After the recent upset caused by Canonical's plan to drop 32bit support in Ubuntu, then to turn around and change their plan due to the uproar caused by it, Valve now have a full statement out about their future support of Linux gaming.
Firstly, to get it out of the way, there's nothing to worry about here. Valve said they "remain committed to supporting Linux as a gaming platform", they're also "continuing to drive numerous driver and feature development efforts that we expect will help improve the gaming and desktop experience across all distributions" which they plan to talk more about later.
On the subject of Canonical's newer plan for Ubuntu 19.10 and onwards in regards to 32bit support, Valve said they're "not particularly excited about the removal of any existing functionality, but such a change to the plan is extremely welcome" and that it "seems likely that we will be able to continue to officially support Steam on Ubuntu".
However Arch Linux, Manjaro, Pop!_OS and Fedora all got direct mentions in this statement, when talking about how the Linux gaming landscape has changed and how there's a lot more options to have a good gaming experience. Valve said they will be working "closer" with more distributions but they have nothing to announce just yet on what exact distributions they will be officially supporting in future.
Also, if you're working on a distribution and you need a direct line with Valve, they suggested using this link.
You can see the full statement from Valve here.
Fantastic news, I will be completely honest, there was that little worry in the back of my mind that Valve would start pulling back but why would they? They've put a ridiculous amount of resources into our smaller platform, things have improved an astonishing amount since Steam arrived on Linux back in 2013 and it sounds like things will continue getting better.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Mohandevir Jun 27, 2019
-Pierre-Loup Griffais
That kind of ending sentence makes my day. :)
Quoting: gradyvuckovicWhat Canonical pulled was crazy and unreasonable, as was said countless times, if there was a solution then Valve couldn't have been expected to work it out in 3 months. You HAVE to give more warning than that when doing something like dropping all 32bit libraries.Well, that exaggeration is a little unfair. No one needs to get off Ubuntu 18.04 until 2023. Ubuntu obviously isn't my first choice, but this wasn't a situation that required immediate action. There definitely would have been plenty of time to change plans.
Quotedevelopment efforts that we expect will help improve the gaming and desktop experience across all distributionsSo Valve is officially working on making linux in the desktop a better place, not just for gaming but as a whole. Thats so great
Mountain Man Jun 27, 2019
Quoting: Mountain ManAt this point, what is the best Ubuntu alternative?Depends on what you're after. I left Ubuntu after they forced too many UI decisions I didn't like, so Mint was a natural choice for me. Similar look and feel to good old Ubuntu + Gnome.
Quoting: SalvatosDebian Testing is also a good choice. It's basically the same system under the hood, so it's not even that much of a change. And Debian Testing is a rolling distribution with packages that are fairly up-to-date. And if you need bleeding edge, there is Debian Unstable. And even Experimental if you are really adventurous. :)Quoting: Mountain ManAt this point, what is the best Ubuntu alternative?Depends on what you're after. I left Ubuntu after they forced too many UI decisions I didn't like, so Mint was a natural choice for me. Similar look and feel to good old Ubuntu + Gnome.
The biggest difference is that Debian is much less opinionated than Ubuntu, Mint, and other derivatives. They don't have the Debian desktop experience, but rather ship upstream packages. So you get vanilla GNOME, vanilla KDE, etc. with minimal branding from Debian.
Arehandoro Jun 27, 2019
Quoting: LinasQuoting: SalvatosDebian Testing is also a good choice. It's basically the same system under the hood, so it's not even that much of a change. And Debian Testing is a rolling distribution with packages that are fairly up-to-date. And if you need bleeding edge, there is Debian Unstable. And even Experimental if you are really adventurous. :)Quoting: Mountain ManAt this point, what is the best Ubuntu alternative?Depends on what you're after. I left Ubuntu after they forced too many UI decisions I didn't like, so Mint was a natural choice for me. Similar look and feel to good old Ubuntu + Gnome.
The biggest difference is that Debian is much less opinionated than Ubuntu, Mint, and other derivatives. They don't have the Debian desktop experience, but rather ship upstream packages. So you get vanilla GNOME, vanilla KDE, etc. with minimal branding from Debian.
I’m actually surprised Valve have not mentioned at all Debian on their last post. I always considered, and still do, Debian the most appropriate distro. Although newer Mesa/Kernels, in an apt repo, would be ideal for sid to have the perfect combination whilst gaming.
Quoting: LinasRolling distributions are a rather big red flag for some distros.Quoting: SalvatosAnd Debian Testing is a rolling distribution with packages that are fairly up-to-date.Quoting: Mountain ManAt this point, what is the best Ubuntu alternative?Depends on what you're after. I left Ubuntu after they forced too many UI decisions I didn't like, so Mint was a natural choice for me. Similar look and feel to good old Ubuntu + Gnome.
Like, I'd always recommend Manjaro stable over Arch for most users, as it has a more thorough process of making sure things remain stable before updates roll out - or rather, an additional round of checking on top of what Arch does.
Nonetheless, if Steam would officially support Arch, that would (if I'm not mistaken) include Manjaro, so...
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