Technology

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.

Valve is a Titan doing incredible work for the open source community and making money while doing so.

Successful open source software business model at work. Way to go.

Valve: "Yeah, we funded Arch (btw)"

Valve are such Chads.

Seeing a large company doing anything involving Linux besides blocking its users from using their product is a rare occurance these days.

I'm just waiting for some FOSS purist to find fault in this.

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.

It's stuff like this that restores my faith in humanity.

I use Steam btw

Dude this is seriously cool as fuck. Valves contributions are priceless to the future of Arch and the rest of the Linux ecosystem.

Man it sure is a good day to be both a Valve and Arch fanboy.

Actually huge news. Linux as a whole benefits and needs more of this imo.

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.

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

It's really good news that there's another company behind Wayland now.

RH frankly directs it against people using "marginal" setups and applications, thus less influenced by it, and not for some ambitious goal.

Valve tend to be well-meaning guys. Anyway, in this case it's in their business interest to be well-meaning.

I think we will be getting proper arch on arm!

Spent a few hours today installing vanilla arch for the first time because of this. Loving it so far.