Yes, they shouldn’t because they have no evidence and are therefore arrogantly asserting something they have no reason to believe

I never denied the possibility, I denied we should believe in those things

it sounds incredibly arrogant to me to assume you know something without evidence

No neither do astrophysicists, they think it might be true with healthy skepticism

or they have proven it true with observation, neither of which applies to religion

are you confident you’re not the arrogant one?

be·lief noun

1. an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

“his belief in the value of hard work”

\2. trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.

“I’ve still got belief in myself”

I don’t believe in anything without evidence and if I do I seek to correct that

belief without evidence is a failure of the mind

i don’t assume the vast majority of astrophysics is true

neither do astrophysicists

Evidence exists for astrophysics

I do not, why would I?

nobody asserts that, they assert that we don’t know, which is accurate it is religion that asserts it happened through magic

I do understand that it is something people made up without any evidence.

I am this arrogant about anything without evidence, if you present evidence, then I have a reason to believe.

All religion is untested made up nonsense, no exceptions.

If you make it up without evidence, it can be thrown out without evidence. Athiests make no claims, there’s nothing to throw out.

The real answer to these questions is “we have no idea”, everything else falls under russel’s teapot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

They were not. I’d need a source for that.

That’s the difference between some randos promising it and the devs extensively testing it and confirming it works universally.

You could use this excuse to justify almost any type of proprietary software. Most apps are not deeply integrated into the system. That doesn’t make them ethical.

I’m using that excuse to justify steamos vs windows, you’re assuming a vacuum, I do believe proprietary software is bad, just that you’re fighting the wrong battle.

It is more free than Windows and I never said otherwise. I just said that it was still unethical.

“I see very little benefit from people using GNU/Linux if they will use proprietary software on it”

“It doesn’t matter how many nonfree packages it has, because even one package makes the whole thing proprietary.”

The entire time my point has been steamos isn’t worth criticising because it’s just archlinux with steam, criticize steam. I’m totally fine with criticising steam, i’m not fine with criticising steamos, because it is literally just linux but with steam preinstalled. All of your issues are simply issues with steam, not steamos.

But those people don’t care about their freedom. That’s the problem. They will always use proprietary software, because they only care about convenience or features. We need to change that. Only then our movement will benefit from this. We can’t let them get attached to Valve as long as they make proprietary software.

That won’t change, they simply do not have the same values as you, so, be pragmatic and try to make FOSS software outcompete proprietary software, in this case, we need steam, we need people to move to linux as much as possible, and only once we have everyone on FOSS operating systems, THEN we attack the clients, that should be the order of operations. Steam is absolutely still bad because it’s proprietary but steamos is a good thing for the free software movement.

You are assuming that a company that makes proprietary software won’t try to get more power over their users. Why wouldn’t they? Their users don’t even care. Sandboxing improves your security (which is good), but not your freedom. You still can’t see what the software does or change it, so that program is still unethical.

I’m not saying they wouldn’t, i’m saying they’ve structured things in a way that they literally cannot, there’s no path to do that for them, that’s why if they wanted to do that they would’ve HAD to use BSD, there is no choice for them in the matter because this is based on linux.

Nobody thought eglstreams was a good idea or a solution, gbm fixed being able to use wayland at all, no devs were saying that would resolve all the issues. The issues are currently solved, you can test the changes yourself if you don’t believe me, but this truly is the end

i’m not saying wait for the next release because they might solve it, I’m saying the current set of patches is confirmed to solve it.

??? I have been following this for years and nobody I have seen has ever said that with nvidia on wayland

either way it has been tested and actually does so…

You’re still not listening to me, or yourself, really.

My goal isn’t to increase the number of GNU/Linux users at all cost.

Neither is mine, the cost is extremely minor in this case, because steam is a gaming client, and the fundamental nature of a gaming client is non-essential and not integrated into the system deeply at all. What you fail to understand is people being on windows is way worse in every single way than them having one proprietary app on their computer.

There’s no situation where one more person switching to steamos isn’t switching from windows where they were also using steam, this means every single person that steam converts is a massive net positive. Do you see how that is not “at all costs” at all?

I see very little benefit from people using GNU/Linux if they will use proprietary software on it, unless it’s only a temporary solution for them.

There is huge benefit, more people are using much more FOSS, and the fact is, if more people were on linux, there’d be more foss software, which means better alternatives and outcompeting proprietary software.

If people stop using one proprietary platform only to be trapped in another without realizing it, then something went wrong.

Steam ain’t that. It’s video games. And nothing else.

Some people ditch Android only to use SailfishOS. Or they ditch Twitter only to use Threads. So I hope those new GNU/Linux users who know nothing about the Free Software movement don’t get trapped again.

Steam isn’t going to be what “traps” them or anything, especially when it’s sandboxed, and when you sandbox it, it has literally no integration with the rest of your system at all. This is a massive win over using windows. Which anybody who is switching to steamos is certainly already on and wouldn’t switch to linux without it under any circumstances.

Not other parts of steamos, just steam

I do criticize those things, my goal is to get as many people using free software as possible, valves work with steam has enabled that, also, you say the goal is to get as many people to use free software as possible while saying the goal isn’t number of users, that’s a contradiction.

i don’t have a problem criticizing steam for being proprietary, I just recognize that steam is massively beneficial to FOSS and from a pragmatic standpoint they are nothing like and will never become nearly as big of a problem as windows

Why do companies make proprietary software and operating systems at all? Because they think it will make them the most money. Why is Steam proprietary? Why is Valve keeping secrets from their users? They could do the ethical thing and make it Free Software.

Steam is proprietary because they want to make money, they aren’t making the operating system from scratch, their goal is to sell stuff on the steam store. Why are they using linux instead of BSD for this, if you think that they have some other scheme? I’m against proprietary software, but the fact is, this extremely optional proprietary software for exclusively gaming is the reason linux is going to get users, a shitload of work done, and will be a usable operating system for anyone. If you don’t like steam, just don’t install it, and no proprietary software will hurt you, and you won’t ever need to install it.

Making proprietary software is already unethical by itself, because users can’t control it. They already do other malicious things like restrict their users with DRM. I’m glad that Valve, Microsoft and other companies contribute to Free Software. They deserve to be praised for this, but it shouldn’t distract us from the evil things they do, which we should criticize. Why can’t we praise Valve for the good things and criticize them for the bad things?

Because you’re criticising them for steamos, which is not proprietary, except for the steam client itself. Criticise the steam client, not steamos.

Steam is part of SteamOS, so I criticize both.

Steam is a single piece of software put upon a completely FOSS operating system, steamos is just immutable arch linux. You can even uninstall steam.

For me personally it doesn’t matter, because I will never use such system. But I want other people to have freedom, I want to live in a free society. For that to happen we must destroy proprietary software, not include it in our distros and pretend that nothing is wrong. I don’t want to see people spied on, restricted by DRM and abused in other ways. That’s wrong, so we have to talk about it and show people that it doesn’t have to be like this.

They do have freedom, they can easily uninstall steam, and steam doesn’t have control over their system because the entire operating system is FOSS, they just have the steam client, which is a completely optional extension and can’t be used for harm when it’s closed. It being proprietary is undoubtedly a bad thing, but that doesn’t make steamos bad, that just makes steam itself bad.

If your goal is to get as many people using as much FOSS software as possible, steam is your ally. It’s what’s getting people to switch to linux in huge numbers, it will push open source forward, not backwards. Your thinking is far too black and white. If steam didn’t exist, and all these developers weren’t working on linux, I wouldn’t even be a linux user, and MANY MANY others would never consider using linux. Because of valves work, linux is usable for an entire massive additional group of people. The same is not even a little true for, say, microsoft, who only help linux in a way that doesn’t harm windows.

Since the OS comes with Steam, clearly having some GPL licensed packages doesn’t prevent them from adding proprietary packages and not all software is GPL licensed. Also Android and SailfishOS exist and both are proprietary.

…again, why would they? They’ve thrown all these resources into helping foss, why would they perform a massive duplication of effort and create more than steam? What could the possible benefit be? I don’t see any incentive whatsoever to do that. If you don’t like steam you uninstall it and enjoy all the benefits that valve is giving us.

There is nothing wrong with commercial software. The issue is with proprietary software, because it takes away user’s freedom. Free Software can be commercial too[1]. It doesn’t matter how many nonfree packages it has, because even one package makes the whole thing proprietary. Google Chrome is not Free Software just because it’s based on Chromium, which is a Free Software project. Android is based on Free Software and it’s also proprietary. Their goal is to blur the line and it’s clearly working. I’m not denying that SteamOS is more free than Windows, but it’s still bad and since they can get away with this, I suspect it will keep getting worse just like other proprietary operating systems.

I’m aware of this, I’m just completely unaware of what malicious thing you’re implying valve will possibly do, other than make steam itself worse, which, again, if you don’t like steam, you’ll still be reaping massive benefits, they’re paying many full time developers to do literally nothing but make linux better. Steamos is not worth taking issue with, STEAM ITSELF is where you should point your attention.

In the same way I wouldn’t worry if somebody made a version of debian with google chrome preinstalled, I’m not worried about steamos. It’s worse for freedom, if you use that version of debian, but pragmatically, how much does this matter? All you need steam for is to play video games, you uninstall steam and then steamos is literally just immutable arch linux.

This isn’t an android-like situation even remotely, android simply uses the linux kernel, valve uses full desktop FOSS linux.