Arch Linux Is Now Working Directly With Valve

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."

what about the game dev's with drm / anit cheat th

[Joe_Dragon]

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

Re:

[Luckyo]

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

Re:

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:

[Spy Handler]

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

Re:

[scalptalc]

I am Ozimandias, king of kings,
Look upon my works Ye mighty
And just dual boot into Windows.

secure signing enclave? so no your own linux kerne

[Joe_Dragon]

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:

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:

[Joe_Dragon]

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

Re:secure signing enclave? so no your own linux ke

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

BTW

[ultranerdz]

BTW, I use arch

Desktop version when?

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:

[robot5x]

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

Everywhere!

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

NTSYNC is going to revolutionize Linux gaming again

Please, just stop. I'm sick and tired of people trying to drag their favorite boy band into every damn conversation...

SteamOS is cool, Arch linux is cool

[Spy Handler]

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.

Critical services? huge impact?

[diffract]

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?

[jonwil]

"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.

Re:

[robot5x]

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.