Steam Client Bootstrapper font is ugly

[yaakov-h]

Clean installation of Ubuntu 12.04. The bootstrapper update progress UI uses a rather horrible font that matches neither the Steam website, Steam client UI or Ubuntu UI.

(GFM doesn't seem to like this, any help?)

Vendor: GenuineIntel

Speed: 3411 Mhz

4 logical processors

4 physical processors

HyperThreading: Unsupported

FCMOV: Supported

SSE2: Supported

SSE3: Supported

SSSE3: Supported

SSE4a: Unsupported

SSE41: Supported

SSE42: Supported

Network Information:

Network Speed:

Operating System Version:

Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS (64 bit)

Kernel Name: Linux

Kernel Version: 3.2.0-23-generic

X Server vendor: The X.Org Foundation

X Server release: 11103000

Video Card:

Driver: VMware, Inc. Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build: RELEASE;

Driver Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.4

Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel

Monitor Refresh Rate: 59 Hz

VendorID: 0x15ad

DeviceID: 0x405

Number of Monitors: 1

Number of Logical Video Cards: 1

Primary Display Resolution: 1476 x 871

Desktop Resolution: 1476 x 871

Primary Display Size: 15.39" x 9.06" (17.83" diag)

                                    39.1cm x 23.0cm  (45.3cm diag)

Primary VRAM Not Detected

Sound card:

Audio device: Cirrus Logic CS4297A rev 3

Memory:

RAM: 3948 Mb

Miscellaneous:

UI Language: English

LANG: en_US.UTF-8

Microphone: Not set

Total Hard Disk Space Available: 41896 Mb

Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 26886 Mb

Installed software:

Recent Failure Reports:

[Majkl578]

AFAIK it's using zenity or something similar 3rd party library, so it's not directly in steam's hands.

[yaakov-h]

Well the Zenity sample looks much better.

[gdrewb-valve]

It's using plain X, nothing else, and so is limited to regular X fonts.

[m4tx]

Why not use GTK+ or Zenity then? You use both of these technologies already in Steam client - Zenity for "You moved Steam content" dialog and GTK+ for Steam UI. On Mac, there's nice, native-looking update dialog - why not use similar solution in Steam for Linux? Btw., whole dialog on Linux looks horrible, not only the font ;>

[gdrewb-valve]

It's deliberately minimal as it runs first and may need to build the environment that Steam needs. The aesthetics are not a priority for the code.

[V10lator]

@gdrewb-valve I fully understand what you are saying but the environment Steam builds for itself at that step neither includes Zenity nor GTK+. You assume that both are there later, so why not use them here, too?

Of course this is low priority, but it would still be a nice feature. :)

[gdrewb-valve]

The current approach gives us maximum flexibility and the downside is small so there isn't much push to change.

[yaakov-h]

the downside is small

I'd say the user's first impression of Steam being that of something from 20 years ago is a decent-sized downside.

[ivanaugustobd]

It's almost 2020 and.. (Fedora 31)

[mlg556]

I genuinely thought I downloaded the "wrong" Steam and it was malware, such a shame :(

[cpuccino]

How is this still a thing... Will this get updated when they update the steam ui to be more like Steam OS 3.0?

[nm2107]

Probably this could help : https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/33oxcd/tiny_issue_ugly_font_on_steam_updater/

( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_configuration#Replace_or_set_default_fonts )

I haven't tried it yet tho.

[n4rzul]

Mid 2024. I hate it. Honestly, I'd rather see a terminal session launched with the details than this abomination.

[bunabyt3]

I know I'm gonna get murdered for this, but I think it looks quite nice, especially for what it is. The bootstrapper UI must be minimal and clean, which this is. It does what it needs to do.

[fgclue]

I'm really confused. Steam seems to be using zenity (or at least Gtk) for a progress bar. Why can't we have that for the bootstrapper?

[fgclue]

I should probably mention that's it a progress bar that shows up after the bootstrapper.

[TheBoctor]

I'm really confused. Steam seems to be using zenity (or at least Gtk) for a progress bar. Why can't we have that for the bootstrapper?

Because, as said ages ago, the initial bootstrapper is purposely dependency-light to make sure it works correctly no matter what. I don't even know if Zenity is supposed to be a mandatory dep at that stage in the first place. It's a lot more ad-hoc and harder for both developers and users to discern issues, when calling completely external binaries like that. The "ugly" dialog is completely in-house, avoiding these problems entirely. Zenity is also more opinionated now, as it's an official GNOME project, so has switched to Libadwaita theming. Unless you use GNOME, it will not give you the desired visual consistency at all. People would need to install an old GTK3 build or use Qarma, and this is delving into extra complexity and reliance on other maintainers to a degree that I don't think Valve would even consider it.

Zenity also doesn't get properly interrupted or display anything useful if an error happens during unpacking a Steam Runtime. I personally don't think smooth fonts and prettier branding are worth this much technical debt for a dated-looking, functional window that we rarely ever see. Imo it's one of those bits you would really not want to be responsible for "breaking," if you were the last developer to touch it.

Mid 2024. I hate it. Honestly, I'd rather see a terminal session launched with the details than this abomination.

Sounds good and would give more verbose output, but deducing the user's terminal emulator is deceptively complicated: #665 #1476 #3980 #9265 This is assuming the user even has a terminal emulator installed. Of course it's silly to be missing one entirely, but most distros will technically allow it.