While Valve will eventually make SteamOS publicly available (technically it already is, if you think HoloISO counts), I doubt Valve specifically reached out to GPD. As impressed as I am by SteamOS on the Deck, it's still a work in progress, and I doubt Valve would reach out to "collaborate" with a Chinese company about using something that remains unfinished.

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Valve's response is just what I want to hear from them. Thank you for the update.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: CyborgZetaSo I disabled the read-only filesystem, removed Firefox, and then re-enabled it. All good now.

That change will be likely lost though when you do a new SteamOS upgrade, due to how upgrades are handled. Still for now it's a neat little adjustment for people who want to rid themselves fully of the outdated version. Hopefully Valve will sort this now with us highlighting it.

Eh, if it comes back, I'll just remove it again. I really don't need it on my Steam Deck if I have the Flatpak.

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Yeah, I noticed that when I first booted into the desktop. I installed the Firefox Flatpak, but the pre-installed Firefox kept opening whenever I tried to open the Flatpak.

So I disabled the read-only filesystem, removed Firefox, and then re-enabled it. All good now.

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I feel I should play devil's advocate and point out that states' rights, despite being frequently associated with Republicans, has been used by both parties. Just recently, the Democrats were all too eager to cite states' rights during the Trump presidency.

Heck, if one considers slavery to be the original argument for states' rights, then the Democrats were the first one to make that argument. It's easy to forget the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, and later Jim Crow. It wasn't until LBJ that it started to become what it is now.

Anyway, I'll again state that I'm sympathetic to giving more autonomy to the states, when appropriate. After all, most decisions are best made at the local level, where the government is closer to the people it represents; particularly in a country as large as the US.

As pointed out though, this can create a patchwork of different laws and regulations; whether it has to do with abortion, the 2nd Amendment, or marijuana (marijuana is a good example of states taking the initiative). So what should be done federally, and what should be done by the states, is something I'm still figuring out myself.

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Quoting: denyasisI would agree a stream lining of quite a bit of it would be nice. Also, since we're throwing things at the wall, I'd be really ok with a multi party system. I'd argue, more than design, the lack of a robust multiparty system is the biggest detriment.

I agree. As an independent, I fall on issues that align with one party, and issues that align with the other. Yet the nature of politics in the US means that if I vote for ______ then I'm getting ______ even if I don't want that and would rather have ______.

Of course, we all know that both parties would never, ever, accept a viable third-party (or any attempt at a multi-party) system. Especially with how partisan US politics has become. "Voting third-party is wasting your vote" "If you vote third-party, you're voting for ______." Ironically, disdain for any attempt to disrupt the two-party system is one of the few bipartisan things in Congress.

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While I can support the idea of devolving more power to individual states rather than the US Government being a one-size-fits-all solution to every issue, to what extent the government should set the rules and to what extent the states should make the rules is something I remain unsure of what the right answer is. It's probably not a question someone like me is capable of answering.

The most I can say is that I am not a fan of states picking which freedoms/rights they want to defend, and which ones they want to disregard as lesser (or just show disdain for altogether); any freedom/right should not end at the border to another state.

And I'm not just talking about the right to abortion. That's all I'm going to say.

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Right now, I'm not sure what the future holds with SteamOS 3.0 myself. The experience as it is now is highly tailored to the Deck, perhaps even handheld PCs in general, and I'm not sure how Valve could/would adjust it for general desktop usage with wildly varying hardware.

At a minimum, I don't expect SteamOS to cause desktop Linux to gain any significant ground. However, I do think SteamOS will become a popular option for pre-built gaming PCs, whatever form they might take. We might even see the return of Steam Machines in some fashion, although that might be optimistic.

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Quoting: fireplaceI’m glad the Steam Flatpak is getting more traction. Native games on Linux sometimes required libraries outside of the Steam runtime, and developers don’t notice this and just say that it only supports ubuntu or fedora or some crap like that. Now with the Flatpak, it’ll be clear as day if the native game works or not.

I agree. I use the Steam Flatpak on my desktop and it actually works quite well. I guess I'm included in that 6.05%.

What I find interesting is not just how high SteamOS Holo is already, but how Ubuntu is noticeable dethroned from the top. It doesn't feel like that long ago that Ubuntu still topped the list.

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I'm hoping the next Stable update, whenever that hits, doesn't reinstall Firefox through pacman. I had to temporarily disable the read-only filesystem to remove Firefox, because I prefer using the Firefox Flatpak and the Arch package was constantly getting in my way.

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