The original SteamOS-like Linux distro HoloISO now dead, replaced with immutable version

Quoting: damarrinIt does? I'd say the backlash Ayaneo received from "Windows fans" explains the Ayaneo stuff. I'm sure an immutable system would have been more beneficial for them.

I'd argue the main reason that Ayaneo went back to Windows is due to the Chinese gaming market (their primary market) is windows dominated and are not really open to other options as I understand it. I have no qualifications to speak on the topic though so take all this with a grain of salt.

Quoting: GuestThat sucks. The only reason I used holoiso is because it's not immutable. I need steamos but be able to actually use it to test my software for steam deck. At least manjaro works on steam deck, even if audio doesn't (because the driver is proprietary, not part of mainline linux). SteamOS being immutable is the absolute worst part of steam deck.

I never used such stuff, but shouldn't an immutable system allow you to have an additional layer on it with your own stuff? If not, well... yes, that'd suck.

Quoting: damarrinIt does? I'd say the backlash Ayaneo received from "Windows fans" explains the Ayaneo stuff. I'm sure an immutable system would have been more beneficial for them.

The idea is presumably, they built their fork on the old version only to later find out it was being discontinued and replaced very shortly after. (Likely after they announced it, HoloISO contacted them and told them "uh there might be a problem" hence the very quick backtrack) They would've released a device unable to get updates since the OS they built on was now dead and they needed to rework their entire fork and since there's no migration process, require everyone to reinstall their devices.

Now if they contacted HoloISO and got early access to build on the new version, that wouldn't be a factor then but presumably, they just forked from the public source code and got absolutely blindsided. They wouldn't have had time to rebuild the OS in time to deploy on shipping devices so they quickly pivoted to what they knew worked, Windows.


Last edited by BrandonGiesing on 29 January 2024 at 8:52 pm UTC

Quoting: fenglengshunAt that point just use Universal Blue's Bazzite. The devs has much clearer track records and works together with various other project. Plus, you can easily clone a repo where you can layer in your own packages and user files to pack into a custom image of your own.

I literally just installed Bazzite yesterday. I'm done with HoloISO and won't be going back.

Quoting: damarrinIt does? I'd say the backlash Ayaneo received from "Windows fans" explains the Ayaneo stuff. I'm sure an immutable system would have been more beneficial for them.

I wonder if there was really a backlash from many people or just a few loud people on Ex-Twitter.

Quoting: fenglengshunAt that point just use Universal Blue's Bazzite. The devs has much clearer track records and works together with various other project. Plus, you can easily clone a repo where you can layer in your own packages and user files to pack into a custom image of your own.

Thanks for the recommendation, going to try it out

Been distro hoping alot the past month maybe lol, holo I tried early on and was unsure when I heard about his pro-war opinion towards the conflict in Ukraine but went for it and was quite happy with the OS, political stuff aside, but what that other person in these comments said makes the person sound very volatile and not someone who sounds very trustworthy, looking at the issues Valve has been facing with a ddos attack on L4D2 servers, is that all is takes is ONE bad actor to ruin ALOT of peoples day. Not saying they would but for me it gives me a lot of uncertainty what exactly I'm installing

I've been rocking Nobara OS atm, I've been happily tinkering for hours some nights testing different distros and so far, when it comes to gaming on linux, its been the most pleasant for me, I'm using the Official KDE build on my main SSD atm, with another for distro hoping.. tried the gnome build of Nobara. tried gnome on Popos too which made me come to realise how much more I prefer KDE

I've had some issues here and there with each distro I've tried so far, looking forward to tinkering with bazzite

Quoting: pbI wonder what's keeping Valve from just officially releasing SteamOS for general use.

Opinion answer. It's in Valve's best interest to _NOT_ publish SteamOS for general consumption.

SteamOS is a brand name, and similar to Redhat Enterprise Linux RHEL when you buy that thing you are buying the brand, and it's in RHEL's best interest to make sure any "other party" work is done under another name -- CentOS (historically.)

I suspect Valve knows after the initial Steam Machine release that it can be problematic having 5 different companies each try to roll their own -- can you imagine you're average Niche 5th world Linux Gamer complaining on the internet

Quote"Y SteamOEZ No Work With my 266Mhz Pentium 2 Processor and some obscure graphics card from 2006 ????"

But seriously, for quality control to be a thing you have to narrow the band of hardware and expectations -- Valve has a good thing going, and the reputation of Steam Deck and SteamOS are on the line, and if I had to guess whether releasing for general consumption would _enhance_ or _detract_ from their reputation I would think It would detract.

Being a member of this community for like 24 years I know it's hard for us to accept certain basic truths that differ from our individual truths -- namely most people _don't want to_ _EVER_ install _X random OS_ on _Y hardware_ and just "hope it works" -- if it literally doesn't come from the store with that exact software -- they literally _WILL NOT_ spend more than 0 hours trying to figure out -- some people "don't have fun" exploring new software things.

It just gets increasingly hard as people get older to have enough time as it is for other things that demand time.

Fewer hardware targets for Valve is a good thing when it comes to trojan horsing Linux to the mainstream. Just look at android I'm going to guess it trojan horsed Linux 4 billion times into consumer hands -- 1 thing.

Computer hardware keeps reaching new milestones and if programmers can't target the cpu and gpu power of the Steam Deck in a non-wasteful way it's never going to happen. At some point the jump between 100GB and 1000GB assets just doesn't have a practical return other than giving programmers more to be wasteful with -- source: am programmer.

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: pbI wonder what's keeping Valve from just officially releasing SteamOS for general use.

The same what keeps Microsoft from releasing the Windows source code and Google from releasing google play services, they like the control it gives them.
Also it places them in a position to negotiate with patent holders and DRM companies.

Oh, c'mon. It's open source, anyone who wants to do the work can make a SteamOS spin for more general use. So they have no control. But that is probably quite a bit of work . . . a distro made for one piece of hardware is way easier than a distro made to work with all the hardware in PC-land, yes? And they don't have a strong motivation to do all the work. What's in it for them?

We know that last time they made a general purpose SteamOS, they didn't maintain it well. It may be better for everyone if they just stick to maintaining the simple version whose smooth working is quite important to them.

Quoting: GuestThat sucks. The only reason I used holoiso is because it's not immutable. I need steamos but be able to actually use it to test my software for steam deck. At least manjaro works on steam deck, even if audio doesn't (because the driver is proprietary, not part of mainline linux). SteamOS being immutable is the absolute worst part of steam deck (and no, distrobox doesn't solve this issue since I need root access for the applications).

Making SteamOS read/write doesn't solve your problem? An OS update will wipe your changes, but that'll just make you better prepared to redeploy your software.

Also, "SteamOS being immutable is the absolute worst part of steam deck": well, perhaps for you, but for the vast, vast majority of SD users it's either irrelevant or very beneficial, depending how you look at it.

Quoting: GuestSo steamos and immutable distros in general are for consuming, not producing. Which sucks because some people see the steam deck as a possible laptop/desktop replacement (…)

I wish Valve hadn't forced the "it's a computer" meme during the early days of the Steam Deck, because in practice it isn't. SteamOS is not only immutable, but also quite limited in general (cannot even change system language), and nobody should log into all their dev accounts on a portable, unencrypted device. While I'd love to see SteamOS on other gaming handhelds, it will probably never be a good distro for anything else, which leaves room for all these other projects like Nobara.