this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023

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Valve Is A Wonderful Upstream Contributor To Linux & The Open-Source Community (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 year ago by narwhal@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 14 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

This shouldn't come as any surprise to any longtime Phoronix readers and dedicated open-source/Linux enthusiasts, but Valve with their work on the Steam Deck and SteamOS have been lifting the open-source ecosystem as a whole.

A talk this week at the Linux Foundation Europe's Open-Source Summit highlighted some of the great and ongoing contributions by Valve and their partners.

Alberto Garcia of the open-source consulting firm Igalia, which continues to collaborate with Valve on some of these Linux ecosystem improvements, talked at length around how SteamOS is contributing to the Linux ecosystem.

SteamOS is built atop Arch Linux with a GNU user-space and systemd, the desktop mode features KDE Plasma to which Valve has funded some improvements there, Valve's Steam Play / Proton that leverages Wine has been immensely valuable to Linux gamers and enthusiasts along with related open-source projects like DXVK / VKD3D-Proton, and then there's also they work they are doing around AMD color management / HDR.

Not just to the AMD graphics drivers for benefiting the Steam Deck's hardware but also to Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan and then other common infrastructure.

There has also been other efforts Valve has been involved in such on expanding case insensitive file-system support on Linux, various other kernel features, their Gamescope Wayland compositor, immutable software updates, and Flatpak.

The original article contains 366 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 41%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] Telorand@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

It's been great, honestly. I had Garuda on a laptop I was using to stream from a local Desktop, and it worked better for Remote Play than Windows 10.

[+] RobotToaster@mander.xyz -14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

They also distribute the largest closed source digital restrictions management system...

[–] whileloop@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So?

Closed source isn't necessarily evil, neither is DRM. It's all in how you implement it.

Valve's launcher/drm are so much less intrusive than their competitors. They've demonstrated more openness to user customization and modding over the years than just about anyone else. If we didn't have Valve, we would have more EA and Epic Games, do you really want that?

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DRM isn't evil, it's just it's current implementations and the fact that when the software is abandoned companies don't remove it. There's no end of life plan for their software

Also some forms in the past have been straight up evil.

I'll never forget sending a letter to a dev because I lost their code wheel for a game I owned and they sent a letter back telling me to buy the game again ‡

I'd say that was my first step towards piracy

‡ Before anyone asks: No I don't remember what game it was for or what company I sent it to, that was decades ago.

[–] whileloop@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd say in your case piracy was 1000% justified. You bought it, you should be able to play it.

I think piracy is acceptable if one of these two conditions are met:

You already own a copy of the game
The game is no longer sold as new, such that any legitimate copy would have to be secondhand.

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The main problem is the "No end of life plan" issue

If the software/game/whatever has to call a server to verify itself then when the company goes under or stops supporting it then the software/game/whatever becomes useless without a crack of some kind that may or may not be possible for the layman to implement

Companies need an end of life plan for their products with DRM

[–] whileloop@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Someone actually emailed Valve about this back in 2013. Here's their response: https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg

Thank you for contacting Steam Support. In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users will continue to have access to their Steam games.

It seems like Valve wants us to think they have an EoL plan. With the goodwill they've built over the years, I want to believe them.

[–] purahna@lemmygrad.ml -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't get this trend of finding someone identifying legitimate problems with the best available option and trying to have discussion on a discussion website and drowning them with "B-b-but everyone else is worse! If we didn't have [lesser evil] then we would surely have [greater evil]! Why do you want [greater evil]???"

[–] whileloop@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

identifying legitimate problems with the best available option

Being closed source and using DRM aren't necessarily problems. In Valve's case, they aren't at all. Valve's DRM doesn't hurt performance, and doesn't stop you from playing their games offline.

[–] AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

You say it like there's some hypocrisy going on. Yes, I donate money to charity, no, I don't leave all my money on my porch. Hot take: people should be allowed to sell their creations.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Doesn't that depend on game devs?

I mean, I can copy Baldur's Gate on a PC where there's no Steam at all and play it just fine, because the game itself doesn't have any restrictions. If other games have DRMs I don't think it's Steam fault.

If you want to be totally free from DRMs you need to check GOG, if a game is there, it doesn't have DRM, so neither the Steam version will.

[–] TheCaconym@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mean, I can copy Baldur's Gate on a PC where there's no Steam at all and play it just fine, because the game itself doesn't have any restrictions

I don't think so, no. You can do that with the gog version. With the steam version it'll try to launch / connect to the local installed steam at startup, and fails if it cannot do so. You'd need to install a steam emulator like goldberg for it to work.

This is the case with most games (there are a few exceptions) on steam, even those that don't enforce "strong" DRM. They want steam running. This is, by itself, a completely unacceptable form of DRM.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can do that with the gog version.

You can do that with Steam too, I know because I'm doing it. I have dual boot, I use Windows very rarely (I play on Linux) so Steam is not installed on it at all, I copied BG3 on it to try out mods because Mod Manager doesn't work on wine for me.

I can assure you the game works perfectly fine without Steam.

With the steam version it’ll try to launch / connect to the local installed steam at startup

As you sure you're using the right exe? bg3_dx11.exe and not some launcher?

[–] TheCaconym@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, I should've clarified: I didn't try it with BG3 (I use the gog version) - hence my "I don't think so"; I simply assumed it wouldn't work because that's the case with like 99% of steam games.

This means Larian specifically implemented their calls to the steam API in order not to exit if it fails to connect; that's indeed pretty good and in fact I know of only one other such exception to the rule: rimworld.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ah ok.

I simply assumed it wouldn’t work because that’s the case with like 99% of steam games

That's because the vast majority of games implement DRM unfortunately, BG3 does not, Witcher doesn't either, any game that does not have any DRM can be played fine outside of Steam, tho there are not many.

DRMs are not Steam doing, it's game devs.