The Solus distribution [Official Site] developers are a clever bunch, with their Linux Steam Integration [GitHub] software package and snaps, they are hoping to "relieve the pressure on distributions for supporting gaming".
When I say snaps, I'm talking the snap package system, specifically from version 2.28 onwards which supports something called "base" snaps. You can read more about the idea behind base snaps here.
Here's why they're doing it:
It's time to relieve the pressure on distributions for supporting gaming, by doing so through a single point of entry. A snapped LSI will ensure that the Steam/LSI combo would work identically on every distribution, *even if they don't support multilib*. It also ensures we can provide a "perfect" runtime, but ensure its up to date, optimised, and configured explicitly to support LSI & Steam.
If you're after an explanation in the most simple of terms, they have you covered:
TLDR: Single Steam/LSI image that takes all of the Solus gaming/Steam work, and provides it for everyone, on any distro.
They're also building a tool to debug the runtime, so they can ensure "ABI compatibility" with Steam and games themselves.
I certainly appreciate what they're doing, so it will be interesting to see what becomes of this. Perhaps in future this might help Valve directly with Steam, who knows what will happen.
On top of that, they recently released a new version of their Linux Steam Integration, which includes a new "vendor offender" mode, which can help games on open source drivers.
You can see the full post on G+ here. What do you think to this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
As far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak. And the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub
I wonder why Canonical always wants to have something special that is not used in nowhere else (See: Unity, Mir ...)
Last edited by Zlopez on 13 October 2017 at 1:34 pm UTC
I wonder why Canonical always wants to have something special that is not used in nowhere else (See: Unity, Mir ...)
Last edited by Zlopez on 13 October 2017 at 1:34 pm UTC
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Quoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak.
Many distributions support snap, including Fedora, Solus, etc. (Solus has full support for it.)
Quoting: ZlopezAnd the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub
Yeah that still uses the Steam runtime and doesn't actually solve anything, it still suffers its own distro incompatibilities.
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I've tried a few programs as snaps on my Ubuntu install but none of them have worked and they take up ten times as much storage space as the equivalent deb package.
However, I do really like the idea of snap and flatpack, especially for proprietary stuff like Steam.
There are logos for quite a bunch of distros on the snap website: https://snapcraft.io/
However, I do really like the idea of snap and flatpack, especially for proprietary stuff like Steam.
Quoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu
There are logos for quite a bunch of distros on the snap website: https://snapcraft.io/
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BabaoWhisky Oct 13, 2017
With snap Steam, it's possible to install a full 64-bits system ?
How Steam and Steam games will work if there are not 32-bits libraries on the system ?
How Steam and Steam games will work if there are not 32-bits libraries on the system ?
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Quoting: BrisseI've tried a few programs as snaps on my Ubuntu install but none of them have worked and they take up ten times as much storage space as the equivalent deb package.
Yeah unfortunately I don't think Snapd uses anything like ostree with Flatpak. Flatpak's can look large but thanks to the de-duplication of ostree binary data is shared between runtimes and apps.
I'm surprised at Solus doing this though as they seemed to initially be more in favour of Flatpak. Does anyone know if they have listed the technically reasons for why they have done this (UPDATE: Seems at least some of the reasoning is in the G+ post)? Maybe they are being practical and trying to push both options right now and see which one holds up under actual trial of fire? I recall earlier in the year they were aiming to get Steam going in Flatpak but as Endless seems to have beat them to the punch did they think let's see how Snapd fairs?
Quoting: ikeyQuoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak.
Many distributions support snap, including Fedora, Solus, etc. (Solus has full support for it.)
I'm quite sure Fedora does not "support" snapd. And my past test failed at running Snap on any non-ubuntu based distro where Flatpak has worked flawlessly for me (including Ubuntu)
Last edited by MagicMyth on 13 October 2017 at 2:57 pm UTC
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johndoe86x Oct 13, 2017
Quoting: ikeyQuoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak.
Many distributions support snap, including Fedora, Solus, etc. (Solus has full support for it.)
Quoting: ZlopezAnd the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub
Yeah that still uses the Steam runtime and doesn't actually solve anything, it still suffers its own distro incompatibilities.
Ikey Doherty? Is that you? For those who don't know he's the founder of Solus!
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Quoting: berillionsWith snap Steam, it's possible to install a full 64-bits system ?
How Steam and Steam games will work if there are not 32-bits libraries on the system ?
Every application you install as a snap will come with it's own set of libraries. That's why it takes up more disk space. It's also why you won't need 32-bit shared system libraries. A snap application runs in a sandboxed environment, so it doesn't have access to the system libraries anyway. Good security feature, since it hinders malicious apps from tampering with your system.
That's how I understand it anyway. I'm no expert though so I could be wrong.
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Things are changing all the time in the snap world. From my understanding, all "application" snaps to date have had a dependency on the Ubuntu Core snap, which provides almost a mini Ubuntu distro with all the needed runtime elements. The plan is for other distros to be able to provide alternative core snaps to ship their own runtimes. As I understand it, this is ikey's attempt to ship a suitable runtime environment for Steam and other gaming platforms. They'll be the "application" snaps and will depend on ikey's core snap. So all distros which support snaps will get to benefit from the work done in Solus to get gaming running smoothly. This is A Good Thing.
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Solus is one of the most important Distros around right now. An amazing achievement for such a small team.
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Quoting: ZlopezAnd the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHubThere's actually a Steam package available from flathub as well, been using that myself since it appeared.
I'm still interested to hear about what Valve were planning when they talked about using something alike Flatpak for their own package handling on Linux.
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BabaoWhisky Oct 13, 2017
What is the difference between Steam Snap and Steam native (runtime disabled) ?
The performance in game can be increase ?
The performance in game can be increase ?
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Quoting: berillionsWhat is the difference between Steam Snap and Steam native (runtime disabled) ?
The performance in game can be increase ?
Improved performance? No. Snap does however run apps in a sandboxed environment, so snap would be more secure than running steam-native.
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Personally, I think that this is the wrong way to solve this problem. The ABI for major system libraries changes very rarely, so if your software doesn't work with different versions then that's either a bug that should be fixed or a problem with your software. I think that it would be far more valuable to have a standardized system to automatically LD_PRELOAD small hacks for end users so that their old software can run on new systems without them even noticing.
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qptain Nemo Oct 13, 2017
Efforts like this are very important, I think. From what I understand it enables us to point developers at this and say "target this, it's easy" which has positive consequences that I don't think I have to explain. :V
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PublicNuisance Oct 13, 2017
Been using Solus for my main system for a week or so now. Liking it so far.
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I personally think declarative package management (as in NixOS and GuixSD) is a far, far, better solution to the same problem things like snaps and flatpak address. I hope the GNU/Linux ecosystem moves more toward that direction in the future
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Quoting: PublicNuisanceBeen using Solus for my main system for a week or so now. Liking it so far.
Absolutely a distro to watch. I think they've said they want to tackle dedicated GPU/Intel dynamic switching at some point, which would be quite awesome...
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These snaps sound exactly like LXC / Docker / UCR / Rocket containers. You build a small distribution along with all dependencies the app needs, and it just works for the most part. With Docker, there is a networking layer added in between your system and the containers. I wonder how Snaps deal with ports. Browse hub.docker.com to get an idea of what is being built into containers these days.
If it works like Docker, then you don't have to worry about space as much as you'd think. Images are in chunks and they share data (deduplication). So, if you have 20 games that rely on 50% the same base data, you will be saving 50% x 20 images.
That said, there is a little disk price to pay with containers. It is worth it a lot of times. Want to make your own Wordpress website on your own server with ease? Load up a Docker container for the site and another container for the DB and you are done in minutes.
If it works like Docker, then you don't have to worry about space as much as you'd think. Images are in chunks and they share data (deduplication). So, if you have 20 games that rely on 50% the same base data, you will be saving 50% x 20 images.
That said, there is a little disk price to pay with containers. It is worth it a lot of times. Want to make your own Wordpress website on your own server with ease? Load up a Docker container for the site and another container for the DB and you are done in minutes.
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I don't get why i should be excited about this, seems like all these flatpaks/whatever other name this runs on increase complexity and solve nothing, if i wanted paranoid level security i believe cubes os does a far better job at isolation. Based on what i read about these so far, i don't get why the status quo is so bad.
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appetrosyan Oct 14, 2017
Quoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak. And the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub
The rpm family don't contribute to the development, but they do put effort into snap compatibility. Debian family is far more extensive, so they have equal footing on "neutral territory" (e.g. Arch or Gentoo).
QuoteI wonder why Canonical always wants to have something special that is not used in nowhere else (See: Unity, Mir ...)
It's natural.
If you have a piece of software, you like the idea, but want to make a few tweaks - go for it. You could ask in the same way, why do different distributions have different package managers. Arch wouldn't be arch if it ran on rpm or deb, which is why it has pacman. Gentoo has need for clever update scheduling, so it has emerge.
Snaps serve to replace two features of the rpm family - flatpak (for desktop app distribution) and Atomic updates (for rigid system management). SSo it makes sense to fork and create something.
Not to mention Snap and Flatpak are only two of about ten "universal" package formats.
But I get why you ask. The two distro families have different strategies:
Red Hat makes sure everyone in the Linux world uses their software, even if it isn't that great (e.g. Gnome).
Canonical, makes sure as few distros as possible can support their work, even if there's no need to couple their code so tightly.
As a result, Unity, runs almost exclusively on Ubuntu, and Gnome Shell runs on everything else, so we get the feeling that the latter is better. In reality, Unity is a great DE, it just happens to be tied to Ubuntu. Which is why Canonical were alone in developing it, went all in, and eventually killed the project off.
If Canonical were a little more giving, and Red Hat were more reserved, we'd have a much more balanced ecosystem.
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