After a rumour circulated on Reddit about Valve using Flatpak in future for Steam, it was suggested by user "gutigen" that I reach out to Valve for an official comment. I now have an answer.
I asked a simple question: "People have been claiming that Valve is moving Steam to being a Flatpak package, would you be able to confirm if this is happening?"
The reply was this:
Quoted with permission.
To put that into simpler terms: they won't be using it for how they deliver the games directly, so you won't in future get games downloaded and installed as Flatpak packages, but how Steam itself is packaged and interacts with your Linux distribution may change in future.
So essentially, nothing is happening right now as it's still at the research stage. However, it is great to hear that they are actually looking to further improve Steam on Linux. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I asked a simple question: "People have been claiming that Valve is moving Steam to being a Flatpak package, would you be able to confirm if this is happening?"
The reply was this:
Pierre-Loup A. Griffais, ValveHi Liam,
Not quite; we're looking at some of the underlying technology to see if it would be a good fit to improve the Steam runtime environment interactions with the host system. If we went forward with it, we would be using some of the same kernel functionality Flatpak/bubblewrap is, and hopefully reusing some core code, but we have no plans to change the cross-platform distribution and packaging method at the core of Steam.
Quoted with permission.
To put that into simpler terms: they won't be using it for how they deliver the games directly, so you won't in future get games downloaded and installed as Flatpak packages, but how Steam itself is packaged and interacts with your Linux distribution may change in future.
So essentially, nothing is happening right now as it's still at the research stage. However, it is great to hear that they are actually looking to further improve Steam on Linux. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Luke_Nukem Nov 22, 2016
This sounds exactly like they'll be replacing the included Ubunutu runtime directories with Faltpak versions of it. Likely with the aim of enabling use of multiple versions to help prevent breakage in the future.
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This sounds exactly like they'll be replacing the included Ubunutu runtime directories with Faltpak versions of it. Likely with the aim of enabling use of multiple versions to help prevent breakage in the future.Well I hear a lot of complaints about how out of date things are in the Steam Runtime, so hopefully they will do something about that.
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This sounds exactly like they'll be replacing the included Ubunutu runtime directories with Faltpak versions of it. Likely with the aim of enabling use of multiple versions to help prevent breakage in the future.Well I hear a lot of complaints about how out of date things are in the Steam Runtime, so hopefully they will do something about that.
From what I heard the runtime is based off Ubuntu 12.04, which will see end of life early next year. Hopefully whatever they'll due is sooner than that and will work. At least then it'll appear Valve is still interested in Linux.
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ZekThePenguin Nov 22, 2016
After basically NO news from Valve concerning Steam, it's good to hear that they are still looking to the future with Linux in mind.
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Pretty nice answer (and pretty nice to have an answer at all from Valve :D ). Thank you, Pierre-Loup.
Yep, Flatpack technology makes sense here, IMO. I just hope it won't make it too difficult to use more recent libraries *instead* of broken ones that might be shipped.
Last edited by MayeulC on 22 November 2016 at 8:15 pm UTC
Yep, Flatpack technology makes sense here, IMO. I just hope it won't make it too difficult to use more recent libraries *instead* of broken ones that might be shipped.
Last edited by MayeulC on 22 November 2016 at 8:15 pm UTC
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Does anyone know why they chose Flatpak over Snap?
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ismaelbonato Nov 22, 2016
I vote for Snappy!
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Title and article aren't really meshing together, seems more like Valve is planning on doing their own take on things (problem: we have X competing standards, attempted solution: create a better standard, problem: we have X+1 competing standards).
Of course in this case it could actually work if they decide to integrate some VCS and P2P type functionalities to facilitate global rollout of updates.
Of course in this case it could actually work if they decide to integrate some VCS and P2P type functionalities to facilitate global rollout of updates.
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I vote for Snappy!
That would be like choosing Mir over wayland
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It could be great if they could find a solution so that the Steam Runtime doesn't break on bleeding edge distributions. Also at some point they'll need to find a way to provide multiple version of the runtime, so that newer games can leverage new features that weren't available a few years ago.
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ertuqueque Nov 23, 2016
As far as I know, Flatpak is more distribution agnostic than Snappy, Snappy has some Ubuntu-ish stuff that some people (developers) are not very comfortable with when packaging for other distros... At least that's what I've read.
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A comparison to other solutions
(biased towards appimage obviously, but still a usefull link)
https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-projects
(biased towards appimage obviously, but still a usefull link)
https://github.com/probonopd/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-projects
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Correct me if I am wrong but this feels like an end of Steam on Arch/Manjaro? We are constantly plagued by obsolete libs in steam runtime. What happens if we remove them? Will Steam 'fail over' and re-download itself immediately?
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Correct me if I am wrong but this feels like an end of Steam on Arch/Manjaro? We are constantly plagued by obsolete libs in steam runtime. What happens if we remove them? Will Steam 'fail over' and re-download itself immediately?
It's already possible to run steam without runtime and arch even has the important compatibility libraries packed in repository. I wouldn't expect that to change just because they change the way to package the runtime.
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lucifertdark Nov 23, 2016
I made the mistake of adding Snappy to my system a while back, it took me two days of fighting to get rid of it, every time I removed it a stray piece would cause the whole thing to reinstall, it's worse than a bloody virus & I want no part of it again thanks. If Flatpak is anywhere near as bad as that they can keep it off my system.
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Luke_Nukem Nov 23, 2016
Does anyone know why they chose Flatpak over Snap?
Because it's the more generic version of this tech. Snaps are too specialised to Ubuntu and many distros won't use them.
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Luke_Nukem Nov 23, 2016
I made the mistake of adding Snappy to my system a while back, it took me two days of fighting to get rid of it, every time I removed it a stray piece would cause the whole thing to reinstall, it's worse than a bloody virus & I want no part of it again thanks. If Flatpak is anywhere near as bad as that they can keep it off my system.
FlatPak is a hell of a lot better, very self contained with few external deps.
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FlatPak is a hell of a lot better, very self contained with few external deps.Snappy is also self contained and with no external dependencies as it's just a single package.
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autonomouse Nov 23, 2016
As far as I know, Flatpak is more distribution agnostic than Snappy, Snappy has some Ubuntu-ish stuff that some people (developers) are not very comfortable with when packaging for other distros... At least that's what I've read.
As far as I'm aware, the only Ubuntu-ish thing about snappy is that it asks contributors to sign the Canonical contributor licence agreement which gives Canonical "permission to use your contributions". It goes on to say that "in effect, you’re giving [them] a licence, but you still own the copyright — so you retain the right to modify your code and use it in other projects".
Don't see the problem myself. But Flatpak is a RedHat thing, and RedHat don't like Canonical, so a lot of RedHat people are negative about anything that comes from Canonical. I guess that's what's going on wrt to some people not being very comfortable with it. Still, I assume Valve know what they're doing, so maybe Flatpak is more suitable for their needs? Then again, maybe its only one guy at Valve and that's his personal preference. Who knows?
I've not played with Flatpak yet, only snappy. Snapcraft is great though. It's really simple compared to building a deb package.
Last edited by autonomouse on 23 November 2016 at 9:49 am UTC
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