That SteamOS is unethical, similar to Windows.
lemmeee
joined 7 months ago
Steam Deck is a computer, so its users deserve to have full control over it just like their PC or smartphone.
You are correct about Steam client though. Even if they keep the internals closed, the GUI part alone would be worth forking. I wish a chrome-less version would exist.
If people can't easily modify it, then its developers have power over users. You have to trust that they will not abuse that power, but they already do - with DRM for example.
Their system (and the Steam client) is proprietary, which means you can't easily see what the software does or change it. If you can't control the software then you don't control the device. People deserve to have the 4 essential freedoms. This is why Windows is bad and it's the same with SteamOS.
Making a proprietary operating system is not the right decision. It's unethical to take away people's ability to control their own devices.
I think we need more to be honest :D
Nice! I found a few more:
My favorite song! Do you guys know any good covers or remixes?
DRM was not popular on PC before Steam became popular. It used to be possible to buy physical copies of games without DRM. On consoles that is still the case.
I didn’t participate in the used games market, but the steam sales are like paying used game prices.
I don't know, but you can't sell your game anymore if you get bored of it, so it's still a loss. Games are overpriced most of the time only to have a -75% off sale a few times a year.
I must have missed how vavle contributed to lootboxes and microtransactions, was that in their games?
Yes, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, CS:GO.
Updates are turned on by default, but honestly moat games need the regular updates and steam made those so much easier.
They have also removed content from people's games.
The devices with steamOS installed are sold to distribute steamOS…
Which is proprietary software.
f course they have to use proprietary libraries to use features. That is how it works…
So I can't release a libre game on Steam and use those features. I can't compete on the same level with proprietary games.
I think they use some very old and heavily modified version of the Linux kernel, so it's not the same Linux kernel we use on desktop. Then each phone manufacturer adds custom patches on top to support their hardware. GNU/Linux phones also require a custom kernel, but the community is working on upstreaming those patches, so that they can run mainline kernel some day (PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 probably already can now, but some stuff might not work).
Yeah, using the name Linux for both the kernel and the operating system makes no sense and it's super confusing. When people say Linux when talking about the operating system, they almost always mean GNU/Linux (like Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But then there is Alpine Linux, which isn't GNU/Linux and that makes things even more confusing. If I didn't know what Alpine Linux or Arch Linux was (and had no knowledge of distro names), based on their name I would assume they are some kind of fork of the Linux kernel. Arch Linux should have really been called Arch GNU/Linux and Alpine Linux should have just been called Alpine OS.
“Piracy” is a propaganda term. We shouldn’t use it. There is nothing wrong with sharing files.