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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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: mehari95Does anyone know why they chose Flatpak over Snap?
Flatpack has one advantage over snap, like the possibility to bundle a runtime containing common dependencies shared between Flatpack packages. Thus Flatpack packages tends to be much smaller than snap ones. The runtime can be updated separately providing benefits for all other Flatpack apps without breakage.
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Quoting: SpykerSnappy have the same functionality ^^ .Quoting: mehari95Does anyone know why they chose Flatpak over Snap?
Flatpack has one advantage over snap, like the possibility to bundle a runtime containing common dependencies shared between Flatpack packages. Thus Flatpack packages tends to be much smaller than snap ones. The runtime can be updated separately providing benefits for all other Flatpack apps without breakage.
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Quoting: LukeNukemQuoting: lucifertdarkI 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.
And thus begins the flamewar... Or do you want to back up your "a hell of a lot better" with some facts? (Even in post-factual times.)
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Mountain Man Nov 23, 2016
A few things come to mind:
1) Isn't this essentially what Steam already does with its built-in runtime library?
2) Isn't it up to the developer and not Valve how they wish to distribute their software? If a developer wants to use Flatpak instead of the Steam runtime library then why can't they? For that matter, developers have always been able to bundle individual libraries if they wished, so what advantage does Flatpak really offer?
3) I find it ironic that Flatpak is supposed to make it easier to install software on multiple Linux distros... but they only officially support Fedora and Ubuntu.
1) Isn't this essentially what Steam already does with its built-in runtime library?
2) Isn't it up to the developer and not Valve how they wish to distribute their software? If a developer wants to use Flatpak instead of the Steam runtime library then why can't they? For that matter, developers have always been able to bundle individual libraries if they wished, so what advantage does Flatpak really offer?
3) I find it ironic that Flatpak is supposed to make it easier to install software on multiple Linux distros... but they only officially support Fedora and Ubuntu.
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Why not AppImage?
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speaking of... valve hasnt said a word about wayland or mir... any clue what mr steam might do when that bridge comes?
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Quoting: Mountain ManA few things come to mind:
1) Isn't this essentially what Steam already does with its built-in runtime library?
2) Isn't it up to the developer and not Valve how they wish to distribute their software? If a developer wants to use Flatpak instead of the Steam runtime library then why can't they? For that matter, developers have always been able to bundle individual libraries if they wished, so what advantage does Flatpak really offer?
3) I find it ironic that Flatpak is supposed to make it easier to install software on multiple Linux distros... but they only officially support Fedora and Ubuntu.
ok, instead of googling random internet opinions lets do the Archwiki chalenge
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Snapd
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flatpak
my conclusion from the above:
snap: PLEASE NO!!!
flatpack: sounds good and better than the situation we have now.
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orochi_kyo Nov 23, 2016
You know, when I see this Snap vs Flatpack war, what I see is that a reliable software distribution for all linux distros just have a long way.
If this happens along users, I cant imagine how harsh is the situation between software devs, thinking they have the best option for linux instead of accepting that maybe others hit the nail ...
Last edited by orochi_kyo on 23 November 2016 at 6:47 pm UTC
If this happens along users, I cant imagine how harsh is the situation between software devs, thinking they have the best option for linux instead of accepting that maybe others hit the nail ...
Last edited by orochi_kyo on 23 November 2016 at 6:47 pm UTC
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Quoting: autonomouseDon'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.
It's not only Red Bat, there is tons of reasons not to like Canonical :
- They don't contribute much to the Linux community
- They have the "not invented here" philosophy, meaning that if a Linux project is successful they'll always create a concurrent project just for the sake of having one. This takes developers away from the main project and slow down the evolution of Linux (Unity, Mir, Snap...)
- They aggressively patch the packages in their distribution, making it so that bugs in the upstream project are not in Ubuntu but often other bugs are here, making it a nightmare for the original developers (I don't really know if they still do this)
- They partenered with Amazon to put ads on Ubuntu
- They partnered with Microsoft to have Ubuntu running on Windows
I could probably find others but I think that's good enough.
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Quoting: seb24Quoting: SpykerSnappy have the same functionality ^^ .Quoting: mehari95Does anyone know why they chose Flatpak over Snap?
Flatpack has one advantage over snap, like the possibility to bundle a runtime containing common dependencies shared between Flatpack packages. Thus Flatpack packages tends to be much smaller than snap ones. The runtime can be updated separately providing benefits for all other Flatpack apps without breakage.
As far as I know only Flatpack provides this feature...
Another drawback for snappy is you cannot set up a third party repo for it (only the one from Canonical is allowed), which is probably the biggest issue for Valve.
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