this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Canonical's Steam Snap is Causing Headaches for Valve (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
submitted 10 months ago by pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
262 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Timothée Besset, a software engineer who works on the Steam client for Valve, took to Mastodon this week to reveal: “Valve is seeing an increasing number of bug reports for issues caused by Canonical’s repackaging of the Steam client through snap”.

“We are not involved with the snap repackaging. It has a lot of issues”, Besset adds, noting that “the best way to install Steam on Debian and derivative operating systems is to […] use the official .deb”.

Those who don’t want to use the official Deb package are instead asked to ‘consider the Flatpak version’ — though like Canonical’s Steam snap the Steam Flatpak is also unofficial, and no directly supported by Valve.

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[–] drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's a far cry from installing everything from one or two places, which I feel like used for be one of the selling points for Linux (years ago).

That's because years ago you had a choice between using the repo or compiling the package yourself.

Now before I install software, I check the website, then I check whether they offer an official flatpak or an rpm package if it's not in the official Fedora repositories, and if they don't, I check if there's an unofficial one on Flathub, which sometimes has implications.

Imagine if Fedora came with software specifically made to install and update software from all of those different sources through a simple and unified gui. That would really streamline that whole ordeal. It could even include a snap backend for masochists.

PS

Wait till you learn about nix and guix

Having options is great and one of the great things about OSS, but I feel like when it comes to "standards" like these, more collaboration instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again would be better.

obligatory xkcd

[–] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The "Discover" app from KDE and the "Software" app from GNOME actually support backend plugins, but it's far from ideal. I had an issue where a Flatpak (Tor Launcher) showed up in Discover with an update available, but when trying to update it would fail silently and show up as an update again. Updating via CLI revealed that the package was deprecated in favor of another one and it asked whether I wanted to replace it.

Even if it'd work great, it wouldn't really solve the issue that developers have to try and package their app in many different formats because not all distributions support all formats (out of the box). There isn't a clear "release in this format" for developers. And as I said, unofficial packages aren't ideal.

[–] drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Refer to the xkcd. There's never going to be a single universal standard to unite them all and in light bind them. The best you're going to get is improved support and integration.