I think this statistic would be more interesting if it filtered out all of the blatant cash-grab, asset-flip, AI generated shit that makes up a large portion of new releases.
Is it 19,000 releases with 10,000 actual sincere efforts at making a game, or 19,000 releases with 1,000 actual games.
And what’s the average number of reviews for actual games versus garbage?
I don’t disagree. It would require manual labelling by a group of people with enough patience and understanding of gaming to be able to reliably label ~60 new games every day. I’d have thought that the Steam community was large enough to achieve this though.
To put it very simply, the ‘kernel’ has significant control over your OS as it essentially runs above everything else in terms of system privileges.
It can (but not always) run at startup, so this means if you install a game with kernel-level anticheat, the moment your system turns on, the game’s publisher can have software running on your system that can restrict the installation of a particular driver, stop certain software from running, or, even insidiously spy on your system’s activity if they wished to. (and reverse-engineering the code to figure out if they are spying on you is a felony because of DRM-related laws)
It basically means trusting every single game publisher with kernel-level anticheat in their games to have a full view into your system, and the ability to effectively control it, without any legal recourse or transparency, all to try (and usually fail) to stop cheating in games.
And it’s worth noting that trusting the game developer isn’t really enough. Far too many of them have been hacked, so who’s to say it’s always your favorite game developer behind the wheel?
Or, even better, when you let a whole bunch of devs have acces to the kernel…
… sometimes they just accidentally fuck up and push a bad update, unintentionally.
This is how CrowdStrike managed to Y2K an absurd number of enterprise computers fairly recently.
Its also why its … you know, generally bad practice to have your kernel just open to fucking whoever instead of having it be locked down and rigorously tested.
Funnily enough, MSFT now appears to be shifting toward offering much less direct access to its kernel to 3rd party software devs.
More importantly, if traditional anticheat has a bug, your game dies. Oh no.
If kernel level anticheat has a bug, your computer blue screens (that’s specifically what the blue screen is: a bug in the kernel, not just an ordinary bug that the system can recover from). Much worse. Sure hope that bug only crashes your computer when the game is running and not just whenever, because remember a kernel-level program can be running the moment your computer boots as above poster said
Not all anti cheats run at startup. Some only run when you play a game. I think vanguard for valorant ran all the time at first and people were pissed. Meanwhile easy anti cheat runs only with a game. So it depends. It all sucks though.
That’s definitely true, I probably should have been a little more clear in my response, specifying that it can run at startup, but doesn’t always do so.
I’ll edit my comment so nobody gets the wrong idea. Thanks for pointing that out!
It’s not just trust of the game developer. I honestly believe most of them just want to put out profitable games. It’s trust that a hacker won’t ever learn how to sign their code in a way that causes it to be respected as part of the game’s code instructions.
There was some old article about how a black hat found a vulnerability in a signed virtual driver used by Genshin Impact. So, they deployed their whole infection package together with that plain driver to computers that had never been used for video games at all; and because Microsoft chose to trust that driver, it worked.
I wish I could find an article on it, since a paraphrased summary isn’t a great source. This is coming from memory.
It’s trust that a hacker won’t ever learn how to sign their code in a way that causes it to be respected as part of the game’s code instructions.
That’s not an accurate description of the exploit you describe. It sounds like the attacker bundled a signed and trusted but known vulnerable version of the module, then used a known exploit in that module to run their own unsigned, untrusted code with high privileges.
This can be resolved by marking that signature as untrusted, but that requires the user to pull an update, and we all know how much people hate updating their PC.
Making it super simple, it runs with full access on your machine, always. It can fuck anything up, and see everything. It can get your browser history, banking details or private messages you enter, activate your webcam or mic without you knowing, or brick your computer even.
And you can’t even check what it’s really doing on your computer because it’s a crime under US law.
Finally, it can get hacked and other people than the creator can do all these to your computer as well,as it already happened once.
I don’t know you, or what you know of the game. But I do know many people have preconceived notions of what the game is that are wrong.
If you haven’t tried it before, the early game is pretty tedious. And that can turn people off. Once you get a few bosses down and especially when you move into hard mode, it really opens up.
Protip: “It gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game.
It has to be good from the start.
If it isn’t and it can’t hook a player, you’ve just lost a customer, who likely just refunded the game as well.
Now personally: I like terraria from start to end. It got a bit boring in the middle. I used to not be able to play it at all because /something/ about the game really triggered my migraines. It doesn’t anymore, and I can play it.
Yep. The first few hours of a game are really important. If people tell me it gets better later I usually assume they are suffering from sunk-cost at that point. There are some games that genuinely start slow and end up really good, but it's not common.
Terraria is a 2D sandbox but with good progression built in with interesting bosses and items. The early game in these games are usually the most fun in my opinion, building up from nothing is satisfying.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on anything. I’m just giving honest information about the game to someone who has already said they don’t intend on playing it. I was addressing what is a common complaint about the game.
For context, I absolutely devoured that lackluster early game back in 2011. It’s just that as the game has gotten content over the years, it’s mostly been added to the latter half (probably like 2/3rds really) of the game. And also, games and peoples’ tastes have changed a lot since 2011 when the game came out.
So for me, today, the early game is a slog. And it’s something I’ve seen many others complain about. I understand the “it gets better” is often used to try to sell lackluster games, but I don’t think Terraria fits that bill. But the game legitimately gets better after the first few bosses for most peoples’ tastes.
I’d agree that “it gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game, but I dunno that a game has to be good (or at least at its best) from the start. Totally understandable if people don’t want to, or can’t invest the time into something that doesn’t grip them right away, but at least for me a slow start can be really nice, especially when a game ends up unfolding in unexpected ways later on. I can enjoy that kind of pacing, and sometimes it’s rewarding to have something start off kind of painful for one reason or another and become something much greater. At least personally I think a “weak start” can end up making the full experience better overall, as it’s kind of a part of the journey.
But of course, if you’re not enjoying it and you don’t want to continue and you want to refund it… That’s totally reasonable! A game that’s a slow burn is probably a much harder sell and not going to appeal to as broad of an audience, and I think that’s okay.
The issue is that "good" varies a lot from person to person. I like survival crafting games with an incremental tree of improvements more than boss rushes so for me it's good from the start.
I've started it so many times and it feels like I'm just mining and building houses for hours and hours, having to check some wiki to see how to trigger "the good stuff". I avoid YT "tutorials" because it's all from people who've put hundreds of hours in who assume you'll just breeze to a first boss in 20 minutes. Not knocking the game, sometimes just mining with a podcast on is relaxing, but, I dunno, it needs more oomph early on.
My kids and some friends play it all the time and I appreciate that it’s a well made, great game. I’ve watched them play it many times and enjoyed the glee emanatingfrom the players, they really do have fun.
I just can’t become immersed in that particular 2D or isometric style game. Excluding the little nightmares series and DARQ.
I think the important thing to note about Terraria is it is as much Zelda and Castlevania as it is Minecraft. That is what makes it special. A lot of the copy cats tried to do 2D Minecraft, but forgot how important the Castlevania combat was to the whole mix.
You can donate directly to Godot or FNA if you want to show support and don’t think that you’d enjoy Terraria. Personally, I love Terraria and have bought it for pretty much every system I own and everyone I know. I got interested in it after watching TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox play it. (I can’t believe that was 12 years ago!)
There could be something to say for both donating directly to Godot and trying to support Terraria in some form because you think they’re doing good.
It depends on how activist the Terraria devs are, though. If this donation is a one-of statement from them, supporting doesn’t make as much of a statement on your part.
I wonder if Valve will ever release an official desktop version of SteamOS? I think Linux adoption would really increase fast if there was a gaming focused Linux desktop distribution with the support of an established company. But does Valve want that? A full featured operating system is a lot to maintain and provide support for.
I think what could really drive adoption is if computers with Linux pre-installed was more easily accessible. Just boot the computer, choose which DE you want to install and then it’s done. It doesn’t need to be SteamOS. Just any good distro will do.
Who else has an incentive to do so other than Valve? Even when you buy a pre-built with Windows today, those things are subsidized by bloatware that’s already installed on the machine.
They don’t need to, just give them 3 screenshots and ask which they want. Show KDE, GNOME, and whatever the distro wants as the third. Maybe include some bullet points below each explaining what they are (pick one from the last two):
KDE - familiar, extensible
GNOME - modern, minimalist
Cinnamon/Budgie/MATE - something in the middle
XFCE/LXQT - super lightweight for older systems
Maybe select one by default that the OEM likes, but showing the option helps nudge them toward the idea that this is a flexible system.
Bazzite offers KDE or GNOME, and in the menu mentions KDE is what is used in SteamOS.
I installed Bazzite on my HTPC recently. It was the worst install process I’ve seen in over ten years of using Linux. I shall enumerate the problems I had:
The image is weirdly large, it’s like 9GB in size. It takes awhile to download and a weirdly long time to write to a USB stick.
Once written, you boot the image, and GRUB has the options to Install Bazzite or Test Media And Install Bazzite. By default, Test Media is selected. It always fails this test.
If you use the typical non-live environment image, the scaling is tiny on a 4k monitor, and there’s no way to adjust this.
If you use the live environment image (in beta at time of writing), it might just lock up. I had that happen twice just while clicking through the Anaconda installer.
The Anaconda installer, which I think they inherited from Fedora, was I think designed by one of the contrarian idiots who work for Gnome. There’s a DONE button up in the far upper left hand corner of the screen that sometimes acts as a back button, sometimes acts as a forward button. You have to move the mouse from the top corner of the screen to the center of the screen a lot, for no reason. The top-left corner of the screen is a dumb place to put a DONE button because most languages read top to bottom, left to right, the DONE button is where a START button should go.
There isn’t a simple way to tell it “put / on this drive, put /home on that drive.” There’s an automatic installer which will do god knows what…fail, most likely. There’s a “custom” partition dialog which I couldn’t make heads or tails of, and then there’s a “custom advanced” one that lets you set the size and position of each partition to the byte. Doing it this way apparently REQUIRES you to not only set up a /boot/efi partition, but also a /boot partition separate from /root.
If you’re in the habit of putting /, you know, operating system and software, on one drive, and /home on another drive, you have to learn from osmosis that part of Bazzite’s immutableness means that there is no /home, there’s a /var/home symlinked to /home.
And if it doesn’t randomly lock up, you’ve got Bazzite installed!
Bazzite markets itself as a newbie friendly Linux. They’ve got that configurator on their website that gives you a little Cosmo quiz about what system you have, what desktop you want etc. which is good! That is good user friendly design. But the actual software you get rattles like a Chrysler. How many noobs are going to bounce right off that?
That’s really too bad. I’ve heard great things about Bazzite, and it’s what I recommend when someone wants SteamOS.
That said, that’s a bit different from what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting OEMs ship a pre-installed Linux desktop, and users are presented an option on setup about which DE to use. So all that would change is enabling one and not the others, but they’d always be present. After install, you could switch between them if desired without messing with the package manager.
I personally use openSUSE (leap on server, tumbleweed on desktop, Aeon Desktop on laptop), and their installer is solid, but I haven’t tried it on a 4k monitor (worked fine on 1440p). Unfortunately, I don’t recommend my distro of choice because it’s not popular enough to have a good newb support network, whereas that’s basically Bazzite’s core demographic.
I don’t recommend Arch forks as a rule, unless it has fantastic support from the maintainers (e.g. SteamOS curates updates). It’s going to by break eventually, and it’s going to require manual intervention (probably minimal), and users will get mad. Maybe it’ll be fine for 6 months or a year, but it will break eventually.
That’s much less likely with something built on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or OpenSUSE. Those all have solid testing and upgrade rules, unlike Arch, which is basically “works on my machine.” I used Arch for years until I got tired of the random breakage, and now I’m on Tumbleweed which has far less breakage and stays reasonably close to Arch package versions.
My first recommendation is either Linux Mint (I prefer Debian edition) or Fedora, because those have good new user experiences and aren’t super opinionated like Ubuntu.
At least some of the problems I reported about Bazzite are inherited from Fedora. Bazzite didn’t create Anaconda.
Fedora has the problem of being generally fine, but most of the world for the last decade has been targeting Ubuntu as THE Linux distro, so there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora. Way fewer things are packaged in rpm rather than deb. I’ve never seen Linux Mint kernel panic unless I was fucking around with the video drivers, I’ve seen Fedora kernel panic.
The main reason I’m using Fedora right now rather than Mint is Mint tends to have an older codebase, and we’re at a point in PC technology where things like wayland offer support for video and graphics stuff that don’t work well under X11. like my 1440p ultrawide 144Hz monitor sitting next to a 1080p 60hz side monitor. Fedora KDE has it ready to go, Mint Cinnamon does not.
there’s a lot if Git repos out there that don’t include instructions for Fedora
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far. Don’t look for RPMs or debs, look for your distros package, and failing that, look to add a repo tons of people online recommend for whatever you’re using (e.g. RPMFusion IIRC). The vast majority of what you want will be there.
If it’s something you really can’t live without, ask on the forums for your distro, and wait until you get multiple answers from different people saying the same thing. Give it a few days too.
Installing from source isn’t a bad thing, I do it all the time. But a lot of people will trust some random post on SM and then complain that it doesn’t work or broke their system or something (see LTT’s video where he uninstalled his DE by trying to install Steam). Don’t install from source or random RPMs/debs until you’re comfortable tracking down what dependencies you need and are able to read scripts to make sure nothing funky is going on. Many posts online will be outdated, and with Linux getting more attention, malware is a growing concern.
Mint tends to have an older codebase
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
Having an older codebase is generally good for new users, since the software tends to be more tested and more people will know the workarounds. Newer software will have different issues, so be careful chasing the latest and greatest if you’re not comfortable sifting through logs to figure out what happened.
For new users, if it doesn’t exist in the repos, you’ve gone too far.
I don’t think this holds up under scrutiny. Theoretically sure, installing using your distro’s package manager is the beginner skill, compiling from source is the advanced skill.
The reality is, people transplanting from Windows often own hardware they want to continue to use, that require software that isn’t in a distro’s package manager. For me, this included a DisplayLink docking station, an Epson printer and a SpaceMouse. For some, it will include gaming keyboards or mice, stream decks, who knows what else. A lot of times, there are folks making open source software for these things, but they don’t package them. So you end up on Github as a beginner looking for the thing to make your thing work.
As you migrate into the ecosystem, you start buying hardware that is well supported by the Linux ecosystem, that problem starts to fade away.
by rpm vs deb, I wasn’t meaning downloading individual files…though I’ve done that. DisplayLink offered their driver as a .deb. At first, that Epson printer only issued a .rpm, and I had to use Alien to install a .rpm on a Linux Mint computer. With time, they offered a .deb, and eventually the printer was just natively supported by CUPS. I meant, I find that the Debian/Ubuntu repos (the dpkg/APT system that uses .deb files) have more stuff in them than Fedora’s repos (the DNF package manager that uses .rpm files) do.
Does Mint still not use Wayland?
When I built my current PC, Wayland support in Mint Cinnamon was “We’ve just now added it, it doesn’t work worth a damn but you can try it.” They’re coming along, but they’re behind.
Is an older codebase generally good for new users? The first distro I installed on an x86 PC was Mint Cinnamon 17. Quiana. On a then brand new Dell Inspiron laptop. For about 6 months, the kernel that shipped with the OS didn’t support the laptop’s built-in trackpad. I had to manually update the kernel through Mint Update for the trackpad to work. There’s problems at the bleeding edge, but there’s problems at the trailing edge as well.
I find that the Debian/Ubuntu repos (the dpkg/APT system that uses .deb files) have more stuff in them than Fedora’s repos (the DNF package manager that uses .rpm files) do.
Ah, makes sense. That’s probably because Fedora doesn’t package non-FOSS packages, so you need to use something separate like RPMFusion, and that doesn’t contain everything. There’s usually a repo for what you want, but for something really niche, yeah, Ubuntu will probably have a better chance of having it, followed by Debian.
That said, I really like the way openSUSE does it. Basically, they have OBS, which is kind of like the AUR, but it actually builds packages for you. I think that’s a much better way to handle it than building stuff from source on your local machine, since it allows you to share that package (i.e. dev machine vs other machines you have) and at least track down the dependencies needed since it starts w/ a blank slate. I don’t know if Fedora has something similar, and it’s certainly not a beginner-friendly option (if you’re pulling packages from OBS, you’re probably doing it wrong and will likely run into issues). However, that is the first step to getting something included in the official repos.
But if it’s not in the default repositories, you should definitely talk to someone more familiar w/ the distro to figure out the “right way” to do it. I’ve built .debs and AUR PKGBUILDs, but only after learning from the community the right way to do it to make sure it doesn’t break on an update. New users are unlikely to put in that legwork, hence the recommendation to never use anything outside the default repos w/o asking for help.
There’s problems at the bleeding edge, but there’s problems at the trailing edge as well.
I agree. I guess my point is that if things work w/ an older set of packages, the chance that things will break is incredibly low. Whereas if things work on a bleeding edge distro, there’s a good chance you’ll see some breakage.
For example, openSUSE Tumbleweed is generally a good distro, but there was a week or so where my HDMI port didn’t work, my default sound device changed suddenly and was no longer consistent (sometimes would pick one monitor’s speakers instead of the other, depending on which came online first), and I was stuck on an older kernel for a couple weeks due to some kind of intermittent crashing. This experience was way better than what I had on Arch, and fortunately TW has been uneventful for 2-3 years now (probably because my hardware hasn’t changed).
So for a new user, I recommend finding the oldest distro that supports all the hardware you need. For experienced users, I recommend using a rolling, bleeding-edge distro and reporting bugs upstream as they happen, because the frustration of something breaking randomly is much less than the frustration of multilple things breaking on a release upgrade, and it’s nice to have the latest improvements to performance and whatnot (i.e. I used Wayland on TW way before it landed on any release-based distro, which was awesome since it allowed me to use different refresh rates on each monitor).
For your example, I’d recommend users hop distros until they find one where everything works. If Mint is too old, try Fedora. There’s usually a sweet spot where everything works and you have a reasonably stable experience overall. Even Debian Testing (pinned to the release name, not “testing”) is probably a better fit than Arch or openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Having played with it for a little while now that I’ve got it installed…I think it’s alright for a mostly or entirely gaming machine. I wouldn’t want to use it, or any immutable distro, as my main computer.
I’ve attempted to stay out of the trendy distro of the month club, remember Garuda? Remember Peppermint? Remember Endeavour?
I switched to Bazzite as my daily driver and won’t be switching distros or going back to Windows.
I ran into an issue during install with my main drive previously having BitLocker. Had to clear the drive with a live USB installer. Had another issue with secondary LUKS drive auto-mounting, but was able to address it through the GUI.
Other than that it has been a magical experience. I do full-time work/school on the system.
Yup, I had this exact experience. Installed Bazzite because it was a “gaming OS”. Had trouble just installing any non-gaming apps, or looking up guides to do so. Even gaming wasn’t perfect.
Installed CachyOS, and yes, there are annoyances, but also a nice path to fix them. It’s both a good gaming OS, and a daily driver for casual use.
You forgot the part where the installer fails just right before the end. Every time.
Had this occuring on both my laptop and someone else’s that I was trying to install Bazzite to, which resulted in installing Fedora on their laptop instead (and back to EndeavourOS on my end), and even Fedora’s new installer errored out too. Thankfully the OS was working though.
I am suspecting your 6th point for that one, which even if it wasn’t I consider it a colossal failure on their part because it is NOT TELEGRAPHED AT ALL. I shouldn’t have to stumble upon random forum posts to learn about it, come on.
I had one fail fairly early, giving me a cryptic message because apparently it couldn’t cope with how I’d set up the partitioning.
I’ve had a Linux Mint install fail because it couldn’t cope with a BIOS setting, the error message gave a plain English explanation “it’s probably the XMBT (or whatever acronym) setting in the BIOS, see this page on the Ubuntu wiki for details:” and it gave a hyperlink, because the installer runs in a live environment, it had a copy of Firefox ready to go, AND it gave a QR code so you could easily open that link on a mobile device. THAT’S how it’s done.
I tried to go with Bazzite on my wife’s old PC. Fuck knows what happened, but I could not get it to recognise that I’d downloaded the image with the Nvidia drivers built in.
Ended up giving up and rolling Kubuntu. I know Kubuntu and like it. And it works beautifully. Back in the world of RDR2 now, and loving it.
Yeah, that is nice. I won’t recommend EndeavorOS or any other Arch installer/derivative for other reasons (IMO, every Arch user should do the official install process once or twice to have a better shot at fixing stuff later), but I do like that UX.
I wish more distros did it. My distro (openSUSE) does something similar, but I also don’t recommend it because the community isn’t all that good for new users IMO.
That tracks since I left Arch about 5 years ago, maybe a little longer, and I used it for at least 5 years.
I used it through the /usr merge which broke nearly everything, and for a few years of stability afterward. But even when it was super stable, there were still random issues a couple times each year. It wasn’t anything big (I’ve been a Linux user for 15 years or so), but it did require knowing what to do to fix it (usually documented clearly on the Arch homepage). This was especially true for Nvidia updates. After switching to openSUSE Tumbleweed, most of those went away, and even the Nvidia breakage seemed less frequent, and if something broke, I could easily snapper rollback and wait for a fix, whereas on Arch I had to fix things because going back wasn’t an option (I guess you could configure rollbacks if you had that foresight).
I just took a look, and it looks like manual intervention is still a thing. For example, the June 21 Linux firmware change required manual intervention. There were others over the last year, depending on the packages you use or your configuration.
That’s totally fine for Linux vets, but new users will have issues eventually. In don’t even recommend my distro, which solves most of those issues, because new user support isn’t there. The main reason I left was because I wanted to switch to btrfs (for snapshot rollbacks), and Tumbleweed had that OOTB so I gave it a shot.
The main reason I left was because I wanted to switch to btrfs (for snapshot rollbacks), and Tumbleweed had that OOTB so I gave it a shot.
This is precisely why I went with Tumbleweed as well. I wanted a rolling release distro because having initially gotten into Linux via Ubuntu back in 2007, I didn’t really like the “upgrade twice a year to keep up to date with new features” method. It felt really cumbersome back then, as a regular distro upgrade often brought problems with it.
When I looked into other features I wanted, I discovered Snapper and I was all “that’s the one for me!”
I don’t even remember my progression. I do remember what first piqued my interest though. A guy came from BUIT (Barn-och-ungdoms IT enhet), which no longer exists, and he was troubleshooting some IT stuff at my school back in 2003. Being the nosy and tech-interested bratty nerd that I was, I hovered around the guy. He was super nice, and had no problem with my prodding questions about his laptop, which was running Red Hat Linux. He explained in simple terms what exactly that meant, and it stuck with me.
Then, years later when I found out about Ubuntu (at the library I think) and the fact that they sent out LiveCDs I was like “Yes please!” and the rest is history. I didn’t use Linux for many years, between having hardware that didn’t play nice with it, and just not feeling like it. Then the other year I went back to Linux and been using it since.
Every so often I boot into Windows to do some texture work in Substance Painter, but I don’t think that’s going to last. I’m very keen on trying Armor Paint, and if I like the workflow there I might as well wipe Windows entirely.
For me, I went to the local community college in high school, and an old guy was in my Java class and gave me a FreeBSD CD. I installed it and played around with it for a year or two, but still used Windows. When I went to uni, I got an Ubuntu CD on campus and installed it on my rental, and later that year the Windows XP install had issues but Ubuntu was fine, so I switched.
Now, if only I could run Linux on my work PC.
I had that at my last job, but my current one uses macOS. At least it’s close enough to Linux on the CLI…
I’m stuck on Windows 11 at work. It’s not a bad laptop, but Windows is insanely slow. Opening the commandline isn’t instant. Explorer takes well over a second to open. It’s like treacle.
Three options is too many? If one is already selected, you can just click through without thinking. Windows already does that stupid “setting up your PC” crap, and this would be far faster.
Sure. If you have all three options be properly configured, it shouldn’t matter too much which you pick. The point is to make it apparent that you can change stuff, if you want.
Do you know why Mac is successful? Because they have extremely few options. You basically have 3 laptops to choose from. That’s not 3 software options, that’s basically 3 hardware options.
I don’t think that’s why. I think it’s more the features that work with the iPhone that are selling Apple laptops. If you want to use iMessage or iCloud between your phone and computer, you need both to be from Apple. That, plus the better performance and battery life of the M-series is more the cause of increased market share, not the single desktop offering.
That is exactly why they are successful, wayyyyyyy before iphones even existed. People don’t have to think about anything. I think I’m going to leave this conversation.
Looking at market share stats, macOS market share is stagnant up until 2010-2015 or so, when it jumps from 6% to 12% or so, and that’s also about when iPhone became dominant. They’re currently around 15-17%, probably because the M1 series is so much better than x86 alternatives, so if you don’t need gaming or anything, it’s a great option! That wasn’t true before the M1.
If it’s all up to the one choice, why didn’t they take off before the 2010s? macOS has been remarkably the same since pretty much forever, unlike Windows, which changes a lot each release.
I think the “friendly” distros like Linux Mint with built-in driver detection/management and pretty broad package repositories (surfaced as an “App Store”) are probably to the point where many normal people could use them, without significantly more technical chops than Windows. Particularly as a gaming rig where you basically just need Firefox, LibreOffice and Steam.
The issue with that is, people have no idea what these “choice” even mean. SteamOS is SteamOS, Windows 11 is Windows 11, MacOS is MacOS, but Linux is a big list. If pushing adoption is the key purpose, the manufacturer need to pick one that they believe is reliable and in active development. Just one. All these editions will very likely cause choice paralysis, which lead to people deem it as “too complicated”.
Its become abundantly clear to me over the past few years that Linux is in place where, to get significant share it needs to have a major figurehead. Imagine if all ThinkPads suddenly were only available with Lenovo’s own fork. That kind of thing.
Unfortunateoy, that’s kinda the opposite of Linux ethos, and not necessarily likely to make Lenovo much money.
So the best we can really hope for at this point is a company with the brand awareness of Valve pushing SteamOS into the mainstream. People who play games know and generally trust Valve, so people (like my wife) who are on the fence, or who just need their computer to work without needing too much faffing, could likely trust SteamOS in a way they wouldn’t necessarily trust Bazzite or CachyOS.
I’d guess Valve wants whatever makes more games work on Linux so that their Steam Deck works better and is more compatible.
And that means the most important thing is Linux desktop adoption by game developers so they make more native games. So somewhat ironically, I don’t think SteamOS would be as high a priority as other distributions, since it focuses on players instead of developers.
A lot of games received their ports during the Steam Machine era, used outdated technologies like DirectX to OpenGL translation, and never got updated, so it’s not surprising unfortunately.
I can attest that SteamOS does work on my rigs that are AMD gpu/cpu. It actually works great. I haven’t had one single issue. But I don’t do multiplayer games either.
I really hope the EU will step in to stop this, it’s a despicable practice, and it makes me sad that Valve doesn’t stand their ground. They’re big enough that they should be able to exert pressure on Visa and MC, who seemingly push this forward the most.
What Visa and MC are doing is despicable and something should be done about them, but Valve is not in a position to do anything but bend over and spread the cheeks.
The EU will sooner ban all adult games from Steam. Seriously, check out any porn game on steamdb.info and look for “restricted_countries” in the Metadata section. Notice a certain large EU country there?
Because I want people to be interested, but that requires knowing what a thing is.
From FAQ:
Is Luanti a clone of Minecraft? # No. Luanti has very different goals from Minecraft, and doesn’t aim to compete with or replace Minecraft. Luanti is an engine and a platform for many different voxel games, rather than one cohesive gaming experience.
When Luanti was initially created in 2010 it intended to replicate what Minecraft Alpha had been shown to do at the time, but it has later diverged into becoming more akin to a game engine.
So… Roblox, but with Minecraft’s graphical style and general mechanics, an open source project, and not a greedy corporation? Cool. I think I’m bookmarking this.
It’s sad in a way but I kinda feel like proton is going to near wipe out the very few Linux native ports we get. It’s so much easier and more stable than trying to build and package for Linux.
Yeah, even more casual games like Balatro are proof of that, despite how easily you can port a game of that nature otherwise, people will choose to use proton because it’s still able to sync with their progress and symlinking is too inconvenient to consider unless you’re running like 2gb ram or something.
And, I totally get that! It’s like yeah, I know how to setup a symlink to probably make that work, but you know what’s a lot easier than that… Just not doing that and just having it work.
Oh man. When I was in the Navy, I had the game boy advance. Advance wars had this sick turn based mode, where you could get your moves in, and then stick it in your pocket and wait to hand it off. We’d have four players playing games that might take all day, sometimes days. Just make your moves, stick it in your pocket, and whenever you find your shipmate, pass it along.
We did that at our lunch hour in high school. We had a super strategic friend that took the entire lunch hour. That pass-around mode was peak early 2000’s multiplayer.
How did the battery last that much? AFAIK the GBA didn’t have any sleep mechanics… Or was one pack of batteries able to hold 12-24 hrs running the game non stop?
I’m trying to recall. I know we always had a solid supply of rechargeables underway. I also distinctly remember that there is a kind of blanked out hand off screen between players because of fog if war. I don’t recall it having any kind of sleep function. But I know it could run for several hours no issue. I don’t recall having to mind the batteries in particular.
On top of that, I was always really impressed by the GBA’s battery life but maybe I’m just old.
Same, I just don’t remember ever bothering about the battery life (unless it turned red) but with that long gaming sessions it would be a concern for kid me probably.
While there’s nothing wrong with a game being declared complete and stopping updates, the way this went down doesn’t sit right. Evil Empire (the studio that split off from Motion Twin specifically to maintain Dead Cells) had longer-term plans and the resources to make them happen, but Motion Twin then ordered Evil Empire to stop development because they thought an actively developed Dead Cells would be a competitor to Windblown that they could preemptively kill off.
I get what you mean, but Dead Cells was already a completed roguelike on launch. The DLC’s add variety and additional story, but you can still get the full gameplay experience with just the base game.
It’s like saying you won’t support the Elden Ring because it has DLC.
Also, the Castlevania DLC is just fucking cool. The soundtrack for those levels alone are just -chef’s kiss-, and probably the closest we’ll get to a new 2D Castlevania 🥲
Yeah, it does, but what are you missing exactly? Can you not get to the final boss without the DLC? No, you can get to the boss no problem, and in fact going to DLC biomes sometimes means you can’t get to the final biome/boss. Is your playtime reduced to less chambers/run? Nope, the number of chambers and biome-bosses remain the same. Is the gameplay altered? Nope, all runes and weapons that you need to finish the game is there in the base game and unlockable.
I know, because I played the base game only until the Dead Cells Castlevania PS5 collection came out.
You’re being disingenuous in making it seem like they purposefully cut content and then added it back for $$$, when Evil Empire has been adding a lot of free updates to the base game since 2019.
I would doubt you'd hit a progression dead end in that game. you'd have to be god cracked at it and enjoy it enough to play that much and milk what's already there, and at that point you'd probably want to buy the DLC to extend the variety and experience, because it's that good to begin with.
I started playing this game before there was DLC. You know what? It was fucking fun.
Doors don't control my enjoyment. I played it at times without DLC installed. I can handle some inaccessible doors being around without letting it control my enjoyment.
Definitely not trying to do that. To speak on the idea of visible, inaccessible DLC in a game, it is bad, full stop. I think it's certainly cynical of the developers to put the doors there and not completely remove them unless you have the DLC installed.
Seeing those seams is something you can't help but notice, and it absolutely does impact your perception of the game to have them there. What I am saying is that Dead Cells is so thoroughly well made and considered that I was able to tell myself "these doors are locked until I beat the game on a certain boss cell and feel justified to pay for an 'expansion' and access new content".
I can live with that specifically because the doors are not necessary, you just can't enter them and take a different path, similar to other locked zone doors that are instead locked because of boss cell requirements. The maps are also consistently laid out in terms of direction to get to a certain zone entrance, so once I know it's there I can avoid that path in the future until I decide to stop playing or buy more content.
If Dead Cells were a lesser game I would be much less forgiving about it, and to be clear, again, the fact that you can see DLC doors for DLC you don't have is bad design, full stop. It's just that the game is so good overall, I think it'd be sad for someone to pass it up for that reason, or to think that they're not getting enough because of it. It's a shame, but the game's still awesome.
I don't think you're wrong to feel the way you do, but try not to sleep on the game because of it. Even without the paid DLC the base game and free updates have a lot of mileage.
You’re wrong, some of those doors were always there, the giant was there from the start, the big door he smashes was there since before the DLC released. You just didn’t knew that was a DLC because it hadn’t come out yet.
Dead cells is still a complete game, the DLCs just give you more of the same thing, you can still get hundreds of hours from the base game alone. By your standards no DLC could ever be made.
Very nice. This money will enable them to make it better. One day when I might start learning how to make games I hope that Godot will be one of the best choices out there.
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