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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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This is possibly regarding the updated OS that's on SteamDeck, which is not built on the same distro of Linux as the older SteamOS from back in the day.
I'm sure that's available somewhere too; it's not as if Valve is massively violating the GPL or something. (If they were, it would've been big news by now.)
Edit: I don't get it; what'd I say that's so upsetting/controversial/wrong?
I guess I need to verify instead of just having faith. It took a minute to find, but the FOSS parts of SteamOS (version 3, for the Steam Deck) are indeed available here: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/public
Its available, just only works on steam deck.
it's only meant to work on steam deck, if you have a computer similar to what the steam deck uses, i can also work there, but there are issues with that. Like hackintosh, basically.
There's no reason to do that though, because you could just use something like bazzite.
SteamOS as a whole is not open source. Most of it is, but it also includes proprietary software (e.g. Steam itself). This is likely why you were downvoted, as SteamOS can be kept private without violating any license thus your first statement was false.
Valve could distribute each single piece of open source software they use on request to their customers, without publishing any guide to actually build it. (Thanks for linking to Valve's repo, which seems to match this statement.)
This is how Apple does it with Darwin, the BSD-derived open source core of macOS. Without all the proprietary parts it's not useful as an OS, even though they follow all the necessary licensing.
But the standard BSD license is permissive, therefore Apple doesn't need to do that.
The GPL still applies to large parts of SteamOS (at least the kernel though since it's arch based there's probably more). So for those source code needs to be provided.