Quoting: CatKillerAbsolutely not.

I don't like the Valve Time update schedule; I don't trust Valve's testing and support capabilities for generic hardware; and I don't like the restrictions caused by the read only filesystem and A/B update mechanism.

For a gaming appliance or HTPC on generic hardware I would (and do) run a generic well-supported distro.

They did it in a really odd way too. I kind of wish they had just taken the regular immutable distro route, it would have been easier to maintain and better for users if that's the kind of setup they wanted.

Quoting: Linux_Rocks

Quoting: CatKillerAbsolutely not.

I don't like the Valve Time update schedule; I don't trust Valve's testing and support capabilities for generic hardware; and I don't like the restrictions caused by the read only filesystem and A/B update mechanism.

I didn't know about the read-only file system. Now it's a hard pass from me. I already hate how locked down macOS has become because of Apple's obsessive walled garden bullshit. A read-only file system is a no go for me.

Wait until you find out about Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue or OpenSUSE MicroOS

Quoting: BlackBloodRumThey did it in a really odd way too. I kind of wish they had just taken the regular immutable distro route, it would have been easier to maintain and better for users if that's the kind of setup they wanted.

It's a fairly standard approach for an appliance or coming from the embedded space. You have two completely independent images so if one gets broken (by any method) you can always boot into the other. Your motherboard's UEFI likely works the same way. It's robust, and is fine for an appliance that's going to be used by the general public that don't want to know about computers. I do know about computers and there are likely all sorts of things that I'd want on my computer that aren't going to be in Valve's image - not least because they need to fit two copies of the OS and some games into 64 GB, which isn't a restriction that I'll be under.

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: Linux_Rocks

Quoting: CatKillerAbsolutely not.

I don't like the Valve Time update schedule; I don't trust Valve's testing and support capabilities for generic hardware; and I don't like the restrictions caused by the read only filesystem and A/B update mechanism.

I didn't know about the read-only file system. Now it's a hard pass from me. I already hate how locked down macOS has become because of Apple's obsessive walled garden bullshit. A read-only file system is a no go for me.

Wait until you find out about Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue or OpenSUSE MicroOS

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: BlackBloodRumThey did it in a really odd way too. I kind of wish they had just taken the regular immutable distro route, it would have been easier to maintain and better for users if that's the kind of setup they wanted.

It's a fairly standard approach for an appliance or coming from the embedded space. You have two completely independent images so if one gets broken (by any method) you can always boot into the other. Your motherboard's UEFI likely works the same way. It's robust, and is fine for an appliance that's going to be used by the general public that don't want to know about computers. I do know about computers and there are likely all sorts of things that I'd want on my computer that aren't going to be in Valve's image - not least because they need to fit two copies of the OS and some games into 64 GB, which isn't a restriction that I'll be under.

Indeed, I am aware of how it works .

I still feel that for the deck in particular, it may have been better to go with a regular immutable distribution style as overall it would offer the same benefits (if it breaks, it's just boot to the last image to fix; upgrade/downgrade the OS easily without fear, etc. It's basically unbreakable.), while also offering more user control (they could edit the image easily, with persistent changes to new images, that won't reset, if they chose. For example by using rpm-ostree.).

Best of both worlds: Easy for normie user and customizable for techy.

Yeah, those Valve guys, they're just not very smart.