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Comment by foxandmouse | Hacker News Reader

That said, when are we going to get a public release for SteamOS? …There’s a joke somewhere about them reaching SteamOS 3

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It's always been public:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

https://gitlab.com/evlaV/holo-PKGBUILD

> These public repositories (@gitlab.com/evlaV) are an unmodified 1:1 public copy/mirror of Valve's latest (currently private) SteamOS 3.x (holo) GitLab repositories

This sure reads like it's private

You can download it and install images freely. The source code is private but available.

> I dunno if I'd characterize this as "public"

Then define public and state what's wrong with this repo which conflicts from your definition of public.

For me this looks like a fine public resource and after a short glimpse it looks like that you should be able to even build this effing source code from this repo.

Edit ps. If you edit your own content then please leave a note about what you have changed please

The ask was "when are we going to get a public release for SteamOS"

Someone's bootleg copy of the private repo is not proof that it has

Well based on the paragraphs in the README it's not actually being updated anymore, it only reflects SteamOS as of August and the author quit running their process to update it.

The linked repo isn't the official public resource. Valve provides the source packages for what they distribute (aka GPL compliance) but this person wanted them to open up their private GitLab instance to the world.

As far as I can tell, they wrote a script to download the source packages they provide and then try to reconstruct them into a GitLab repo.

Somewhere along the line during the past almost 30 years, we forgot what public and private mean.

Now I see...

Down down down you find

> (April 1, 2024): After over 2 3 years (and 2 Steam Deck model releases - LCD and OLED) Valve still hasn't publicized their private GitLab repositories nor fully complied with the GPL. I decided to (finally) release the relevant portion of my automated "bot" project, aptly titled srcpkg2git. This/These software/tools haven't been updated/modified much since 2022, but should allow users to easily access and even mirror Valve's SteamOS private repositories (as I've demonstrated with these public mirrors (@gitlab.com/evlaV) the past over 2 3 years).

Yes indeed. That's hardly public what we can get...

If I understand this correctly, Valve provides the src packages for the packages they distribute. This person wrote a script to download the src packages and extract them. The README misleadingly claims it's a "mirror" of Valve's private git repos, which is not accurate.

The author wants them to open up their GitLab instance, showing their internal development. That's not required under GPL.

Valve appears to be complying. This person wanted access into their internal development systems, though.

The rest of the README is tens of thousands of lines about capitalism, abstaining from procreation, and withdrawing from society with hundreds of links to videos and hundreds of quotes. It's very strange. These are not the writings of a healthy person, sadly.

> https://gitlab.com/evlaV/holo-PKGBUILD

So to summarize: Valve provides source code for what they distribute, in compliance with the GPL, but this person went on a personal crusade to demand they open up their private GitLab to the world?

There appears to be some interesting history here, but this takes the cake as the weirdest README I've ever seen in a git repo.

The writing is impenetrably wordy and filled with excessive bolding and parentheticals. It goes completely off track and turns into an extremely long rant that implores the reader to "abstain from procreation", among other things. There are hundreds of links and hundreds of quotes mixed into long-winded sections about the author's self-importance.

Does anyone have a link to a more down to earth, less self-important, and more importantly concise explanation of what's going on?

Yeah, this is clearly a person going through a mental health crisis. Sorry for them.

From what I understand from this repo, the problem is that the official Valve source code release contains PKGBUILD files with build steps that reference a private Gitlab repo that's internal to Valve. So while there is a public release of all source code available for download from Valve's website, these sources cannot actually be built because they want to clone a repo that cannot be accessed.

(In other words, even if you download a tarball of all SteamOS code, you cannot build it, because the build script insists on downloading source code from a Valve-internal remote, instead of looking for it locally.)

So to fix this, the author of this repo did two things: they created public mirrors of all individual git repos that are referenced by the PKGBUILD scripts (presumably by extracting the tarballs from Valve's release and running git init/add/commit/push), and then they created a "master" repo (linked here) that has only the PKGBUILDs, which the author fixed so they reference their own public mirrors instead of Valve's internal GitLab repos. See [1], for example, which contains the build instructions for the Steam Deck's DSP driver. The referenced git repository ([2]) is an inofficial mirror of Valve's internal repo, created from the source code release from the Valve website.

So no, it's not a "personal crusade" to demand Valve open up their "private GitLab to the world". It's a serious grievance about Valve releasing an "open-source" software that cannot actually be built from source, and a request for Valve to provide a public GitLab mirror themselves, such that their PKGBUILD scripts will actually work.

I agree that the author has a confusing writing style, but I do understand their frustrations and concerns.

[1]: https://gitlab.com/evlaV/jupiter-PKGBUILD/-/blob/master/stea...

[2]: https://gitlab.com/evlaV/valve-hardware-audio-processing

oh no, this again.. I remember checking out HoloISO when I was looking for SteamOS at launch… did a quick lookup on the creator and yeah, turns out he's a racist furry (literally)..

The installer is here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

The sources of the packages are here: https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/so...

And for the record most packages come directly from Arch Linux, unmodified.

That is not for desktops. I would assume they meant a proper steamOS desktop release. We haven’t seen one in many years and the previous one is basically useless for most people.

Many of us have been waiting for a proper release for a LONG time. Bazzite is nice but I want to see what valve does next.

my guess is it will be mostly the same as for the SteamDeck but with

- Game Mode becoming getting a not Steam Deck specific desktop version, which I would love to see, e.g. last time I installed Bazzite+Steam Game mode, the Game Mode will default to 1080p even if your GPU can render 4k ...(easy to fix in the options menu, tho. But not very convenient.).

- slightly different defaults, tweaks, builds (e.g. AFIK not to long ago if you tried to put SteamOS on a desktop with RDNA3 graphics it didn't work. But they seem to more or less just use a standard linux graphic stack, so it's probably was just something on the line of "as it's not expected the parts needed for RDNA3 wheren't compiled in/shipped in the SteamOS for SteamDeck image)

There's nothing stopping you from installing it on a desktop with the right hardware.

I have a Ryzen 5 5600 and a 7600 xt in an sff pc, installed steamos directly from the recovery image. It supports the GPU, controllers, even the super fast sleep/wake.

Valve has specifically taken down the (desktop) steamOS download page and only kept up the recovery page because it just isn’t a viable desktop OS if you want to play modern games consistently (as well as other shortcomings). They explicitly discourage its use for desktop on the recovery page IIRC and emphasize it’s for handheld hardware.

The amount of tinkering and driver patching and just general work it requires to get it to play games properly (especially if the person is not AMD CPU/GPU) now makes it a non-starter except for people who explicitly want to make it work.

It can run. It generally runs poorly and with major holes in it.

What you are saying just doesn't align with my experience. I've done no tinkering and definitely no patching and have been able to play several modern games (Cyberpunk, Spiderman 2, GoW: Ragnorok). I expect it's not the same for Nvidia based pcs or ones with exceptionally old or new AMD hardware, which is why I specified the hardware I'm using.

Telling me that the computer I've been gaming on for the last 7 months "isn't viable" for gaming based on CYA language on the downloads page is annoying and unconstructive.

You don’t have to argue with me about it. Feel free to dismiss my opinion. But I encourage you to go do a cursory search online about this and see what comes up.

I never said it can’t be done, just that it’s ill-advised given the limitations and specific hardware requirements to make it work stably/consistently. You yourself said “with the right hardware,” which is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Valve doesn’t stand by it as a desktop OS currently. Whenever it comes up, people almost always instruct folks to go to bazzite. What I am excited for is what they have planned for the steam machine because it’s hard to imagine that an updated version of steamOS built for desktops isn’t coming.

I don't think there's anything concrete at the moment, they're just working on improving hardware compatibility, you can hear it directly from Valve at the 5:05 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuJi1-Csrds&t=305s

I have a SFF pc with an AMD GPU and AMD CPU both with better specs that the new Steam Machine just waiting for them to release a standalone installer for SteamOS :(

You can use the Steam Deck recovery image to flash an SSD with SteamOS. It's what those of us on other handhelds do.

Have you tried CachyOS? May get the results you are looking for with Desktop or even Handheld addition.

Have you tried Bazzite? It’s basically a drop-in replacement. It’s based on Fedora’s Atomic stuff instead of Arch, but if it wasn’t for the logo at the start, I’d be hard pressed to notice I was using it and not vanilla SteamOS.

I did try using Bazzite but I had weird issues with stuttering/throttling on the RX 7600 which made most games totally unplayable (I confirmed the same hardware worked fine on a windows install). That was a while ago though, it's probably worth me trying again.

Normally I just use regular Fedora/Arch/OpenSUSE for gaming on Linux and never see any issues (albeit that's on a 6800xt at the moment) but I want that consolized experience.

edit: found the thread where I discussed fixing this - few bits of false hope and then I eventually gave up. https://www.answeroverflow.com/m/1314736793190662216

I just use vanilla debian and Steam works great. Just set it to launch steam on login and set your system to auto-login, that should get you most of the way.

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