With the Steam Frame and Steam Machine launching with SteamOS Linux this year, we’re going to again see a nice boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall.
Linux has, historically, been quite messy when it comes to software distribution. We have various distribution-specific packaging formats like .deb (Debian / Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora) and the list just goes on and on. Canonical also went their own way with Ubuntu for the likes of Snap, but the real winner is going to end up being Flatpak and the main Flathub store.
Valve not showing the price of these is a pretty strong indicator that these are not going to be generously priced, which is why I’m not allowing myself to be excited about them. I think that they won’t be widely adopted enough to make a large impact on Linux as a result of the price.
Valve showed the price of the Steam Deck the day it was revealed, so I agree. This thing’s gonna be $700 if we’re lucky, which is way too high for mass adoption. Even the $400 Steam Deck entry price is gone now.
Not for a pc, as a kid I couldnt justify consoles but I could justify more expensive pcs/laptops because I could do homework and other sht on them, it runs proctor programs, browsers, and google docs just fine, microsoft online is free too. Libreoffice/onlyoffice are solid too.
It’s not just a console, it could be a college freshmans first pc that is fairly portable.
Possibly, but it’s being marketed to the console crowd. They’re not going to get big numbers from people looking for a PC. It should at least be profitable for Valve, but it’s a damn shame it had to release when hardware pricing is so messed up.
I just hope it sets a good example for other OEMs.
“What do you mean people don’t want 50+ liters of unused space?? They want Linux on their gaming computer?”
And I’m guessing the price will be high enough that other OEMs will be able to compete with it with higher specs (RDNA 4) and similar prices (within a few hundred dollars)
I expect the machine to sell much less than the deck, and even less than the frame.
Personally I’ll get the frame, I can’t justify full price for the machine (unless it’s under 500, which won’t happen with RAM as it is priced)
Even without the RAM prices being mad, there is no way it would ever be under $500. I think most industry estimates were ~$800 iirc
Anything over 600 is dead on arrival IMO.
In that case it would be valve having learned nothing from the failure of the previous steam machines largely owing to obscene pricing.
For the specs described 600 would be the most sold computer of the year. Even 800 would be reasonable seeing the prices around. I can’t justify because I already have a much more powerful & expensive desktop.
I was hoping to see a price on the Frame but I imagine with RAM prices going apeshit they’re putting that off for a bit.
mmm yes, I too like duplicated dependancies in the push for a unified distro.
Realistically that’s my only complaint about flatpak. I have 7 or 8 flatpaks installed on my system, and I think 4 seperate gnome environments installed as dependancies to them. It’s so bloaty
It’s a feature to have multiple environments. Otherwise all apps would have to stay on an old version with the lowest common dependency versions.
I really like Flatpak. Sure it uses extra disk space, but it works well, and doesn’t require admin to install
most software shouldn’t require admin to install tbh, like I install all my stuff to ~/.local/opt and ~/.local/bin and it works fine generally as long as it doesn’t need root for something. I do agree flatpak is nice for things that might need an isolated environment though, but for most of my stuff a local user based install works fine
well that depends on the… dependencies (heh) more than the program itself
AppImage works well too, I’ve been using Gear Lever for them
As another person said, having multiple versions of dependencies is part of the draw. Also, Flatpak does allow for deduplication of dependencies when multiple applications require the same version.
Who doesn’t like bloated dependencies, it’s like you get more software per software
Luckily SSD prices are going down. \S
In fairness, I have enough to value more the convenience than the extra size. Might not agree if I had a small drive
I agree. I wish Flatpak used a proper package manager. You install one Flatpak and you need the entire freedesktop sdk even if you use a fifth of it. Install a second Flatpak and maybe do it again.
bit of a hyperbole but if we didn’t stick to this shared dependency model for applications for so long we would already have the year of the linux desktop
