this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Steam Deck Platform Driver In No Apparent Rush For Upstreaming Into The Linux Kernel (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I switched back to Steam OS from Bazzite due to some QoL issues on the OLED Deck, and there's definitely some improvements between sound, battery life, and general performance.

Makes sense why they wouldn't want to upstream their work, since it gives them a market edge, but I wish they'd introduce some kind of persistent Overlay FS, so people can install non-flatpack software. Being able to layer packages in Bazzite and utilize things like Distrobox was so nice, and keeping these improvements to themselves means the user has effectively less options.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't distrobox (and podman) come with SteamOS these days too?

You wouldn't be able to layer, but using distrobox-export from inside a distrobox container would let you export command line apps as well as graphical ones too. The graphical apps will even show up in your menu and can be pinned as well.

(Of course, if something is available on Flathub already as a Flatpak, installing the app via Discover is easier and better. While Flathub has a lot of apps, it doesn't have everything, so being able to pick and choose from any distribution using distrobox is nice for a very large selection of software.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh, does it? I'll have to go check! That's almost as good as layering, especially since you can have anything from Ubuntu to Fedora to Arch.

Edit: Well, I'll be goddamned. It most certainly does have distrobox and podman already installed!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

"OK. Each time we get a steam update we drink a shot!"

"Yeah!!"

[Steam OS 3.6]

th-881915218

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Sadly, more than two years later, this driver still hasn't been upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel and it looks like it could still be months before it happens.

The Steam Deck platform driver for the Linux kernel is used for CPU/device fan controller, accessing the DDIC registers, battery temperature measurements, display-related settings, and USB Type-C event notifications.

Valve has been carrying a downstream version of this driver in their own kernel used by SteamOS and ships on the Steam Deck.

After being quiet on the mailing list for over a year, finally in late April a user asked about the state: "I want to run the latest mainline kernels on the Steam Deck and came across some newer patches of yours (and others) in Valve's steamOS kernel that may(?)

They seem to be required for properly handling input, thermals, etc on this device.

Andrey Smirnov has been working for Valve going back several years on various SteamOS kernel changes and upstreaming.

The original article contains 309 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 48%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

It tried, but it missed some good context

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I always know that my DKMS setup for the platform driver failed when I hear my fans whining after a kernel update. Gotta figure out what's going wrong some day now.