down Windows-only gaming ecosystem that restricts Valve/Steams potential market. This is a great move for anyone interested in gaming or Linux.
Probably nothing. This is more steamdeck related stuff since the SteamOS is based on ArchLinux. And even then, it does not mean much for SteamDeck users. They wont notice much at all really. This might help with development a bit on valves end. The big news is really for ArchLinux users and maintainers which will see more effort in the development of that distro.
There is some wild speculation that maybe this makes arm for Arch Linux more official in the future. Which is based of the other recent news that Valve are creating an ARM emulation layer for running games on ARM devices. Which means maybe they are working on an ARM device and maybe need to start working on getting ARM support for Arch. Though again this is all wild speculation.
Spent a few hours today installing vanilla arch for the first time because of this. Loving it so far.
This comment is missing the mandatory “btw.” :(
