Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :(

From	Samuel Henrique <samueloph@debian.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.devel
Subject	Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :(
Date	2021-07-17 14:50 +0200
Message-ID	<CBRVv-rW-3@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

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Hello d-devel,

As some of you already seem, we have very good news for the Linux
gaming community, although somewhat bad for Debian:
https://www.steamdeck.com

The Steam Deck is a portable gaming device, running SteamOS, to be
released later this year.
Review video from 2kliksphilip:
Valve Steam Deck - The Budget Gaming PC We Need
https://youtu.be/zBEpymHvrpo

The bad news for Debian comes from this page:
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
Operating System: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based)

SteamOS used to be based on Debian, and Valve seems to have decided to
go with Arch instead (great news for Arch, don't get me wrong).

The reasons for the switch have not been publicized, but I think we're
safe to assume it's because Debian is not fit for the majority of the
desktop/gaming users, at least not officially (since testing is not a
supported release). I remember having some issues due to SteamOS being
based on stable. These are the people who need to be able to run the
most up-to-date packages, especially drivers and kernel (backports is
not always there).

Now, this is ok for regular users, as they can take the risk[0] of
running testing to get all the benefits from it, and that's what I
recommend to pretty much anyone running Debian on a desktop, though I
recognize some people prefer to run stable.

Debian Testing is very close to Arch wrt up-to-date packages (when not
frozen) but most people don't know this and we end up being known for
not supporting newer hardware/software[1].

This is a niche that is currently fulfilled by Fedora, Ubuntu non-LTS,
Arch... and Debian Testing (only one which is not an official
release).

I know the situation is not as simple as calling Debian Testing
something else and making it an official release, my intentions here
are to expose the current issue we have: that we don't fulfill the
needs of a lot of desktop users and SteamOS is now Arch-based, most
likely because of this.

So here's my wish that someday we can have a Debian semi-rolling
release (if we want to have it based on Testing), with security
support and a different name other than "Testing".

[0] No security team support.
[1] And software matters here because the gaming side of Linux still
receives major improvements with new releases of things like Proton.

Have a nice weekend!

-- 
Samuel Henrique <samueloph>

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Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Samuel Henrique <samueloph@debian.org> - 2021-07-17 14:50 +0200
  Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2021-07-17 16:00 +0200
  Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2021-07-17 17:20 +0200
    Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Sandro Tosi <morph@debian.org> - 2021-08-10 19:40 +0200
      Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Andrey Rahmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2021-08-10 19:40 +0200
        Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2021-08-11 03:00 +0200
          Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Calum McConnell <calumlikesapplepie@gmail.com> - 2021-08-11 07:10 +0200
            Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2021-08-11 08:50 +0200
              Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Steffen Möller <steffen_moeller@gmx.de> - 2021-08-11 11:40 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Vincent Bernat <bernat@debian.org> - 2021-08-11 16:10 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> - 2021-08-11 18:10 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Timothy M Butterworth <timothy.m.butterworth@gmail.com> - 2021-08-12 05:30 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2021-08-12 06:50 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2021-08-14 08:50 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Moritz Mühlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org> - 2021-08-14 09:20 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> - 2021-08-16 16:30 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Romain Porte <debian@microjoe.org> - 2021-08-12 16:40 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2021-08-12 23:10 +0200
                Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2021-08-13 00:00 +0200
                git workflows (was: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad  news for Debian :() Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-08-13 00:40 +0200
                Re: git workflows (was: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad  news for Debian :() Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2021-08-14 09:00 +0200
                Re: git workflows (was: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad  news for Debian :() Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2021-08-15 07:10 +0200
  Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( "Thaddeus H. Black" <thb@debian.org> - 2021-07-18 02:20 +0200
  Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2021-07-18 03:00 +0200
    Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Hanno 'Rince' Wagner <wagner@debian.org> - 2021-07-18 10:40 +0200
      Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2021-07-19 04:30 +0200
        Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian :( Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-07-19 22:30 +0200
  Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian? Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2021-07-19 23:40 +0200
    Re: Steam Deck: good news for Linux gaming, bad news for Debian? Samuel Henrique <samueloph@debian.org> - 2021-07-20 00:30 +0200

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