Link for the context

Some extra fun details from the staff discussions around this: Valve is not interested in control of the distro, but are mainly interested in funding work on projects that are chosen by Arch staff, and are already things that Arch staff wants to implement. The projects chosen are indeed things that Valve also want to be part of the distro's infrastructure, but the process has been totally in the hands of Arch staff.

I gotta say, it's been really cool to see Valve go through the process of considering OSS as not just a useful tool or worthwhile target, but as a robust collaborator.

First, they build and maintain their client on Linux, and build their games to run natively on Linux, learning that things aren't actually as difficult as it's commonly made out to be, and the things that are more difficult than they need to be can be fixed by working with and contributing to the existing community.

Then they consider building their own hardware, but try the half-way approach of building SteamOS on top of Debian, and depending on existing hardware vendors to build machines with SteamOS in mind, learning that there's a lot of unnecessary complexity around both of those approaches to that goal.

Then they learn how to develop and build 1st party hardware with the SteamLink and Steam Controller.

Then they put the lessons from the Steam Machine project into practice by dumping loads of time and effort into Proton, knowing that they won't have the market unless they can get Windows games to run on Linux in a reliable and seamless way.

Then they put all that knowledge and effort together to do the impossible: unite PC gamers of both Windows and Linux flavors under the banner of the SteamDeck, a fully gaming-focused, high-quality, and owner-friendly piece of kit that kicks so much ass that it single-handedly pulls a whole category of PC hardware out of obsurity and into the mainstream.

And what do they do with that success? Literally pay it forward by funding work on the free software that forms the plinth that their success stands upon.

Good on Valve.

Fuck you, pay me.

As a former rideshare driver: Fuckin' based.

The thought in question is that a specific group of people should stop existing. I'm sure that won't backfire either.

I think the main concern is that this is a step towards normalizing extremely frequent price changes, a la Uber surge pricing.

WAT.

Waow. MS can't decide if their users should have control of their hardware or not.

Your linux bootloader and efi config? That belongs to Windows, and it will make changes as much as it wants. A recovery partition that has no usefulness outside their own ecosystem? Yeah, they know it's fucked, and they fucked it, but it's your computer, you fix it!

They get paid when the least amount of people they insure use their services. They're not incentivized to help those they've insured. The less they have to pay out to providers, the better the executive bonuses. Thus, they are diligent in collecting premiums, but can just sit on their hands when it comes to paying out.

The more the system denies and delays a claim, the fewer insured people are willing or able to put themselves through the bureaucracy gauntlet, the fewer pay outs.

They're not in the business of insurance, they're in the business of making money from the business of insurance. It's over-complicated on purpose.

I'll admit I have zero insight and haven't looked into this, but at first glance, I don't understand why a desktop environment theme engine is unable to provide enough functionality for theme creators to do their thing without resorting to arbitrary command execution...

I trust KDE devs to address this quickly, but this is a pretty major oversight IMO...

My uncle missed Thanksgiving 2019 because he was in an Arkansas hospital for "untreatable viral pneumonia" and the various complications that came with it. Shit was fucking everywhere already by then.

Also worth mentioning: if you fuck up the door trying to get into it,

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FIX A GARAGE DOOR YOURSELF!

Light percussive maintenance to bend a panel back into shape is one thing, but never ever try to take one apart if you aren't qualified. There are dangerous springs under tension that can and will kill you.

Get a professional