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Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

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Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#61

Post by je42 »

libcg wrote: post #5

I've been running Arch on multiple machines for 10 years at this point. Been through the systemd transition. In my experience there is very little breakage, and it's easier to deal with than a huge upgrade every 6 months or more. I'm guessing Valve will not deploy Arch packages directly to the Deck, but instead do weekly/monthly releases that are properly QA'd. It should be very smooth while giving them flexibility t…

I have the opposite experience, I have had several breakages with Arch in a years time. (without Timeshift - i would have been totally lost how to fix the breakages).

So right now, if i run a system upgrade (pacman -Syu) my system would not boot.

- i had to exclude linux (nvidia,nvidia-utils) from my pacman system upgrade.

- even then most stuff seems to work, except for steam... however, i don't see any log messages that indicate whats wrong.

- so my current conclusion is not to upgrade for another week or so and then try again...

Also, during the gnome 4 transition I had a similar issue that i had to wait "several" updates until the system upgrade wouldn't break my desktop.

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#62

Post by libcg »

je42 wrote: post #61
libcg wrote: post #5

I've been running Arch on multiple machines for 10 years at this point. Been through the systemd transition. In my experience there is very little breakage, and it's easier to deal with than a huge upgrade every 6 months or more. I'm guessing Valve will not deploy Arch packages directly to the Deck, but instead do weekly/monthly releases that are properly QA'd. It should be very smooth while giving them flexibility t…

I have the opposite experience, I have had several breakages with Arch in a years time. (without Timeshift - i would have been totally lost how to fix the breakages). So right now, if i run a system upgrade (pacman -Syu) my system would not boot. - i had to exclude linux (nvidia,nvidia-utils) from my pacman system upgrade. - even then most stuff seems to work, except for steam... however, i don't see any log messages…

Sounds like these issues are caused by the nvidia driver, which I thankfully never had to deal with, and the Steam Deck won't use that either.

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#63

Post by ekianjo »

SilverRed wrote: post #55
ekianjo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arch is great and probably very rarely breaks but if it does, there is very few ways to recover the situation other than instructing users to reinstall the OS. What are you talking about? Whenever things break in Arch, I fix them in my own install, either by downgrading a package that may be causing problems, or worst case with a USB stick which can enable me to chroot in the system again. Never had to reinstall an…

The problem is you can not tell users to just go fix it themselves. This is a device that should not _ever_ require fixing. It is not ok to ever tell a casual user to open up a terminal and correct the system state. An immutable OS gives a huge safety layer by allowing all mistakes to be rolled back automatically.

You can't have an Open device with an immutable OS. And Valve is marketing this as an open device.

This is not a Switch.

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#64

Post by seba_dos1 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #42
mcbuilder wrote: post #41

I've run arch on probably a dozen or more physical machines (more if you count VMs) over the last 12 years. I can count the number of breaking updates on 1 hand. The talk about it being unstable may have been sort of true 10 years ago, but now it's just complete FUD.

I mean, everybody blaming Arch for being breaking and unstable...as if Debian or Ubuntu never were unstable. Quick to forget all the Mir, GNOME, wayland messups, huh? The huge difference with Arch is that it's usually recoverable, no matter what's broken. And that's what I like the most about it.

Debian is more recoverable though. dpkg is much more robust regarding rollbacks and installation failures in cases that pacman (by design) simply does not handle at all. It's much easier to break something in Arch and not notice at all until things start layering up (although it also means it's easier to fix things up "just enough", while Debian will give you hard time until the issue is resolved completely).

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#65

Post by kyruzic »

baq wrote: post #52
kyruzic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You corrupted your kernel. Arch had nothing to do with that, and regardless of the os if you corrupt the kernel you need to reinstall.

Wow. How’s that a reasonable answer? The OS did a very bad job at upgrading something that should be upgraded in an atomic fashion and blew up on both that and a failsafe boot to previous kernel. Neither should happen.

Unplug a windows machine, or any os, while its updating and see what happens. Y

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#66

Post by baq »

kyruzic wrote: post #65
baq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. How’s that a reasonable answer? The OS did a very bad job at upgrading something that should be upgraded in an atomic fashion and blew up on both that and a failsafe boot to previous kernel. Neither should happen.

Unplug a windows machine, or any os, while its updating and see what happens. Y

Please point me to where I said windows does a good job, because I must’ve missed writing that.

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#67

Post by SilverRed »

ekianjo wrote: post #63
SilverRed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you can not tell users to just go fix it themselves. This is a device that should not _ever_ require fixing. It is not ok to ever tell a casual user to open up a terminal and correct the system state. An immutable OS gives a huge safety layer by allowing all mistakes to be rolled back automatically.

You can't have an Open device with an immutable OS. And Valve is marketing this as an open device. This is not a Switch.

Immutable OS does not mean it is not customizable. Your own customization just go in to "layers" which are applied on top of the OS. Means that if something stuffs up, you turn off your own layers and see if the problem goes away.

Re: Why SteamOS Switched from Debian to Arch Linux

#68

Post by SilverRed »

kyruzic wrote: post #65
baq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. How’s that a reasonable answer? The OS did a very bad job at upgrading something that should be upgraded in an atomic fashion and blew up on both that and a failsafe boot to previous kernel. Neither should happen.

Unplug a windows machine, or any os, while its updating and see what happens. Y

Android and ios will survive this. Android uses an A/B partition scheme and will switch back to a working partition if the upgrade failed.
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