Recently we had the big news that Valve (Steam) began a collaboration with Arch Linux, to help fund two very specific parts of the Linux distribution. Now, we have a bit more info on what it means.
After an interview recently from the A1RM4X YouTube channel with an Arch Linux developer, Antiz, they took to Reddit to explain things a little bit further to help people understand what's happening. Here's an excerpt:
Basically, the way packages are currently built / managed still requires a few manual interventions from Package Maintainers (e.g. triggering the build itself and signing the built packages afterwards). As of now, supporting multiple architectures would mean multiplying those manual steps by the number of supported / targeted architectures. With the current number of packages compared to the current number of (volunteers) Package Maintainers maintaining them, Arch is not able to handle the extra amount of effort that it would imply.
A central build service and a central secure signing enclave (the two projects concerned by that Valve "sponsoring") would streamline the overall process by allowing automated build and signing for packages without requiring any manual steps / interventions from Package Maintainers anymore (and it will also allow to increase the security of the process as a side benefit). Only such a streamlined / automated workflow would allow us to start working on supporting multiple architectures without implying to multiply the current amount of required effort.
In other words, those projects are prerequisites to start working on multiple architectures support in a clean & sane way, which is a end goal shared by both Arch and Valve.
So basically, a lot of it is towards supporting multiple architectures. And with the news that Valve are seemingly working on supporting some form of Arm and Android support (likely for a future VR headset), this definitely makes sense. Especially when Valve already use Arch Linux for SteamOS on the Steam Deck, it seems increasingly likely that Valve will use an Arch Linux base for what comes next.
Antiz has also been replying to other comments on Reddit, in one post noting that it is very much their "end goal" for Arch Linux to support multiple architectures.
Check out the full interview on the A1RM4X YouTube channel with the Arch Linux developer Antiz:
Direct Link
Viesta2015 about 12 hours ago
Quoting: BlackBloodRumThis is actually good news for Arch. I mean the benefits are very real here, all around. I know some Arch users are worrying over this, but I really don't think they should.most likely preparation for the deckard since there are secret ARM builds of VR Games inside Steam that are non accessible at the moment and the only reason we know this is because of SteamDB
If I had to guess, this is preparation for Steam Deck 2? or perhaps a new SteamOS? Maybe preperation for making SteamOS an OS for anything? Something is happening either way, and with a bit of luck it'll provide that nice easy to use OS we can point all new users to and say "Use this, it works out the box for most things" as opposed to having to say "For nvidia try this distro, for amd try this one, oh and if you need this, try that distro over there, etc.
Last edited by Viesta2015 on 3 October 2024 at 11:31 pm UTC
kaktuspalme about 6 hours ago
Quoting: JarmerVR device maybe, but I doubt it. Smartwatch no chance.
I think @cato-the-younger is right ... They want SD2 to be on arm. Battery will last 2x - 5x longer, fans will sound less like a jet engine, and performance will either be on-par or even better than x86. It's really a no-brainer for a mobile device to get off x86 at all costs.
After the Lunar Lake launch I think this is not true anymore. It looks like the ISA doesn't matter that much for power efficiency.
But, I also think they prepare an ARM device in the background.
ElectricPrism about 5 hours ago
A future Steam Deck and even Deckard (Standalone VR Index) would logically target ARM, RISC-V or something else as (1) better battery efficiency (2) less heat produced
Who wants to have a GPU strapped to their face outputting 66 C
I use my Steam Deck OLED every day and it's a great product, I don't personally need any better battery life than what I get but I could understand on a backpacking trip or long travel how it would be nice to get a boost.
--
Here are my notes from watching the video:
[1] automated build service -- currently this is done manually by antiz, ( thank you for your service good sir)
[2] secure signing enclave -- secure signing of packages -- centralized -- (people who use arch occasionally have to reinstall `archlinux-keyring` prior to large multi-month updates) -- this singular signing key would make it unneeded to have all these updated keys to allow software installation.
[3] This is a valve freelance contract, it simply boosts team members to spend more time doing what they are already doing to reach their goals sooner and to create better versions of these build systems that are envisioned.
[4] Speculation, that architectures that may be considered, could include: x86_64v2 x86_64v3 dram risc-v, arm
[5] I was unaware but Proton is alleged as tested on ARM processors already, I would love to see/read more on this.
--
Valve is logically looking to cross the next proton-esk bridge by making sure that game libraries are not limited to x86 or x86_64. (Who knows how long x86 will even be defacto.)
The timing of this is very smart as other countries are pushing competing architectures and there will no doubt be growth in the future that benefits us (the consumer).
--
I was unaware of the claims made above that there are fully open source arm processors? If anyone has any good links please fill the rest of us in who don't get out of anticancer much :P
BlackBloodRum about 4 hours ago
Quoting: Viesta2015Not going to lie, I entirely forgot about VR in general in this case.Quoting: BlackBloodRumThis is actually good news for Arch. I mean the benefits are very real here, all around. I know some Arch users are worrying over this, but I really don't think they should.most likely preparation for the deckard since there are secret ARM builds of VR Games inside Steam that are non accessible at the moment and the only reason we know this is because of SteamDB
If I had to guess, this is preparation for Steam Deck 2? or perhaps a new SteamOS? Maybe preperation for making SteamOS an OS for anything? Something is happening either way, and with a bit of luck it'll provide that nice easy to use OS we can point all new users to and say "Use this, it works out the box for most things" as opposed to having to say "For nvidia try this distro, for amd try this one, oh and if you need this, try that distro over there, etc.
Quoting: ElectricPrismI think you guys are on the money.
A future Steam Deck and even Deckard (Standalone VR Index) would logically target ARM, RISC-V or something else as (1) better battery efficiency (2) less heat produced
Who wants to have a GPU strapped to their face outputting 66 C
I use my Steam Deck OLED every day and it's a great product, I don't personally need any better battery life than what I get but I could understand on a backpacking trip or long travel how it would be nice to get a boost.
--
Here are my notes from watching the video:
[1] automated build service -- currently this is done manually by antiz, ( thank you for your service good sir)
[2] secure signing enclave -- secure signing of packages -- centralized -- (people who use arch occasionally have to reinstall `archlinux-keyring` prior to large multi-month updates) -- this singular signing key would make it unneeded to have all these updated keys to allow software installation.
[3] This is a valve freelance contract, it simply boosts team members to spend more time doing what they are already doing to reach their goals sooner and to create better versions of these build systems that are envisioned.
[4] Speculation, that architectures that may be considered, could include: x86_64v2 x86_64v3 dram risc-v, arm
[5] I was unaware but Proton is alleged as tested on ARM processors already, I would love to see/read more on this.
--
Valve is logically looking to cross the next proton-esk bridge by making sure that game libraries are not limited to x86 or x86_64. (Who knows how long x86 will even be defacto.)
The timing of this is very smart as other countries are pushing competing architectures and there will no doubt be growth in the future that benefits us (the consumer).
--
I was unaware of the claims made above that there are fully open source arm processors? If anyone has any good links please fill the rest of us in who don't get out of anticancer much :P
I tend to forget other people don't read the Wine release notes(understandable).
Wine on ARM is under construction, since the availability of copilot+ pcs and supported since Apple bought Rossetta from CodeWeavers.
Specifically look at the Alexander Julliard notes: most of the ARM contributions go through him.
Apparently Wine still had a lot of assembly parts that had to be written to ARM.
Edit: *Apple copied Game Porting Toolkit from CodeWeavers
Many of the release summaries contain references to ARM.
Oldest easily found wine release with arm specific fixes
Also I've got a dumb maybe controversial question:
what's anti-cancer?
My speculation gives nothing useful.
Chemotherapy(I hope that's not that common among GOL users), well moderated internet fora(most of the useful sources are things like release notes and wikipedia, which are pretty well moderated) or some form of misspelling of a word I can't guess.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 4 October 2024 at 8:59 am UTC
- Running Windows ARM binaries (Win8, CE, RT etc.) on ARM hardware.
- Compiling Win32 programs against winelib to be run as a native Linux ELF on ARM hardware.
None of these involve running x86/64 apps or games on ARM.
There is however a separate project, Hangover, for that sort of emulation. It uses Box64/Flex (or even QEMU) as a backend.
Last edited by whizse on 4 October 2024 at 11:17 am UTC
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