The Arch Linux team is now working directly with Valve — SteamOS and Arch should both benefit greatly

The Arch Linux team has announced on its public mailing list that it will be entering into a direct collaboration with Valve. This is a big deal for several reasons, but let’s start with why and how it happened. If you’re familiar with Valve and Steam Deck, you may already know that the Deck uses SteamOS 3, which is built on top of Arch Linux. Thanks to the Arch Linux base and Valve’s development of the Proton compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux, we now have a far improved Linux gaming scene, especially on Valve’s Steam Deck and Deck OLED handhelds. 

While Valve’s specific reasons for picking Arch Linux for Steam Deck remain unknown, it’s pretty easy to guess why it was picked. Mainly, it’s a particularly lightweight distribution maintained since March 2002, which lends itself well to gaming with minimal performance overhead. A more intensive Linux distribution may not have been the ideal base for SteamOS 3, which is targeted at handhelds like Steam Deck first.

As primary Arch Linux developer Levente Polyak discloses in the announcement post, “Valve is generously providing backing for two critical projects that will have a huge impact on our distribution: a build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave. By supporting work on a freelance basis for these topics, Valve enables us to work on them without being limited solely by the free time of our volunteers.”

Polyak continues, “This opportunity allows us to address some of the biggest outstanding challenges we have been facing for a while. The collaboration will speed up the progress that would otherwise take much longer for us to achieve, and will ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors […] We believe this collaboration will greatly benefit Arch Linux, and are looking forward to share further development on the mailing list as work progresses.”

These quotes go to show how bigger corporations like Valve can still be a helpful, desirable influence in the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. While the rules of FOSS dictate that Valve was under no obligation whatsoever to give back to the community in any way, it’s had a great track record so far through Proton and is now directly funding the continued development of Arch Linux, which forms the foundation of its own SteamOS 3 operating system. It’s true that volunteers in FOSS make that part of the tech world go round, but it’s always nice when these projects can actually afford to pay people to get the work that needs to be done for the rest of our enjoyment.

In the long-term, the funding touted should, at minimum, allow Arch Linux to improve the security of its distribution and provide more structured releases compared to its current near-continuous update cycle. This could also lead to greater long-term improvements and feature additions, perhaps even ones that will benefit SteamOS 3 and its gaming performance, but for now, that part remains in the air.