Quoting: soulsourceA Mozilla developer posted about Snap (and Flatpak) just recently, and I think it's a very interesting read.

Original thread:
https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/109976029692454638 [External Link]

Follow-Up with links to the bug-reports:
https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/109981179869984715 [External Link]

Most of his points have already been thoroughly discussed before. I’m not sure if that’s him trying to stir up a flamewar again or is just ignorant on the topic, but they’re false anyways.

Edit: that criticism of the thread is also brought up in the replies.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Guest

"the most popular Steam titles which should ‘just work’ based on reports on ProtonDB"

I'm inferring from this that they are working hard on the "weak spot" that sandboxing always had, even flatpak which is a bit superior (imho) has some shortcomings with proton emulation. Personally I won't be using it, if valve provides a deb package I will use that instead. I can't remember but I think it has some issues regarding how linking and hard linking works on sandbox mode that makes proton go bonkers.
Maybe Im barking out the wrong tree, and this is already fixed, but back in the days when proton started, steam flatpak had all kinda of issues, related to sandboxing, even Proton GE didn't work, it was a bloody mess.
Tbh it's kinda of logic, because you are running an "emulation" app (proton) on top of sandboxing, I guess it makes everything more complex.

Nothing is being emulated. Proton, which is based on WINE, is translating windows calls to Linux ones. Sandboxing is perfect here because you don’t want random windows apps and games having access to your Linux system. In fact, proton itself uses the sandboxing technology of Flatpak in it, which leads me to your anecdote of Flatpak Steam issues. I’m pretty sure you’re talking about when old versions of Flatpak didn’t support sandbox within a sandbox, so modern proton versions. This has long been fixed, and, because of the reproducible and immutable nature of Flatpak, it sometimes works better than a traditional install of Steam would. Some examples are:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/csgo-osx-linux/issues/2815 [External Link]

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6051 [External Link]

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/5214 [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Viesta2015maybe it'll make bungie budge. :)

bungie will budgie

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyTry reading for comprehension, like the bit where I explained how they hold some of the copyrights involved.

You should try reading for comprehension. They had zero relevance in the discussion aside from the fact that they wrote GPL. And even then, not everything in steamos is GPL…

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo . . . you were completely wrong, there was no basis for what you said, I was completely right in assuming you had no such basis, and yet to the end of your comments you were still coming off all arrogant at me?

That's impressive, in a perverse way.

I stated what was available. You’re the one making claims that it’s free with no basis (no source packages). I kept looking everywhere to find these while you kept repeating the equivalent of “yeah valve is big, so we don’t question it.”

Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, but... you still haven't explained how the OS itself is non-free...

Didn’t you see those source packages from the link? That’s free in my book.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

btw, it was right here all along. everything's back in order now :)

https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/ [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: fireplace

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYeah, you're asserting that. But it doesn't jibe with anything else I've ever heard about the current SteamOS. So I'm asking you to provide a bit of chapter and verse about, in what sense, in what way, is Valve "keeping most of the distro closed source"? What is it you claim they are doing?

I seriously don’t know what that means. The opposite of providing source code, I guess? It’s not that hard. There is either source code or not. It doesn’t have to “jibe” with anything.

Valve uses their own packages and repo for Steam OS. And besides the very few packages that they rarely update in public, everything else is not to be found, but there are definitely plenty of other GPL programs. Maybe you know where they are :)

Quoting: Purple Library GuyDo you claim that they have made changes to Arch files they downloaded, but kept the nature of the changes secret? Do you claim they have re-licensed GPL Linux code they are using to some closed license? Do you claim they have bribed the FSF not to sue them for any of this? What exactly are you saying?

That’s literally… none sense. Only the copyright owner can do that, so they’re just violating it. They can only keep this up till one of them threatens vlave. See Trump’s Mastodon clone.

Gee. Three paragraphs without really saying anything. It would appear you don't actually know anything about whether your claim is true or what it would mean if it was.

So. The FSF, the Free Software Foundation, holds the copyrights for important chunks of Linux. You know how some people like to call Linux Gnu/Linux? So yeah, the FSF holds the copyright to the GNU part, and a few other things, and have I believe also been asked by some other copyright holders to help them out with copyright enforcement in the event of infringement. So if someone began to distribute a version of Linux in a way that violated the GPL, that would be General Public License, a copyright license used by Linux which does not allow non-free releases of it, it is very likely that lawyers from the FSF would be in touch with them. Initially to explain to them how the license worked and why their actions put them in violation and how they could go about complying with the license, but if that failed things would get sticky. They have done this before; it is one of the key functions of the Free Software Foundation.

For the non-GNU portions of Linux, or for KDE, there are other foundations, in the case of Linux with fairly deep pockets, which would be likely to take similar action. Then there's Linus himself, who wouldn't be amused, takes no shit, and who may be personally only moderately prosperous but if he felt the need to crowdfund some lawyer's fees to defend the GPL he would suddenly have many, many dollars. So, nobody can really release a non-free Linux distribution without getting in a heap of legal trouble (and having it hit industry headlines pretty damn fast).

Valve certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to try it. So in the absence of some fairly serious and specific information I am concluding you are mistaken.

Why do you keep bringing the FSF up? How are they relevant here? If I own the copyright of a project I can do whatever I want with it even if I distribute it with GPL. I can get legal help from them, or my lawyer, or whoever I want. But fact of the matter is that it's my copyright, not the FSF's.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyValve certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to try it. So in the absence of some fairly serious and specific information I am concluding you are mistaken.

You got that right, there is some serious information missing that are called source code, and so far the only thing you've provided are words. But apparently I'm mistaken because
Purple Library Guy concluded so on the basis that "Valve wouldn't be stupid."

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYeah, you're asserting that. But it doesn't jibe with anything else I've ever heard about the current SteamOS. So I'm asking you to provide a bit of chapter and verse about, in what sense, in what way, is Valve "keeping most of the distro closed source"? What is it you claim they are doing?

I seriously don’t know what that means. The opposite of providing source code, I guess? It’s not that hard. There is either source code or not. It doesn’t have to “jibe” with anything.

Valve uses their own packages and repo for Steam OS. And besides the very few packages that they rarely update in public, everything else is not to be found, but there are definitely plenty of other GPL programs. Maybe you know where they are :)

Quoting: Purple Library GuyDo you claim that they have made changes to Arch files they downloaded, but kept the nature of the changes secret? Do you claim they have re-licensed GPL Linux code they are using to some closed license? Do you claim they have bribed the FSF not to sue them for any of this? What exactly are you saying?

That’s literally… none sense. Only the copyright owner can do that, so they’re just violating it. They can only keep this up till one of them threatens vlave. See Trump’s Mastodon clone.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: fireplace

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: fireplaceI can see why they’d want to do that. I wouldn’t touch Valve’s non-free OS either. But I bet their’s won’t be free as well…

I'll bite. So, "non-free OS" in what sense?

Huh? What else could it mean in a GNU/Linux website? I commend you for being so dedicated to free software that you forgot all about proprietary software. But just to refresh, non-free software is software that’s not freedom respecting as in proprietary software as in software that does not grant you your four essential freedoms [External Link].

Yes. I'm saying, in what sense is SteamOS that?
The Steam platform itself, for buying and managing games from Valve, is non-free. But your comment is the first time I've ever seen anyone claim that the OS is non-free, so I was wondering if you had some particular basis for saying it. As far as I understand, SteamOS is a perfectly normal Linux distro, based on snapshots of Arch and using KDE as the desktop environment. I haven't heard anyone say that the source code is unavailable or that they've tried to re-license anything.

The platform and the OS are different. Technically, you could buy a Steam Deck, rip out Steam but leave SteamOS in, and play everything except Steam games on it.

So. In what sense is the OS non-free?

Aside from the obvious fact that the main interface, the Steam client, is non-free that always runs in the background, Valve keeps most of the distro closed source unlike the previous Steam OS versions. But I’m not too considered about that because there is already lots of work in making bunch of the great features of the Steam deck into other distros like gamescope and immutability in Fedora. You won’t be limited to Valve’s non-free offering for your Steam deck.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: fireplaceI can see why they’d want to do that. I wouldn’t touch Valve’s non-free OS either. But I bet their’s won’t be free as well…

I'll bite. So, "non-free OS" in what sense?

Huh? What else could it mean in a GNU/Linux website? I commend you for being so dedicated to free software that you forgot all about proprietary software. But just to refresh, non-free software is software that’s not freedom respecting as in proprietary software as in software that does not grant you your four essential freedoms [External Link].

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I can see why they’d want to do that. I wouldn’t touch Valve’s non-free OS either. But I bet their’s won’t be free as well…

View this comment - View article - View full comments