Valve looking to drop support for Ubuntu 19.10 and up due to Canonical's 32bit decision (updated)

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

Quoting: ScooptaThe Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

While I'm sure those scenarios are fine for you guys and you get a great system out of it and all that, you can see why Valve wouldn't be wanting to put their muscle behind advising the general gaming public to go with that, right?

Ha, Debian's installer is pretty much a 'next, next, configure partitions (or let it do it for you), wait, reboot, done.' sort of deal.

Yes there are a few tweaks after install, but that's why you create your own pre-seed, which is really all SteamOS is.

But this isn't even about them dropping their distribution for something non-Ubuntu, because it already is. This is all about them changing 'Ubuntu' as their requirements. Which really I think it never should have been that in the first place. But I do understand why they did it that way, because it is harder to just say 'runs on anything that Steam for Linux will run on' because that's a bit more difficult to pass on as 'this is what we support.' But they could easily say 'supports Debian based distributions' but that would still make all Arch / Fedora, etc users butt hurt.

I still maintain they should just have Kernel / Library / Driver version / HW requirements
I noticed Overload for example complains about libva.so.1 not existing in 32bit. Apparently it's a deprecated library and Debian dropped support after Stretch. I installed the Stretch packages in Sid/Buster, but that's not ideal. But if it said that in the minimum/recommended requirements as just libraries vs 'run this distro and all will be shiny' I think it'd be a lot better for everyone.

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

Ha, now I'm really curious what you're trying to do with the installer that prevents you from setting it up the way you want. I mean I understand that about Ubuntu and a lot of other distributions, where they try to simplify the partitioning, but what is it you're trying to do that Debian doesn't allow, because I think it's one of the more flexible partitioners (unless you're not talking about partitioning?)

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

Ha, now I'm really curious what you're trying to do with the installer that prevents you from setting it up the way you want. I mean I understand that about Ubuntu and a lot of other distributions, where they try to simplify the partitioning, but what is it you're trying to do that Debian doesn't allow, because I think it's one of the more flexible partitioners (unless you're not talking about partitioning?)

Nope I'm talking about partitioning. There's two things I do which it doesn't like. Depending on if I use grub or not changes what I do and what it complains about. If I don't use grub then I efi stub and it doesn't like /boot being on vfat instead of a Linux FS. If I do use grub then I have grub do my luks decrypt so /boot is encrypted and Debian doesn't like an encrypted /boot. I've mostly stopped using grub so it's usually the first issue but I do some hobby kernel dev and my kernel requires grub so I have systems with both setups.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThe main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

So, Arch is better than Ubuntu/Fedora because it has newer software, and is better than Tumbleweed because its software is older? I wouldn't say that one distro is better than another just because of packages versions. Some people want to have everything as new as possible, some people don't.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

Yast seems like Ubuntu's Synaptic. Anyway, I thought Linux users prefer CLI package managers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It probably does, but sometimes an OS needs reinstalling. I got a bigger SSD this winter, so I had to install it. I recently bought another one, even bigger, haven't got it yet, but already annoyed by an idea of another installation.
I also have about 20 computers with Ubuntu-based Linux at my work, and I would have gone crazy if I had to spend so much time on installing and tweaking systems on every of them. But with Ubuntu all I need is to:
1. boot from an USB drive;
2. add IP of my "server" with APT cache, so I could get updates via LAN with 100/1000 Mbps speed (one minute of time);
3. click "next, next, install", type a couple on line (one more minute);
4. boot into the installed OS, enable APT cache again (one minute);
5. run a bash script that installs software I need and removes that I don't (two seconds);
6. tweak some UI settings (one or two minutes).

That's few minutes of my time I must spend on a computer. The rest of time I can rest, everything is automatized. So, quick and easy installation is a must-have feature for me since I have to manage many computers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThough with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

I actually installed Arch yesterday, couldn't get graphics working though. I had to read wikis, look into config files on my system and on VMs as well to check what should I have done. I installed xorg, lightdm, lightdm-gtk-greeter, xfce4, wrote many configs, but for some reason I don't see a GUI greeter, and after i type my username and password all I get is a blank dark screen. I think I didn't configure xorg right.

Installing Arch the hard way sure hepls to understand how Linux works, but does it make it a better distro than others?
I made less effort to install FreeBSD once (and I thought THAT was hard), and at least I succeeded.

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: slaapliedjeThe main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

Quoting: ageresSo, Arch is better than Ubuntu/Fedora because it has newer software, and is better than Tumbleweed because its software is older? I wouldn't say that one distro is better than another just because of packages versions. Some people want to have everything as new as possible, some people don't.

No, I was stating that Arch is more stable based on how they do things vs how Tumbleweed does things. A lot of times with Suse (at least last time I attempted to use it) you have to use separate repositories for packages. Arch has either their base, which is really stable, or their AURs which can be less stable / badly maintained. But in the end, my experience was that Arch is something you can install once, and run forever, Suse is less so.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

Quoting: ageresYast seems like Ubuntu's Synaptic. Anyway, I thought Linux users prefer CLI package managers.

Yast is more than a package manager (Synaptic is only a graphical frontend to apt). Yast configures the whole system, it's more like Windows' control panel, handling networking, etc.

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

Quoting: ageresIt probably does, but sometimes an OS needs reinstalling. I got a bigger SSD this winter, so I had to install it. I recently bought another one, even bigger, haven't got it yet, but already annoyed by an idea of another installation.
I also have about 20 computers with Ubuntu-based Linux at my work, and I would have gone crazy if I had to spend so much time on installing and tweaking systems on every of them. But with Ubuntu all I need is to:
1. boot from an USB drive;
2. add IP of my "server" with APT cache, so I could get updates via LAN with 100/1000 Mbps speed (one minute of time);
3. click "next, next, install", type a couple on line (one more minute);
4. boot into the installed OS, enable APT cache again (one minute);
5. run a bash script that installs software I need and removes that I don't (two seconds);
6. tweak some UI settings (one or two minutes).

That's few minutes of my time I must spend on a computer. The rest of time I can rest, everything is automatized. So, quick and easy installation is a must-have feature for me since I have to manage many computers.

When taking one install to a bigger hard drive, I just either clone the drive to another system, then image the drive, or just rsync the data over, and install grub. Wouldn't bother re-installing in that case.

If you have that many systems, PXE boot an image with a preseed :) Or use clonezilla to image one, then PXE to clone to the others. Works fantastic for both Windows and Linux.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThough with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

I actually installed Arch yesterday, couldn't get graphics working though. I had to read wikis, look into config files on my system and on VMs as well to check what should I have done. I installed xorg, lightdm, lightdm-gtk-greeter, xfce4, wrote many configs, but for some reason I don't see a GUI greeter, and after i type my username and password all I get is a blank dark screen. I think I didn't configure xorg right.

Installing Arch the hard way sure hepls to understand how Linux works, but does it make it a better distro than others?
I made less effort to install FreeBSD once (and I thought THAT was hard), and at least I succeeded.

Weird, what hardware are you using there that xorg didn't automatically set up your drivers? Even on my 2080 RTX, the nouveau driver works for basic 2d.

Edit: Bah, a lot of my quotes / answers were in-line, and it's 3 in the morning, so don't want to try to figure out why ha!
main point was, Yast is more like a control panel, vs just a package manager like Synaptic.


Last edited by slaapliedje on 1 July 2019 at 9:11 am UTC

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

Ha, now I'm really curious what you're trying to do with the installer that prevents you from setting it up the way you want. I mean I understand that about Ubuntu and a lot of other distributions, where they try to simplify the partitioning, but what is it you're trying to do that Debian doesn't allow, because I think it's one of the more flexible partitioners (unless you're not talking about partitioning?)

Nope I'm talking about partitioning. There's two things I do which it doesn't like. Depending on if I use grub or not changes what I do and what it complains about. If I don't use grub then I efi stub and it doesn't like /boot being on vfat instead of a Linux FS. If I do use grub then I have grub do my luks decrypt so /boot is encrypted and Debian doesn't like an encrypted /boot. I've mostly stopped using grub so it's usually the first issue but I do some hobby kernel dev and my kernel requires grub so I have systems with both setups.

Curious WHAT distribution supports that config easily? Like seriously, that's pretty custom and non-standard.

Quoting: slaapliedjeWeird, what hardware are you using there that xorg didn't automatically set up your drivers?

It's VirtualBox.

Quoting: slaapliedjemain point was, Yast is more like a control panel, vs just a package manager like Synaptic.

So, they just combined a control panel and a package manager. I still don't see why someone could dislike Yast.

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

Ha, now I'm really curious what you're trying to do with the installer that prevents you from setting it up the way you want. I mean I understand that about Ubuntu and a lot of other distributions, where they try to simplify the partitioning, but what is it you're trying to do that Debian doesn't allow, because I think it's one of the more flexible partitioners (unless you're not talking about partitioning?)

Nope I'm talking about partitioning. There's two things I do which it doesn't like. Depending on if I use grub or not changes what I do and what it complains about. If I don't use grub then I efi stub and it doesn't like /boot being on vfat instead of a Linux FS. If I do use grub then I have grub do my luks decrypt so /boot is encrypted and Debian doesn't like an encrypted /boot. I've mostly stopped using grub so it's usually the first issue but I do some hobby kernel dev and my kernel requires grub so I have systems with both setups.

Curious WHAT distribution supports that config easily? Like seriously, that's pretty custom and non-standard.

I'm aware lol, which is exactly why I don't use the installer. I also usually install into a BTRFS subvolume where the Debian installer/most installers only let you install to the root of a BTRFS disk. Tbh my setup is far more of something you'd do on Arch than on Debian but I absolutely love apt with its super cow powers so I've been reluctant to switch.

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: slaapliedjeThe main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

So, Arch is better than Ubuntu/Fedora because it has newer software, and is better than Tumbleweed because its software is older? I wouldn't say that one distro is better than another just because of packages versions. Some people want to have everything as new as possible, some people don't.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

Yast seems like Ubuntu's Synaptic. Anyway, I thought Linux users prefer CLI package managers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It probably does, but sometimes an OS needs reinstalling. I got a bigger SSD this winter, so I had to install it. I recently bought another one, even bigger, haven't got it yet, but already annoyed by an idea of another installation.
I also have about 20 computers with Ubuntu-based Linux at my work, and I would have gone crazy if I had to spend so much time on installing and tweaking systems on every of them. But with Ubuntu all I need is to:
1. boot from an USB drive;
2. add IP of my "server" with APT cache, so I could get updates via LAN with 100/1000 Mbps speed (one minute of time);
3. click "next, next, install", type a couple on line (one more minute);
4. boot into the installed OS, enable APT cache again (one minute);
5. run a bash script that installs software I need and removes that I don't (two seconds);
6. tweak some UI settings (one or two minutes).

That's few minutes of my time I must spend on a computer. The rest of time I can rest, everything is automatized. So, quick and easy installation is a must-have feature for me since I have to manage many computers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThough with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

I actually installed Arch yesterday, couldn't get graphics working though. I had to read wikis, look into config files on my system and on VMs as well to check what should I have done. I installed xorg, lightdm, lightdm-gtk-greeter, xfce4, wrote many configs, but for some reason I don't see a GUI greeter, and after i type my username and password all I get is a blank dark screen. I think I didn't configure xorg right.

Installing Arch the hard way sure hepls to understand how Linux works, but does it make it a better distro than others?
I made less effort to install FreeBSD once (and I thought THAT was hard), and at least I succeeded.

I had nothing but pain with lightdm
Sddm has always been my way to go.
I think it's even recommended for KDE/Plasma and XFCE

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: slaapliedjeWeird, what hardware are you using there that xorg didn't automatically set up your drivers?

It's VirtualBox.

Quoting: slaapliedjemain point was, Yast is more like a control panel, vs just a package manager like Synaptic.

So, they just combined a control panel and a package manager. I still don't see why someone could dislike Yast.

Make sure you install the virtualbox drivers.

Because Yast overwrites all of your config files. Some config files have far more options than Yast or any GUI could possibly add in, so if you try to customize something, then load up Yast, it'll likely override your customization.

This is why I dislike Yast, pretty sure I said as such in the original post I was talking about.

I'm a Debian person, though I do have a drive set up in triple boot with Arch and Windows 10.