Valve steps up support for Arch Linux with new infrastructure

Image of the Steam Deck portable PC by Valve

Valve announced a new collaboration with the Arch Linux distribution. The company revealed it will provide financial backing for two crucial Arch Linux initiatives— a build service infrastructure and secure signing enclave.

This collaboration will take off some old pains for Arch Linux. The volunteer developers work on projects in their free time. However, some tasks require an amount of time investment that volunteers alone couldn't reasonably achieve. Valve's backing will allow that focused work to be done through freelance contracts, accelerating progress.

Of these, the main one would be setting up a strong build service. This would automate building and packaging software from source for Arch Linux. It would save volunteers from mundane or repetitive tasks so they could contribute to more creative work, such as making actual software or packaging.

Furthermore, it would be more reliable because it catches errors and makes sure all the software builds cleanly. That is one of those projects that have been talked about for a very long time but never really had dedicated resources.

The other initiative is a secure signing enclave. This involves setting up an environment solely for cryptographically signing packages before release. Signatures ensure that downloads have not been tampered with and are coming from a source that is trusted. A segregated signing system will move the process away from regular development to increase security.

By directly funding work in these areas, Valve is "ultimately unblock us from finally pursuing some of our planned endeavors," said project developer Levente Polyak;

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 are incredibly grateful for Valve to make this possible and for their explicit commitment to help and support Arch Linux.

It's a serious commitment from the company, which looks on Arch Linux as strategically important for its Steam Deck. While work goes on under this partnership, Arch Linux will post updates through their mailing lists and development platforms.