Does anyone know why SteamOS is based on arch rather than Debian?

LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Linux@lemmy.ml – 131 points –

Just got a steam deck and immediately checked out the desktop mode, and I was somewhat surprised to see KDE and pacman as opposed to GNOME and apt, I have nothing against the former though a strong preference for the latter, anyone know why Volvo went in this direction?

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I don't think that's a good point, since they make their own immutable images, so they can use whatever versions of software they want, and you don't normally get to update them with the rolling release

Yeah but what's the point of using Debian when you're going to have to manually package newer versions of a lot of software?

Why would they manually package them? Just grab the packages you need from testing or sid. This way you keep the solid Debian stable base OS and still bring in the latest and greatest of the things that matter for gaming.

But why go through those hoops? What is the advantage Debian brings when you have to cherry pick packages and their dependencies from Sid? Stability is no longer an advantage when you are cherry picking from Sid lol.

Stability is no longer an advantage when you are cherry picking from Sid lol.

This makes no sense. When 95% of the system is based on Debian stable, you get pretty much full stability of the base OS. All you need to pull in from the other releases is Mesa and related packages.

Perhaps the kernel as well, but I suspect they’re compiling their own with relevant parameters and features for the SD anyway, so not even that.