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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2026
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Why bother disabling cdrom drivers in the first place? It comes with the kernel for decades and costs virtually nothing to load.
KISS
Keep it simple and stupid.
Anf that means dropping feature thay arent in use anymore.
The kernel has a ton of optional modules that they'd be stupid to include them all. They certainly don't need support for an obscure Quebec companies GPUs that stopped producing in the 90s.
Its pretty standard operating to cut out any cruft you can, saves on storage, boot times, etc. This one was probably saving milliseconds and kilobytes, so presumably not much thought was given to disabling it, nor needed to reenable it.
Again?! An unwarranted attack by the anglophones against the Québécois GPU artisans!
L’enterrement de cyber-crapaud!!
Listen here frenchy!
Ouuuuu....you done fucked up.
Wannabe Frenchies, the French don't care about them.
Mon Dieu!
L'américaine ne pas bien!
(Oh god please don't fry me for my French, this was attempted without AI translation and a very long gone French education)
Maudit anglais !
The existence of it also adds another potential attack vector for hackers. It's unlikely that this would be a real problem, but any additional software is just another place that could be exploited.
Thats a really good point, especially with the more obscure modules.
It must be interesting for steam to develop a hackable device in a market that usually locks their hardware down so aggressively.
I mean just because steam doesn't mind you tinkering with their own hardware doesn't mean they should not try to secure the base system OS against outside intrusion (like a RAT entering in via an AUR installation using modules as an entry point)
Yeah, sorry I meant more in the way that a user in a VM is a really different threat surface to a full root user.
For sure both should apply security patches, and avoid malware, I'm just wondering even within that model what the differences are.
True but part of Valve's marketing for Frame is the expansion slot, so at least peripherals compatible with ARM hardware were probably meant to be enabled and this was an oversight.
Thats valid, and due to the speed of the update I wouldn't be surprised if it was already in their testing suite.
How unloaded kernel module can slow boot time?
Still needs to be read from disk/flash, for the kernel to know it exists. And more relevantly every module has a number of dependencies that will all contribute to size/boot times in their own way.
Maybe even milliseconds is giving it too much, but bloat is really important especially near the release of new hardware.
I imagine the last thing anyone was worried about in crunch time was if they enabled enough random hardware in their config file.
They disabled them to save boot time.
Not everything is included by default, otherwise kernel gets larger for no reason as do possible CVE issues. Its good practise to only include what is needed.
I had to add CDROM drivers on my Linux machine when I added an external CD after install.
Have you ever configured the kernel? As in
make menuconfig.There's a zillion options in there and best practices dictates that you only enable that which you need. For example, why would you enable support for sound cards that don't exist in your board? Beyond wasting space, it could enable some vulnerability discovered in the future.
Example: My PC doesn't have a MIPI DSI display connector (or support for one on the motherboard), so why would I enable support for that in my kernel? Sure, I could compile it as a module and let it sit there, taking up a few kilobytes of space on my hard drive but why?
It makes no sense to support CD ROMs on a VR headset so I completely understand why they didn't enable the driver. Even though it's a "real PC", the Steam Frame is still embedded hardware.
I want to know why this person wants CD ROM support! The Steam Frame has at least a 256GB SSD and a Micro SD card slot. Just put the ISO (or .bin/.cue files) on one of those and mount it like any other loopback filesystem or use FUSE
cdemu(yes, Linux has support for that built-in; unlike Windows haha). It'll be a zillion times faster and a vastly superior experience!Aside: Yes, I know Windows 11 can natively mount an ISO file but it only supports a limited subset of the filesystems that you can find on CD/DVD ROMs. So unless the image is ISO9660 with the Joilet extension or UDF, it's not going to work. Example: Trying to mount a PS1 CD ROM works in Linux but not Windows. Not without 3rd party stuff, anyway.
Porn? Maybe some early VR DVDs or maybe they are burning / buying content that way..I have no clue I'm not familiar with the space.
Maybe music? Queue up some cool visuals in the goggles while listening to we tunes.
Any CD or DVD can be ripped into a mountable/runnable .iso file. There's no reason to keep the CD/DVD ROM hardware connected.
Only SSD space would limit you. And I guess physical media being easier to manage for longer term storage.
Free good publicity for “fixing” it.
Uhm, they just did not thought of enabling the kernel module because it's an embeeded system that has no CD/DVD/BlueRay reader...
… it’s intended to have stuff added to it. It’s like having a modular pc without the drivers for controllers or a keyboard and mouse.
Nothing wrong with good publicity for listening to their users.
Good publicity from... having a bug?
How’s this a bug?
And cd support is the current hot issue with gaming. It’s free publicity, not many people know about it being already available and they artificially limited it. So even if people know and get it out there, the publicity generated is far more positive and washes that out.
This is a common marketing tactic. They look like the good guys for adding a feature that was “requested”. Because of course people are gonna bring it up with everything going on.
Still clearly is now an intended feature, that yeah I'd even consider it being overlooked as a bug.
Assuming every single thing they do is a calculated, profit driven decision is like blaming all your bad luck on the devil, without proof youre just swatting imaginary faries.
I'd be insanely surprised if like 1 TV commercial would market leagues above "some company most old people don't recognise changed something about a thing most people don't know how works. The company claims its a positive".
IT'S NOT THE DEVIL IT'S GABE NEWELL
STEAM SKIMS 15% OFF OF EVERY MARKET TRANSACTION
30% OFF OF EVERY GAME PURCHASE
THOSE TRANSACTIONS ARE DENOMINATED IN FUN BUCKS THAT YOU ALREADY PAID TAXES ON
EVERY TIME AN ITEM CHANGES HANDS, THE FUN BUCKS DIMINISH AND VALVE KEEPS A FRACTION
YOU CAN'T TAKE OUT THE FUN BUCKS FROM THEIR CIRCUIT LEGALLY, BECAUSE IT'S LITERALLY A FUCKING CASINO
EVERY VALVE GAME IS A STORE FRONT FOR LITERAL FUCKING NFTS AND LOOTBOXES THAT CONTAIN NFTS
AND YOU GUYS KEEP SUCKING THE COCK OF A GUY WHO DOESN'T JUST OWN A YACHT BUT A YACHT COMPANY THAT HE OWNS BECAUSE OF THE ABOVE
It's literally DIGITAL COIN CLIPPING
Also Steam acquired its user base in the first place by vendor lock-in on Quake mods. (Counter-Strike derived from Navy Seals Quake, Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod, and Half-Life is a Quake total conversion originally sold on a CD-ROM in a box.)
And this is why it works, people make excuses for them when people point this stuff out.
I would be extremely disappointed with their marketing group if this didn’t come up.
But sure, it’s a “bug” since it’s “now” an intended feature and they get credit for fixing it. That’s incredibly backwards thinking. You’re making my case for me, while defending this corporation. It’s crazy how apparantly only Valve is somehow immune to this here.
So what's the marketing team say when 1500 indexes join a botnet cause they didn't properly audit the CDrom code?
Really worth the potential 3 extra sales, by ruining your entire reputation as youre trying to build it.
Hyperbole is not a good look, especially when you’re clearly using fake numbers to make it so lopsided in your favor.
Clearly it was so easy they could do it so fast (article specifieds 10 minutes even for you….), so why didn’t they? It couldn’t have been for an audit, and if it was, that wasn’t that robust of one of its out so fast now isn’t it? I wouldn’t trust a 10 minute audit, that’s nuts.
Quit making excuses for them.
And as I said it’s a common marketing tactic, guerilla marketing uses the exact process you’re decrying.
Why not? Hyperboles are a literary tool, and meant to be used.
Unfortunately its as off topic as your random hate for companies and literary structure, so I'm a bit hesitant to continue this debate.
That being said I'd assume it was in their test suite considering their haste.
Doing things the wrong way will always be cheaper, Elon had the same argument as you when he used a padlock to secure a datacenter worth of confidential twitter data. It makes money immediately, but anyone with a 2and grade education realises time exists beyond the next quarterly report.
Properly auditing and testing software takes time, looks like shit quarterly, and develops a long term following leading to stable profits. I see no reason for Steam to have changed from this path.
Hyperbole using extremes at both ends to bias a point is a fallacy and not conversing in good faith. It’s a tool when used correctly, you have not.
You’ve never heard of guerrilla marketing before have you?
This isn’t something new that they’ve done, why do you think it can be called out, theres even wikipedia pages where you can see examples of other companies doing this. You’re not seriously thinking I’m coming up with this new novel never heard of thing before…. Are you…? Because that’s just clearly foolish.
Wait so its incorrect to say "its as hot as hell in here"?
I'm explicitly implying it is truly hot as hell, while not even addressing the possibility its cold as shit as well. Hell I'm not even using it to describe the fallacy that it is, in fact, not hot as hell, as hell may not even exist physically - much less have an average atomic kinetic energy.
Or maybe were both just being pedantic dicks cause were incorrect in our original claim?
Damn I gotta get back to English class
So that’s a yes to you don’t know what guerilla marketing is and you refuse to educate yourself.