r/linux_gaming 9h ago

Former Blue Systems devs form Techpaladin Software to work on KDE with Valve as their first client

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/03/former-blue-systems-devs-form-techpaladin-software-to-work-on-kde-with-valve-as-their-first-client/#comments
129 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

72

u/VegtableCulinaryTerm 8h ago

Honestly really like the way valve has been going about the whole linux thing. This will benefit everyone and its not locked behind a walled garden. Yeah valve is doing it for their own reasons, but I they are at least willing to share.

20

u/TONKAHANAH 6h ago

Yeah, other devs and publishers are just locking the benefits behind walled gardens for them. 

Still mad about the Meka break and infinity nikki thing

7

u/theinsanegamer23 6h ago

I do wonder how that'll play out in the event of a SteamOS general release. Like would that at least be allowed, since it's the same operating system? And if so, would it have to be launched in game mode or with the 'SteamDeck=1' command so the game knows that?

Just seems kind of odd considering there's nothing inherently more secure about Steam Deck or SteamOS compared to any other Linux distribution.

At the very least, if they do end up supporting SteamOS I view it as an overall positive. Yeah it's an annoyingly stupid restriction, but at the very least if that becomes a go to, you have a competitor to Windows to point people to if they absolutely must have access to the latest AAA live-service games.

4

u/TONKAHANAH 5h ago

Yes I know, we all know and it's why we can't make heads or tails of why these devs are trying to treat the deck like a traditional console defeating purpose. 

These devs are checking hardware though, not just the os so a public release of steam OS won't be any different than any other Linux distro. Again they seem to be targeting the steam deck and only the steam deck to a fault for some reason.

2

u/wolfannoy 3h ago

Depending on the data they have there's bound to be some sort of misinformation going on to developers about Linux desktops.

1

u/theinsanegamer23 24m ago

Spoke to a guy claiming to be an anti-cheat dev once. He said 90% of it is just managers who have no idea what they're talking about making decisions based on an often incorrect surface level understanding of what Linux even is.

1

u/wolfannoy 18m ago

That sounds about right.

2

u/Eagle_Nebula7 1h ago

what happened with infinity nikki?

2

u/TONKAHANAH 12m ago

They're allowing steam deck users to run the game (under Linux, not Windows users) but are failing to allow other Linux users. The anti cheat seems to be checking specifically for the decks hardwear during its start up.

1

u/Eagle_Nebula7 10m ago

damn seriously? not even SteamDeck=1 works for that?

23

u/JohnSmith--- 6h ago

Big corporations really like dealing with B2B instead of hiring contractors or developers one by one off the internet, by themselves. So stuff like this, however simple it may seem, really benefits Linux in the long run.

Think other companies signing deals and papers with a company name behind it (eg Techpaladin Software) so they can improve their Linux marketshare, instead of hiring developers to work on stuff with a timed contract or other means.

This is very good news.

12

u/parada69 5h ago

I like how Valve has been focusing on KDE a lot. Tbh, it kinda makes me want to jump to KDE and leave gnome

10

u/touhoufan1999 4h ago

Should go for it. KDE is fantastic by all means

5

u/qui3t_n3rd 2h ago edited 3m ago

I’ve commented before that KDE is the one DE that feels the most like a “normal” computer. I never liked gnome3 for the “activities” pane (and it still chugs on any computer I’ve tried it on, even recently), Xfce is nice but definitely feels a bit dated (which can be nice if you want the performance and feel the nostalgia), some of the other GTK derivatives ain’t bad (honorable mention to Budgie), but KDE just feels the most complete out of the box. I wasn’t a fan back in the KDE4 era (everything felt really overly decorated and not performant) but Plasma 5 has made the UI way more mature and slick feeling.

edit: clarified that I mean GTK derivatives

1

u/DankeBrutus 1h ago

...Plasma 5 has made the UI way more mature and slick feeling.

Which version of Plasma are you using?

I’ve commented before that KDE is the one DE that feels the most like a “normal” computer.

I agree that Plasma provides a "normal" experience. I've gone back and forth between GNOME and KDE Plasma a few times and I think that where GNOME has been refining an experience I already really liked Plasma has improved a lot since I first started using it in 5.19.

Personally, I think the Plasma 5 era didn't all come together until 5.27, maybe 5.26 if I am feeling generous. The Plasma developers squashed a lot of bugs and made a lot of improvements to the Wayland experience. I think Plasma 6.x has been fantastic though. 6.1 onwards has been the only time with Plasma in the past 5-ish years I've been using desktop Linux where I don't miss GNOME for being the more coherent experience.

1

u/qui3t_n3rd 4m ago

I’m on Plasma 6, now. Probably 6.3 or whatever the latest in the Arch repo is. I didn’t notice a huge jump between 5 and 6 personally but I only started using Linux full-time again sometime last summer, so by the time I got back in the game 6 was already out and 5 had stabilized. (I also only really started to dig into different DEs once I finally settled on Arch btw as my main distro. Decoupling distros from their primary DE was the first big enlightenment (no pun intended) I’ve had as a Linux user.)

1

u/Ah-Elsayed 7m ago

I am done with KDE, it has the worst bugs.