Friday Facts #446 - An ARM and a Frame

[GalegO]

Question: I have a Steam Deck but I don't like the UI for it, how can I change it to the same as Desktop? Cannot find into the config menus.

If you change the control scheme to "keyboard+mouse", you can get the standard UI layout, but you lose all of the gamepad functionality. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to get the standard UI layout while using a gamepad.

Understood. I'll open a post to evaluate the possibility of this. Thanks

[fraggar]

Great news for the arm64 enthusiasts! I am really looking forward to running a headless server using native arm64 on my Raspi 5, and was super excited when seeing this post.

However, I stumbled upon an issue when trying it out myself, I have a RaspberryPi 5 with Bookworm OS and have been running a headless server for a few months already by using box64. Performance-wise I'd say it runs ok, but the hassle of handling cross-compilation and such is not much worth the trouble, especially when wanting to update to the latest version. With this new arm64 release I was eager to try it out, but immediately after running the binaries I got this error:

./bin/arm64/factorio: /lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.38' not found (required by ./bin/arm64/factorio)
./bin/arm64/factorio: /lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.38' not found (required by ./bin/arm64/factorio)[/icode]

I wonder what Raspi OS was used for testing this port? I fear I may need to upgrade my OS for Factorio to run, which I am not quite ready to do so at this time.

Thanks anyways for the great effort you guys have been doing so far!

[DopplerShift]

Hey guys, I am new here but I have been playing the game for years now.

Awesome job with the ARM64 release! Been waiting on that for a while

I have been running mine on a Pi 5 since it landed and it's been great, no box64 or messing around.

Ended up wrapping it in Docker because I wanted it to update itself, so sharing in case it's useful to anyone:

https://github.com/aconti90/factorio-headless

Code: Select all

docker pull aconti90/factorio-headless

or if you'd rather not use Docker Hub

Code: Select all

ghcr.io/aconti90/factorio-headless 

amd64 and arm64, both native, rebuilt automatically whenever a new stable or experimental turns up. Compose examples and all the env vars are in the readme.

Couple of gotchas for anyone scripting the download themselves, since they cost me time:

The slug is linux-arm64 — https://factorio.com/get-download/exper ... inux-arm64

And arm64 is experimental-only at the moment. I had my build pointed at /stable/headless/linux-arm64 and spent a good while convinced I'd typo'd something before working out that it just 404s, 2.0.77 only ships linux64. So if you're automating it, check the URL actually exists rather than assuming every channel has every arch. Mine probes each one and publishes a smaller manifest when it's missing, which does mean :stable is amd64-only until arm64 shows up there.

Feel free to drop me a message or open an issue if you encounter any issue!

Happy building

[motmontheinternet]

I wonder what Raspi OS was used for testing this port? I fear I may need to upgrade my OS for Factorio to run, which I am not quite ready to do so at this time.

If it makes you feel better, the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS meets requirements. But yeah it's dumb that 2.36 isn't supported without explanation. They just changed requirements to 2.36, too.

[eugenekay]

If it makes you feel better, the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS meets requirements. But yeah it's dumb that 2.36 isn't supported without explanation. They just changed requirements to 2.36, too.

Because we statically link our dependencies, we don't require steamrt in order for the game to run, but Steam does not allow games to opt out, so we have been targeting steamrt 1.0.
However, steamrt 1.0 does not have an ARM64 version - in fact, only steamrt 4.0 received an update to support ARM64 - so it was time to upgrade. The steamrt version is a global switch which affects all players, so when we were ready to begin distributing the ARM64 build through Steam, we had to bite the bullet and change Factorio's steamrt version to 4.0 for everyone. Fortunately, we did not notice any issues as a result of this.

[ . . . ]

After a few failed attempts having to do with incompatible glibc versions (which is a dynamic dependency that we, unfortunately, cannot avoid), I successfully booted Factorio on the Steam Frame for the first time in February 2026!

The dependency change seems fairly well-explained: glibc was updated for compatibility with steamrt4. This update from steamrt1 was required for the Steam Frame hardware.

[Kuhluh]

Everytime I read about people setting up a C or C++ cross compilation environment, I get reminded of the fact that Uber uses Zig's clang wrapper for cross compilation since it boils the setup from "install compiler + linker -> install sysroot -> pass correct target triple + pass path to sysroot" down to "install compiler + linker -> pass correct target triple".

Here a post on Medium about it in case anybody's interest got piqued: https://thamizhelango.medium.com/why-ub ... 1584e57c5b

[Npl]

The dependency change seems fairly well-explained: glibc was updated for compatibility with steamrt4. This update from steamrt1 was required for the Steam Frame hardware.

If they had to change anything for compatibility with steamrt4 they would need downgrades, you can build against an older glibc (well, down to glibc 2.0), they are forwards compatible.