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Latest 30 Comments

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By rea987, 10 Jan 2026 at 4:20 pm UTC

Using Snap so any time I launch a program, it hang for 5 seconds as if it is on a 5200 rpm spinning HDD. No thanks.

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By dziadulewicz, 10 Jan 2026 at 4:13 pm UTC

Quoting: Stellamy problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all
They didn't get angry LOL. Oh please. Ubuntu is concentrating on one packaging officially, their own, that they can audit and control. It's only wise. It's also a wish for their corporate customers.

Flatpak can be installed on Ubuntu in a whiff and they are not angry about that 😂

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By CatKiller, 10 Jan 2026 at 4:13 pm UTC

Quoting: Stellamy problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all
Kubuntu has never shipped with the flatpak backend already installed. It's trivial to install it if you want it, but it's never been installed by default.

You're thinking of Xubuntu, who also never shipped with flatpak enabled. When they floated plans to have a third install method by default - deb and snap already being necessary for the default distro packages - Canonical said no since that's gratuitously confusing for new users. Just like with Kubuntu and Ubuntu it's trivial to install flatpak support on Xubuntu for those that want it.

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By Stella, 10 Jan 2026 at 4:07 pm UTC

my problem with Canonical is that they actively harm the Flatpak ecosystem. Kubuntu used to ship the flatpak backend, but Canonical got really angry at that and it got ripped out in favor of snaps. Requiring users to do an extra steps to install flatpaks is not user friendly at all

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By Brokatt, 10 Jan 2026 at 4:06 pm UTC

Quoting: _wojtek
Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.
Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…
That's a weird argument. Building on the work of others is like the whole stick of open-source.

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By dziadulewicz, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:57 pm UTC

Quoting: scratchiregardless of how they package it, if they can win a few more users over from Windows and increase overall Linux marketshare
Exactly. Sometimes it feels like some of these ppl think more about themselves, their choices being keen to push others to what THEY prefer and not the good of Linux overall 🤔

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By dziadulewicz, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:54 pm UTC

Packaging for Linux is important to be easy and efficient. Flatpak and Snap are both great for creating a universal package distribution.

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By scratchi, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:54 pm UTC

Quoting: _wojtek
Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.
Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…
I agree; but at the same time, Ubuntu is still Linux. So regardless of how they package it, if they can win a few more users over from Windows and increase overall Linux marketshare, I won't complain :)

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By dziadulewicz, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:49 pm UTC

What are you ppl up there talking about? Nothing needs to die, snap and flatpak are also very different. Both have their place and more. This is important. Everything is important to get to work correctly and well on Linux and we should support Canonical on this effort!

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By _wojtek, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:30 pm UTC

Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.
Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By DjBRINE1, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:25 pm UTC

Huh, I wonder how well will it run on my Android tablet
Xiaomi Pad 5, it will be an interesting test

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By LoudTechie, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:19 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.
It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.
Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.
As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.
You've silently changed topic here. We were talking about every package being maintained security-wise, not every program in the world being packaged. See what we've referenced:

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.
How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?
It creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.
So, yes, quite obviously, no distribution can package everything you might want. But this no argument against deb, rpm or whatever. The question at hand was if using deb is creating security issues due to missing manpower.

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.
First, and I already mentioned this, this is not a problem if several different major library versions are packaged as long as they are all security maintained.

Second, I can name you 20 libraries that do not have different versions in Debian that you can install next to each other for any that you give me that does. Try me.

Quoting: LoudTechieDebian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.
This has nothing to do with security, it is about looking for GDPR issues.
First my excuses. It was not my goal to change the topic. A. We have a definition difference. Maintenance is in my eyes less to not even about security. Maintenance is in my eyes the first place keeping something functional and compatible within your distro, B. In my logic every program can be critical for someone's workflow, since I and distros don't have the data to reliably determine that it's not. This is the explanation for my topic change. Not a counterpoint.

Further on your second point. I'm not actually arguing that distro specific packages should disappear.
As I said before somewhere in this thread, they should as they were designed to apply to everything that requires root, such as drivers and other virus scanners. Things that don't, like games, applications and production software need a different system, than "distro approved". This isn't only, because it's less work, but also because "centrally approved" is a model ripe for abuse when Linux compatibility starts to matter to the market. Flatpak couldn't if it wanted, since as a containerized package format it can't run in ring0 and can thus not update things like the kernel itself.

On your third point. Truly, I thought that when you said that maintaining two package versions one with and without security flaw it was a counterpoint to the part you quoted, which stated that making a package distro independent was less work. This seems to be the same miscommunication as the past one. I was talking about how reduced developer effort had the potential of flowing over in better support. You were talking about how you disliked Flathub's policies.
In that sense the best argument in that direction is a rant of the developer of the default login of screen of if I remember correctly Gnome about how Debian's slowness in updating was keeping DOS(denial of service) patches at bay. Yet, I'm more inclined to agree with you than disagree in this sense. I use debian and avoid flathub(fedora's flatpak repo receives some leeway), because I agree with many of debians repo policies. I personally, also very much disagree with flathub's easy going attitude towards proprietary software.
I simply think the tech and movement show promise.

(Also on the argument I mentioned that dude was totally making a mountain about a mole hole. He was considering a technically advanced attacker who couldn't do a DMA attack, but still had physical access.)

On your final point. If you violate the law and don't handle it in time the government will take away your availability. The gdpr specifically is about ensuring confidentiality for the most personal data someone has. Availability and confidentiality are totally security. They're two thirds of the CIA triad.

Edit: Also my original point about manpower still stands, because there was nobody the project leader had to spring in. This takes away their time from other functions. One of the primary functions of any open source project leader is handling high profile responsible disclosure cases and negotiating about vendor support(vendor support is a functionality thing I admit, so you can from your definition of maintenance skip that one..

News - Canonical call for testing their Steam gaming Snap for Arm Linux
By Stella, 10 Jan 2026 at 3:08 pm UTC

Snap needs to just die imo. Flatpak is the future! 😇

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By t3g, 10 Jan 2026 at 2:57 pm UTC

There have been these leaks from a random site that all of the YouTubers are referencing regarding the leaked Steam Machine price. Some are saying $950 for the 512 GB model and up to $1100 for the 2 TB model. Of course these are not official, but we are in a RAM crisis.

What I never liked about Valve was their distribution method of only selling the hardware on Steam. No Amazon, no Best Buy, and no Walmart. It would be awesome if I could see a Steam Machine (Steam Deck too!) kiosk at Target so people know it exits. Heck, maybe the boxes for the Steam Machine could advertise that you can play thousands and thousands of games and the latest titles that come out next to Xbox and Playstation.

But they won't. They will instead tailor to the Gen-X/Millennial Steam user with a huge library and disposable income instead of bringing in new blood. This forces a user to randomly create a Steam account and THEN buy a Steam Machine vs buying a Steam Machine on Amazon or Best Buy and then they get the Steam account.

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By Eike, 10 Jan 2026 at 1:48 pm UTC

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.
It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.
Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.
As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.
You've silently changed topic here. We were talking about every package being maintained security-wise, not every program in the world being packaged. See what we've referenced:

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.
How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?
It creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.
So, yes, quite obviously, no distribution can package everything you might want. But this no argument against deb, rpm or whatever. The question at hand was if using deb is creating security issues due to missing manpower.

Quoting: LoudTechieAlso on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.
First, and I already mentioned this, this is not a problem if several different major library versions are packaged as long as they are all security maintained.

Second, I can name you 20 libraries that do not have different versions in Debian that you can install next to each other for any that you give me that does. Try me.

Quoting: LoudTechieDebian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.
This has nothing to do with security, it is about looking for GDPR issues.

News - Steam Client Beta adds a revamped interface for opting into game Betas and other changes
By Liam Dawe, 10 Jan 2026 at 12:24 pm UTC

Quoting: bolokanarA little too late.
What makes you say that? What about it makes it too late?

News - Linaro reveal they're collaborating with Valve for the Steam Frame
By fabertawe, 10 Jan 2026 at 11:43 am UTC

Quoting: Jarmer^ Interesting! Unfortunately I'm on Verizon in the US and it's unsupported. I could do tmobile and it'd work though. I wager that's not specifically this phone though, I bet all the linux options are this way. Verizon is horrible for stuff like this. But they're the best network. Oh well.
Some US carriers do seem to be the most problematic. This could also be down to a whitelist, where if your phone make is not on the list, then you're barred. Personally I'd boycott any such carriers and vote with my wallet.

News - Minecraft is getting a cute overhaul of baby mobs
By TheSHEEEP, 10 Jan 2026 at 8:33 am UTC

Quoting: simplyseven
Quoting: posthum4nI made a chick crusher 2000 and now I feel bad.
With the bounding box changes do automated cooked chicken contraptions work anymore, I wonder. I'm curious if it didn't IMPROVE the rates actually.
Now wouldn't THAT be something? Make you feel worse while also giving you better results 😇

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By Johnologue, 10 Jan 2026 at 5:50 am UTC

I appreciate the linked article from UploadVR. Powerful ideas here, and they're amplifying my recent surge of interest in the Steam Frame. I'm believing that there's some really cool potential for "Personal Computing in VR".

"What I had trouble conveying is why openness and offline computing matter. I want an appliance that's both hard to break and easy to use, and I want a playground for everyone at least as big as the one I had to explore in 1995."

It's challenging to convey these ideas in words, though we try. I want to imagine that people will get a Steam Frame and feel it when they wouldn't have otherwise, because they already had a phone and computer and such that never gave them that experience.
I want to see those ideas the article covers, of blurred lines between "users" and "developers", of people creating lateral value, be proven in the real world.

Especially while Meta's VR program is, apparently, pulling back from expensive "creator competitions" that attempted to solve the same problem with the same "firehose of cash" approach that's worked so well for the likes of Amazon and Epic (with all of their freebies, etc.).

They're retreating, and Valve might show them up here in a way they can't pass off as "Steam is too big to compete with, we tried everything except launching our digital retailer with basic features like a shopping cart. Completely unfair."
No, Horizon-whatever has been established, the hardware was subsidized, they put their entire corporate identity into the "metaverse"...

...and Valve might still show them up. They might fail, but that can be said of any venture, and I think they have a shot at it.

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By Woodlandor, 9 Jan 2026 at 11:16 pm UTC

I just like Linux and have been using it for 27 years.

Everyone use it the way they want to use it, that’s been the entire point of the project.

News - Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high
By bolokanar, 9 Jan 2026 at 11:06 pm UTC

Don't really care about the stats.

I am excited for when Steam survey pops out... I have a surprise for them. Finally got my hands on 5950x!
The GPU is old as fuck but who cares about this things? Most of the time when I game (which happens more and more rare this days) I lean towards playing CS 1.6... xD

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By elmapul, 9 Jan 2026 at 9:06 pm UTC

forget flatpaks, i cant wait to see things like our 3D desktops and beloved cube in an 3D enviroment!

News - 1-4 player co-op hack-n-slash dungeon crawler Dungeon Rampage gets revived on Steam
By Linux_Rocks, 9 Jan 2026 at 8:48 pm UTC

Quoting: Phlebiacbut I suppose the comparison was for "advergames"
Yeah, my bad. Just a comparison of advergames. lol

News - Linaro reveal they're collaborating with Valve for the Steam Frame
By LoudTechie, 9 Jan 2026 at 8:02 pm UTC

Quoting: fabertawe
Quoting: JarmerI would LOVE to switch to a linux phone, but for me a daily driver has to have the following:

  • banking apps for remote deposit and other stuff

  • reliable maps with gps and navigation

  • whatsapp & signal & sms

  • bluetooth connection to car audio

  • all day long battery with medium usage

  • decent camera - don't need fanstastic features, just need to be able to quickly open and snap kids moments



so far I don't think there is anything?
The phone I already mentioned does all of those things apart from maybe the banking app (depends on the bank). I use PureMaps (Linux) with voice navigation. I have bluetoothed to my car, bluetooth speaker, TV, earbuds and headphones. Also records video.

Edit: disclaimer: there are teething troubles with the new phone (I have the original) but they will get ironed out very quickly (as with the original, no issues for me), the devs are amazingly productive for a small team and super helpful.

Also, you can't switch your Granny to one of these from Android (that's what they're ultimately aiming for though), you'll need some Linux experience to get the best out of it and really enjoy it.
The granny problem is probably what Steam pocket people are hoping Valve will fix, since they made such great strides in handling that on the Steam Deck.

News - Linaro reveal they're collaborating with Valve for the Steam Frame
By Jarmer, 9 Jan 2026 at 7:54 pm UTC

^ Interesting! Unfortunately I'm on Verizon in the US and it's unsupported. I could do tmobile and it'd work though. I wager that's not specifically this phone though, I bet all the linux options are this way. Verizon is horrible for stuff like this. But they're the best network. Oh well.

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By AsciiWolf, 9 Jan 2026 at 7:42 pm UTC

Quoting: RedjeAnd I don’t really get the hype for flatpak.
That's easy: Regular Linux packaging is an unpredictable, outdated and in many cases broken mess. Flatpak is not ideal, but fixes most of the biggest packaging problems and actually makes desktop Linux usable even for regular, non-technical users. Especially when combined with "immutable" distributions such as Bazzite.

News - Steam Frame and Steam Machine will be another good boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall too
By LoudTechie, 9 Jan 2026 at 7:41 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.
It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.
Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.
As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.
Also on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.
Debian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.
I've also encountered several times that debian warned me about the fact that this version still had unpatched vulnerabilities.

Edit: I'm willing to believe the flathub maintainers to be more lax than the Debian maintainers and thus leave more unpatched packages in their repo, but flathub isn't flatpack. Fedora has its own repo and a few others do too. This is actually the primary feature that differentiates it from Snap.

News - Minecraft is getting a cute overhaul of baby mobs
By Philadelphus, 9 Jan 2026 at 7:31 pm UTC

Previously, baby mobs were just smaller versions of the adults.
Well, not quite – (at least) some of the babies had much bigger heads proportionally to their body size than adults did*. But this is a welcome change nonetheless. 🙂

*I don't feel like checking all of them, but it's true for chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep, at least.