This is your regularly scheduled and apparently necessary reminder that SteamOS is Linux.

SteamOS is built from Arch Linux.

The Steam Deck runs Linux. So will the Steam Machine and Steam Frame.

To be clear - no shade here, just part of the continued service of being a Linux nerd, ensuring people do actually understand what's running 👍

Much love devs.

https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/

"SteamOS is Valve’s Linux-based operating system."

SteamOS

SteamOS is Valve’s Linux-based operating system. It features a seamless user experience optimized for gaming, while retaining access to the power and flexibility of a PC, and plays tens of thousands of games on Steam. SteamOS officially ships on Steam Deck, and will soon ship with certain Legion Go S models. We’re currently working on adding support for more devices.

@gamingonlinux Nowdays I tend to question the technical skill and understanding of some devs. Some of them is like they turn on the machine but never really poked the nose to look how an OS run, just write codes of lines blind for something they didn't saw the workings.

Otherwise I don't see how a dev could say that SteamOS isn't linux.

@raster @gamingonlinux Recently I met an IT trainer that thought that "Atlas OS" was something for Apple devices, because it had "OS" in its title 😅

@raster @gamingonlinux Likely a member of the community team rather an actual developer. Their job is more writing changes to the game and community engagement stuff, or providing community feedback to the development team.

It's not a technical role (though in some instances especially for smal teams it is usually an actual developer who has it as a secondary role). That said game developers have a concerning lack of understanding about anything below the game engine they use.

@Umbreon @gamingonlinux I could think that. A good part (or perhaps the majority...) of games today are made with devkits and engines that have their own script language and are abstracted from the OS.

Depending what you use, you could be a dev, but doesn't imply you are also a programmer in the usual meaning.

@gamingonlinux Probably the community manager, who's not technical as a person/role. See a lot of people confuse the relationship with SteamOS and Linux.

@gamingonlinux I mean, I've seen at least one game, Infinity Nikki, where the game is explicitly told to crash out if you're on Linux but NOT on a Steam Deck so... there IS THAAAAT?!?!?!

Not at all like this, tho, this does sound like just nonsense, lol

@VileLasagna @gamingonlinux yeah but that's 1 launch command and.. Oh no? You can't tell that I am not on a steam deck? Oh how sad.

@vineyardsiren I actually looked for a workaround back in the day as the Frau was interested in checking it out but didn't managed to find it.

This WAS disappointing and surprising at the time, "surely this will be corrected by some modder in like 3 days, right?".

@VileLasagna in case you are still looking proton-GE has it as a default i belive but the launch option is just steamdeck=1

@vineyardsiren Worth checking out, for sure. And it IS surprising I didn't run into something this simple =P

If it works, we can see if the Frau is still curious =3

Thanks for the pointer

@VileLasagna @vineyardsiren How is the rootkit situation with that game these days? That's the only reason why I never tried it, and then I heard the devs destroyed the new player experience, which didn't exactly improve my lack of motivation. 🤷‍♀️
@VileLasagna @gamingonlinux The PC gaming industry is totally like that.
@gamingonlinux the ultimate btw i run arch…
@gamingonlinux It's GNU.
@Fedihacker @gamingonlinux Might be. There are a number of Linux distribution that are not nowdays. Embedded developers usually don't use GNU but instead busybox. They don't use glibc but instead musl or whatever.

@crazyeddie @gamingonlinux SteamOS is GNU and if you want to run GNU compatible software under non GNU OSes you need compatible libraries.

Software loaded thanks to Wine doesn't mean it's not Windows software anymore.

Moreover, Musl doesn't provide C++ API. There's only GNU's libstdc++ and LLVM's libc++, which aren't ABI compatible.

@gamingonlinux "We only support Linux through Proton"
@gamingonlinux i mean there is kinda of an argument here, steamos is one configuration of linux

since the foss world can't agree on a single anything saying that you support only this one specific configuration is pretty reasonable imo
@gamingonlinux like fun fact, krita wayland only officially supports kwin, but it does work on all other compositors
@gamingonlinux I don't mind them providing support for SteamOS only, testing the game on SteamOS devices is totally fine. What's concerning is when they go out of their way to block any other Linux running Steam client. This is absurd.
@gamingonlinux As someone who doesn't know. If I have Steam properly configured on my, say, Linux Mint machine... does that count as a SteamOS machine?

@gamingonlinux "supported" is a magic word though. It means one thing to a lot of software folks "it works" and another to corporate types and many other bits of a business "we'll care if it doesn't work"

If you say you support Linux and it breaks on someone's obscure setup then to most eyes you are at fault. If you say it supports steamdeck and it happens to work on their box then great everyone is happy.,

@gamingonlinux

Finally, I can SSH to my portable console and I love it.😊
I can SSH out of console too, but writing anything longer on that display/keyboard is not really best way to do anything.

@gamingonlinux I had a better opinion on SteamOS when it was based on Debian plus a few more updated libs from Ubuntu. So basically what the vast majority of linux users had (as in the base user, maybe not so much the power user or the enthusiast).

Targeting Arch is a bit like if windows games targeted Win10 LTSC IoT or Windows Server, something I use but the average user would rarely touch.

@cygnathreadbare @gamingonlinux Como persona que hace más de 20 años que no usa Debian/Ubuntu y familia, veo muy bien que esté basada en Arch (aunque yo uso openSUSE Slowroll). Precisamente.
@gamingonlinux The problem here is that affected games are made for Windows and in some cases Mac. Said games don't even know they're running on Linux when getting funneled through Proton. Hence, developers can't claim they built the game for or support Linux.

@gamingonlinux I constantly see regular people misunderstand what SteamOS (and what it isn't) which, sure, I can understand.

But, a game dev?

@gamingonlinux It was impressive to see Steam... iron out... early problems, to being... stiff competition... ... ...

I just can't go on.

@gamingonlinux it's impressive that we have gotten to a point where SteamOS is more popular than Linux in the corporate world :D

@gamingonlinux Tell me you're a normie without saying you're a normie.

But what do game developers know. Give 'em a break I guess.

@gamingonlinux

I tend to interpret Linux / SteamOS support as in «we specifically support and test against that specific os»

Actually, that response it looks whackier the more I look at it, nevermind

@gamingonlinux i will accept that when a "normie" can download & install it on their generic x86 system just like any other "Linux" distro. Till then to me it is not much more Linux than Oracle Linux is. Any corporation that uses Linux to lockdown to their ecosystem isn't doing that out of goodness of their heart or what is best to consumers but to maximise their return to shareholders.
@htpcnz @gamingonlinux It's not locked down tho? It just doesn't have driver support for desktop hardware, and why would it when it's designed to be a handheld OS?
@gamingonlinux and yet if you reach out to Steam support about technical issues running a Steam game on Manjaro, they will tell you that only Steam on Ubuntu is supported. Can you make it make sense?