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0 pointsStavrosK13y ago0 comments

This is irrelevant. They can add the Steam binary to their own PPA and update it as they update the client now. Steam will be able to do all those thing, like every single program in Linux can, while being installed as a system package.

The way they're doing it now is plain unclean.

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throwaway6413y ago

how is it irrelivant? if people are wanting games and stuff to be distributed through the package manager, all these issues very much apply.

Even the steam client package itself is something like 100megs, so it becomes painful without diff/delta patches. (steam updates a LOT)

StavrosKOP13y ago

I'm only talking about handling Steam updates, I agree with you on game updates. However, the Steam client can still access the user's home directory and create/access game data there, as all Linux apps do, so the current way of having Steam dump its binaries at the home dir is unclean.

Pretty much the only valid point is having to update the whole thing every release, but I've never seen the Steam client download an update that was less than 75 MB.

throwaway6413y ago

the issue is, if you have a cluster of games/etc managed by steam in your home directory that is already not under the control of package management, what do you gain by splitting out the steam client itself? it is easier from valve's perspective to just allow steam to manage its own updates along with everything else it manages, than to have a rather arbitrary split that gives you no real advantages anyways.

Steam has always been designed on both osx and windows to be a portable folder that you can move around from system to system and run stuff out of wihout worrying about installers and dependancies.

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throwaway6413y ago

how is it irrelivant? if people are wanting games and stuff to be distributed through the package manager, all these issues very much apply.

Even the steam client package itself is something like 100megs, so it becomes painful without diff/delta patches. (steam updates a LOT)

StavrosKOP13y ago

Pretty much the only valid point is having to update the whole thing every release, but I've never seen the Steam client download an update that was less than 75 MB.

throwaway6413y ago

Steam has always been designed on both osx and windows to be a portable folder that you can move around from system to system and run stuff out of wihout worrying about installers and dependancies.

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