Yup, that’s what Peertube is.

Steam Deck

It’s managed like a console, meaning users don’t really manage the system. You can install flatpaks, but that’s about it, managing packages with pacman just isn’t a thing. Bazzite is largely the same way, the base OS is immutable and updated with atomic updates.

Saying Steam OS is Arch is like saying the Switch is FreeBSD. It’s technically correct, but not in the sense that actually matters.

And yeah, Bazzite is totally fine. If you don’t touch the internals, you probably won’t have any issues, especially if you run an AMD GPU. But I don’t really consider it an “Arch distribution” because of that immutable base OS. I use an immutable distro on my laptop (openSUSE Aeon), and I love it.

Woo! Have fun!

Arch doesn’t have a standard interface, you pick it yourself. By default you get a terminal and no UI whatsoever.

On most Linux distributions, you’ll install a pattern (basket of packages) for whatever you want, like gnome-desktop or plasma-desktop then reboot and it should be an option to pick at the login screen. There are dozens to choose from, and they all have various features and caveats. Installing multiple is generally fine, so feel free to experiment. Some distros have a very customized interface, so you may need to customise it a bit to match what you see in screenshots.

I recommend either KDE Plasma or GNOME to start. Broadly speaking, GNOME is more unique (inspired by macOS iI guess) and stable since it’s sponsored by RedHat, whereas KDE Plasma is more familiar (looks like customized Windows) and still pretty stable since it has a large community.

The specific distro doesn’t matter that much for the interface, so pick something mainstream with at least an option for more recent packages.

Honestly, the whole Arch family is problematic because everyone does things a bit differently with different assumptions, so support doesn’t exactly transfer. Arch in particular also expects you to do a lot of your own research, and that tends to carry with the various derivatives.

When you’re new, you want something mainstream with a ton of users with a variety of configurations so you have a better shot at getting support for the problems you’ll run into. You also probably want something recent, especially for gaming since there are a lot of changes to the gaming landscape.

That’s why I recommend stable distros with relatively up-to-date packages. My go-to is Debian, and if you need something newer, upgrade to whatever the testing release is (in this case trixie). Fedora is also a great option. I personally use openSUSE Tumbleweed and Aeon (and soon Kalpa), but I don’t recommend those distros because they’re relatively niche so getting support may be difficult. They rarely break, but new users seem to attract Murphy’s Law more than others, hence why I don’t recommend it for new users.

As a second or third distro, sure, it’s absolutely fantastic. I loved Arch when I used it, and I mostly switched because I wanted to run the same family of distros on my desktop and servers, and I wanted something a bit more stable than Arch for servers. I realize now that what I actually want is a separation between base OS and running services, so I’ve switched to containerization and am porting to a rolling distro for my servers as well (in this case, MicroOS, coming from Leap). But I definitely do not recommend Arch for new users because it has very few guardrails out of the box for when things go wrong.

You can get pretty much any interface on any distro, so if you’re judging a distro based on how it looks, you’re probably not the target audience for Arch since Arch leaves all of that choice and responsibility on the user. Arch is a fantastic distro if you want what it offers, and you’re okay managing what it doesn’t offer.

Garuda is probably fine, idk, just avoid Manjaro IMO (they promise stability, but time and time again they’ve proven they can’t deliver that). I personally recommend going with the more “professional” distros, because you’ll have a lot more ready resources for help if something goes wrong.

strongly consider a fedora or arch based distro.

I very much do not recommend an arch-based distro for a newbie.

If you need a newer kernel:

• Fedora or Bazzite or Nobara (as you mentioned)
• Debian testing (not sure what version it ships, the online package search isn’t working ATM for me)
• openSUSE Tumbleweed (what I use) or Aeon (what I’m testing out) - definitely on 6.14 now

But Arch-based distros will break for someone new to Linux. Maybe not in the first month, but probably somewhere in the first year. That’s not to say Arch is a bad distro or anything, I used it for several years for both work and play, just that it expects users to know what they’re doing, and most new users don’t.

the server isn’t live compressing it

It is for generated data, like a JSON API. Static content is often pre-compressed though, since there’s no reason to do that every request if it can be done once. Compression formats is largely limited to whatever the client supports, and gzip works pretty much everywhere, so it’s generally preferred.

At least that’s my understanding. Every project I’ve worked on has a pretty small userbase, so something like 50-100 concurrent users (mostly B2B projects), meaning we didn’t have the same problems as something like a CDN might have.

I’m not really sure how latency is related for FS operations. Are you saying if the CPU is lagging behind the read speed, it’ll mess up the stream? Or are you saying something else? I’m not an expert on filesystems.

Some parts are really well polished IMO:

• everything touching downloads (esp. with the recent-ish improvements) and installation
• library management and family sharing
• steam link
• steam input

But there are also a lot of rough edges, like high resource usage and weird interface bugs. It could be better, but it could also be a lot worse.

Yeah, because you’re optimizing for different things.

• server - maximize requests handled, so you need to balance CPU usage and bandwidth
• disk - more bottlenecked by disk speed and capacity, so spending more time compressing is fine, provided decompression is fast (reads should exceed writes)

There’s nothing for others to discuss there.

There certainly is. You can disagree with my points the same as I disagreed with yours. And you have, just a bit later on in the discussion.

How cruel of me to ask a question

There’s no problem with asking questions. i didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t respond to that point. I launch things through Steam’s UI, so I don’t trigger the issue you seem to have w/ it.

The reasons you’re getting downvotes and negative interaction is largely your justification for piracy. I don’t think anyone would have an issue if you said “I pirate because games are too expensive” or “I pirate because I fundamentally disagree w/ DRM” or something of that nature. But no, you said, “A main reason I pirate is because Steam opens a window when I launch a game with it minimized.”

That’s ridiculous, but I didn’t down vote. Why? Because you had an on topic, relevant comment asking if a specific bug was fixed. But I also didn’t upvote. Why? Because you also had a completely irrelevant, IMO silly comment about you pirating because of a super minor thing. If you had left it at just the question, I probably would’ve upvoted and maybe tried out that bug you mentioned. As it turns out, someone did just that and confirmed that it’s still a bug.

Also, if you’ll notice, I didn’t respond to your top-level post, I responded to other people making what I feel are inaccurate statements. In this particular chain, we were discussing Steam being “bloatware,” and I was pointing out that, while it could be slimmer (i.e. less bloat), it does a lot of things very well, especially from the perspective of a Linux gamer where the other options are way worse on a number of fronts.

Steam as a platform provides a ton of value, for example:

• Steam input
• Remote Play
• Proton

And all of those things work w/ games not purchased from Steam, which is awesome! I use each of those all the time on my Steam Deck, many times for games not purchased through Steam (e.g. I have Heroic load GOG and Epic games to the Steam UI so I can use those features). Steam is a great platform with a client that does a lot of things well.

Yes it has bugs, but having bugs doesn’t make something “bloatware.” The bugs absolutely suck, and they should be called out so they hopefully get Valve’s attention and get fixed, but that doesn’t make the whole package “terrible,” and IMO they certainly don’t justify piracy. There are a lot of valid reasons to justify piracy though, so don’t go putting words in my mouth claiming they don’t exist.

All your comments in this thread are invalidating other’s personal experiences.

Well yeah, if I agreed, why post? You provide one perspective, I provide another, and we discuss it. Isn’t that why services like Reddit and Lemmy exist?

down voted me

I didn’t downvote anyone in this thread, I only downvote poor or irrelevant content, not content I disagree with. In fact I agreed with your criticism of Steam here (said it could be slimmer), I just disagreed w/ the claim that it’s “bloatware,” especially given that you provided absolutely zero evidence for that claim, until now. I guess you kind of did at the top of this thread, but I rarely track usernames, especially this deep into a comment chain, so I didn’t associate the above w/ the top comment.

I have a different experience, so I provided that as a counter-example to your claim of it being “bloatware.” Steam provides a ton of value, especially to me who otherwise wouldn’t likely have access to major gaming platforms w/o their investment in Linux. Heroic is a thing largely because of Valve’s investment into Proton/WINE, and game devs considering Linux at all is absolutely a result of Valve’s investment in the platform w/ Steam Machines and then Steam Deck. Valve has a ton of features other launchers don’t, such as: Steam Input, Remote Play, and Steam Family. I use those all the time and they’re absolutely wonderful.

Yes, Steam has bugs, and they’re annoying. But that doesn’t make it “bloatware.”

Exactly. Pick a solid distro, install graphics drivers if you have an nvidia card, then install Steam, and you have a solid gaming distro. SteamOS makes sense for a console-like experience, but a distro doesn’t.

If you want a “gaming distro,” look up Bazzite or Nobara, they basically do that. But it’s really not necessary, any solid distro is equally capable of being a gaming distro.

Opinions are always subjective… not sure what you’re getting at.

Here’s my perspective. I’ve been a Linux user longer than I’ve been a Steam user, in fact I only made a Steam account when they came to Linux. In the 12-ish years since they launched on Linux, they have only made my experience playing games on Linux better.

What other company is comparable here? The closest is maybe GOG, but they don’t even support Linux with their client, much less actually invest in the platform. They do make a few older games work on Linux, but that’s about it. Their first party titles don’t even support Linux.

So yeah, I’m willing to overlook a few things. That doesn’t make me a Steam fanboy, and I’d happily move my spending elsewhere if another company stepped up and provided decent Linux support. But the closest we have is GOG basically treating Heroic purchases like affiliate links (not sure what the share is), and that doesn’t instill a ton of confidence, though it does encourage me to occasionally buy from them.

Sure, and I have no issues with compression or encryption on the device. In fact, I used full-disk encryption for a few years and had zero issues, and I’ve done plenty of compression and decompression as well (in fact, I think my new OS uses compression at the FS layer). Most of the time, that stuff is completely a non-issue since CPUs have special instructions for common algorithms, I think they’re just using something fancy that doesn’t have hardware acceleration on my CPU or something.

I’m planning to replace it, but it still works well for what I need it for: Minecraft for the kids, Rust Dev for me, and indie games and videos every so often. I’m on integrated graphics and it’s still holding up well.

It’s a bit old, it’s a Ryzen 3500U (laptop from 2017/2018 ish), so at the older end of your range. I’m still maxing my internet speed, it just kicks the fan on.

I haven’t checked my desktop (Ryzen 5600) because I don’t hear the fan when the CPU gets pegged (never thought to check), but maybe I will the next time I download a game.

It’s really not though. It could certainly be slimmer, but it does a lot of things way better than its competitors.

My internet isn’t that fast (100mbps), and it was still maxing one core.

Encrypted and compressed. But it’s way beyond what I expect that to take.

Same, never heard of it, but now I want it.

I agree with the poster, I don’t want any of that social nonsense, I just want to play games. As long as they keep developing Proton, I can forgive quite a lot.