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Arch Linux Is Now Working Directly With Valve (tomshardware.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the behind-the-scenes dept.
The Arch Linux team has announced a collaboration with Valve, working to support critical infrastructure projects like a build service and secure signing enclave for the Arch Linux distribution. Tom's Hardware reports: If you're familiar with Valve and Steam Deck, you may already know that the Deck uses SteamOS 3, which is built on top of Arch Linux. Thanks to the Arch Linux base and Valve's development of the Proton compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux, we now have a far improved Linux gaming scene, especially on Valve's Steam Deck and Deck OLED handhelds. While Valve's specific reasons for picking Arch Linux for Steam Deck remain unknown, it's pretty easy to guess why it was picked. Mainly, it's a particularly lightweight distribution maintained since March 2002, which lends itself well to gaming with minimal performance overhead. A more intensive Linux distribution may not have been the ideal base for SteamOS 3, which is targeted at handhelds like Steam Deck first.

As primary Arch Linux developer Levente Polyak discloses in the announcement post, "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." Polyak continues, "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 believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on the mailing list as work progresses."
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Arch Linux Is Now Working Directly With Valve More

Arch Linux Is Now Working Directly With Valve

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  • what about the game dev's with drm / anit cheat that flags and blocks Linux wine play?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      That's about game developers that use those. Valve is a distributor with a tiny developer side which already supports linux on steam deck.

    • That's a real bummer, but I don't like to buy those games on Windows either — especially if they have kernel/driver-based DRM, so it's not going to affect me. YMMV.

      It will no doubt affect many people, but we are all making choices.

    • You can just dual boot into Windows and install Fitgirl Repacks.

  • secure signing enclave? so no your own linux kerne (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:08PM (#64829925)

    secure signing enclave? so no your own linux kernel?
    At least you should be able to build / load modules for drivers not in the base.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      I suspect the point is to lock down the device into a specific configuration so it could be reasonably well trusted by anti-cheat systems.

      • as long as it's not storage at X4 markup like apple and ram at X2 markup.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Your competition here is an average windows PC, so those kinds of markups will lose even to prebuilt PCs that will by default run more games better. You're the one breaking into the market, not trying to use dominant market position to maximize profit.

          So no, small company breaking into a new market by definition cannot behave like apple until it becomes dominant in the said market.

    • Re:secure signing enclave? so no your own linux ke (Score:5, Informative)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @08:36PM (#64830089) Journal
      I think that they mean it in the sense of an environment in which to sign packages; which distros have been doing since roughly forever at this point; but often rather unsystematically with not-necessarily well secured signing keys in a perhaps not entirely trustworthy environment. An Arch-related person delivered a talk [media.ccc.de] about their work on the issue at this year's All Systems Go conference. Looks like they are (or at least were until very recently, not sure if Valve's contribution involves a different direction) doing something with a fairly minimal OS environment [archlinux.org] intended to connect to a NitroKey NetHSM.

      Unless someone is being deliberately obscure about what the term means there should be no difference in behavior vs. any distro that signs its packages today; just with significantly greater assurance that the signing cert isn't stashed in some random dev's home directory with a trivial passphrase on a general use system.
    • https://media.ccc.de/v/all-sys... [media.ccc.de] someone posted this in relation to "secure signing enclave" thing, and David is indeed one of the main Arch engineers.

  • BTW (Score:3, Funny)

    by ultranerdz ( 1718606 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:17PM (#64829945)

    BTW, I use arch

  • Desktop version when? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:28PM (#64829967)

    I suspect with windows going the way it's currently going, a widely compatible, easily installable and fairly lightweight linux distro that can run most windows games at a good speed would be a game changer on desktop market.

    • Exactly - so why is there still this mystique that Arch is a 'hard' distro?

      I am absolutely not a linux expert but I've used arch exclusively at home (and mostly at work) for the best part of 20 years. I've had exactly one system-breaking issue in that entire time - and that was only because I neglected to keep an older machine up to date.

      Honestly, if anything arch has deskilled me - all I have to do is pacman -Syu every few days and I have a well running up to date system. I needed to fix an issue with my k

      • Re:Desktop version when? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @02:29AM (#64830435)

        Anything that uses command line for anything but most arcane configuration things average user should never need to do is "too hard" in modern world. We're not in the world where competition is windows 95, and you have to fuck around with command line just to get install to work on most machines. This is the world of windows 11, where insert stick into USB port, answer a few questions about where you are and so on, and get a fully functional desktop with everything you need to use the PC installed. Where you don't need to use any command line commands to configure the rest to your liking unless you're trying to perform surgery on the damn OS to remove telemetry and such, the parts they specifically do not intend users to remove.

        That is the linux problem. For an average user, the moment you go "RTFM" and "use this command line command", you lost them. Forever. Because this is like you telling your average car driver "you need to disassemble the engine and..." No matter how much you rage against this issue, it will not change humanity.

        • We're not in the world where competition is windows 95, and you have to fuck around with command line just to get install to work on most machines. This is the world of windows 11, where insert stick into USB port, answer a few questions about where you are and so on, and get a fully functional desktop with everything you need to use the PC installed.

          I was installing Windows 95 before it existed (Chicago beta) and I supported machines with Win95 through OSR2, and I have no idea what the hell you're talking about needing to go to the command line to get your system working. Windows 95 would run on most systems without anything but a few driver dis(c|k)s, which it very much did need of course because back then the system didn't ship with a driver for practically everything. But if you bought a PC with it, it came with a disc that installed all of that for

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            You don't even remember that windows 95 was built on top of DOS, rather than as a fully separate OS. It's no wonder you think fifth grader level zingers make you sound smart.

            • Windows 95 uses DOS while running only if you run it in 16 bit mode so you can use DOS drivers, otherwise it is used only as a boot loader. I see that I know more about it than you do, this is my surprised face. Run along and peddle your inaccuracies to people who don't know better.

      • Arch is hard if you have seen and used certain other systems that do more hand holding, and you expect certain things, and you don't want to think too much about certain things. I've just installed Arch for the first time in my life, and it went fine, but just the fact that you have to choose your login manager and graphical system makes it unsuitable for a total newbie who has no interest in Linux but just wants something other than Windows (old hardware, distance to MS, whatever).

        I've used Linux by boot

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Valve was only able to do it by fixing the hardware with the Steam Deck. If you have to deal with a wide array of hardware then it's probably impossible, or as close to as to make it impractical. Otherwise Valve would have done it.

      Even Google only guarantees ChromeOS Flex (their generic desktop distro) to work on hardware they certified. If your system isn't on the list, you are on your own.

    • We've been waiting for this moment for decades.

    • That's called Ubuntu, as loathsome as snap is.

      Perhaps Debian will get ZFS in the installer, then I can go back to just recommending Debian. You don't have to understand it to benefit from it.

      All Linux distributions are lightweight compared to Windows, just don't install every package. But even if you do allow all the default apps to install then you frequently still have a smaller install than Windows alone.

      The problem with the way Windows is going is that it's going to shit to the point you don't want to r

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        To quote myself from another part of this thread:

        >And this attitude is exactly why "Year of linux on desktop" is a meme that is decades old and it just never stops being relevant.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ormy ( 1430821 )

      This. I've never used Linux at home (dabbled at university) and the simple reason is gaming. Having shelled out a four figure sum on a flagship Nvidia GPU for that sweet eye candy in AAA games (e.g. RDR2), I'm not about to throw away 30% (or more) of the performance to run Linux when windows (after some wrangling) works well enough. The very second that situation changes, and I can get performance parity on high-end hardware between windows and linux on the vast majority of modern games (even if it requi

    • So what you're saying is, next year could be the year of the Linux desktop?

      ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        No, because it will take several years to get any linux distro to where windows 7 was in 2009. And that's the benchmark. An OS that is easy to install, that just works, that just runs your software by opening the executable, and that has no need for CLI for anything but high level administration.

  • Everywhere! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:45PM (#64830003) Homepage Journal

    Thanks to the Arch Linux base and Valve's development of the Proton compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux, we now have a far improved Linux gaming scene, especially on Valve's Steam Deck and Deck OLED handhelds

    I wouldn't say especially there, I'd say it's equally everywhere. Since the Steam Deck is a PC, the dividends are paid to all PC gamers who run Linux. Valve deserves an enormous amount of credit not just for Proton but also for the improvements which have made it back to Wine.

    NTSYNC is going to revolutionize Linux gaming again, with truly significant performance improvements — in a few cases providing performance exceeding even the native performance, but mostly improving minimum performance and also notably increasing reliability and compatibility. While there are real benefits to increasing rendering rates above 60 fps, what you really notice (and negatively!) is when frame rates drop, and especially when they are inconsistent. NTSYNC is going to improve that a whole lot.

  • but Steamdeck hardware is kinda slow. Good news, you can install the equivalent of SteamOS/linux on ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion GO (my preferance due to bigger screen) and enjoy faster hardware than Steam deck.

    • I think the point of Steam Deck isn't that it's a PC, but that it's a handheld PC gaming system, like the Nintendo Switch. Of course, if a Steam Deck owner just leaves it permanently docked then it's not much of a thing...

  • This might be above my limited understanding, but what is a "build service"? Do they refer to a build system like cmake for building Linux or parts of Arch? How is this critical and will have a huge impact? Arch doesn't seem to have a problem building and releasing new packages.

    Same with the "secure signing enclave". I don't see how this is critical or having a huge impact

    • Re: Critical services? huge impact? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @09:00PM (#64830127)

      "build service" sounds like a server for doing official builds of Arch and it's packages. "Secure signing enclave" is probably a system for signing those official builds and packages so you can be sure things haven't been tampered with.

    • I might be wrong but Arch has a component called ABS [wikipedia.org], which allows you to compile arch binary packages from source, and modify the build with a few easy commands. I guess Steam need to leverage this to custom build some pieces which can still be managed nicely within the pacman ecosystem.

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