Switch to Linux. As a big-time gamer, I did it last year and it’s been fantastic. Only issue is if you main games with root kit anticheat…but with enough momentum in Linux direction, game studios will be forced to abandon those dubious detection methods anyway.
I’ve been hard at trying to get games i like to work in mint. It takes a lit of time but it’s going ok. Like you said though kind of sucks for multi-player. I can’t even get diabolical multi-player to work (after I looked up how to fix the instant crashing audio driver issue) . It’s also a lot of qork getting any racing game to work with my DFGT…even though linux does see the axis and buttons, the force feedback is all messed up. Wish I knew how to code so I could fix these issues! But I don’t have 12 hours a day to ever learn that
Use Bazzite. It is a distro dedicated to gaming and user friendly for beginners. It still has some limitations but it is better compared to others when it comes to gaming. You don’t really require more tweaking unlike other distros to make games work.
This is the advice I came here looking for. I’m intimidated by the switch and have no time, but if there’s a distro that’s easy to get going, I’m there for it. I’ll check it out!
I just wasn’t sure fedora based (bazzite) would be as easy to troubleshoot as mint (Debian based) since arguably debian/Ubuntu are the most popular distro.
Another distro that’s easy to get going for gaming is Garuda.
Also, the easiest way to switch to any distro is to get a USB drive and install a program called Ventoy. Then you throw your install iso onto the Ventoy drive, boot from USB, and you’re good to go.
As a tip, pick up an external drive large enough for your Steam library. Then in Steam, you right click on each game and select Manage/Back up game files.
Doing it this way will save you days of downloading.
Sadly I use way too many programs that only work on windows or Mac that Linux would handicap me. The free open source versions of yhe apps I use are no where near as capable.
My only option I can think of would be running a virtual machine of Win10 on a Linux install so I can still use those apps.
I’m not the OP but I have a similar situation. I work in multimedia design and use a wide array of software from the full Adobe suite, to in-house command line apps, to the Articulate suite and everything in between.
I’d love to be on Linux but that just isn’t a possibility for me.
I mean, sure you can do this, but you have to also sympathize with the folks that have years if not decades of experience in a program/suite, and that experience is what they use to market themselves. Like, in a perfect world, everyone could make the switch to FOSS alternatives, but it’s not so cut and dry for those who can’t spend up to years of their personal time to just get back to being as efficient as they were with the other, just to not support a scummy company. I’ve been moving pretty much entirely over to FOSS for everything I do, but it’s been years in the making, and substantial effort on my part. And I have it easy, since I work in software development. We in the FOSS community can’t expect all others to do the same.
I’m not Tyler Bourbon, but it’s Fusion 360 for me. I sound like a broken record at this point, but it’s the only piece of software that keeps a windows install in my house
Not OP, but for another data point: recently I did quite a bit of Linux-related research on the three Adobe apps I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, in this order of prominence), and they are all reported as some level of broken via Wine and their Linux alternatives are missing important features and/or a pain in the arse to use :/
Unfortunately, any app that needs a GPU would be difficult to work with in a VM. You have to manually set up GPU-passthru, which requires figuring out the PCI addresses and whatnot of your card, along with using a terminal. As I understand it, this process also prevents you from using that GPU outside of the VM, which is cruddy.
I was hoping to have a Linux Mint + Windows 11 VM back in January, but that didn’t work out. I am hoping that the upcoming SteamOS Desktop would make Linux friendly enough for games that aren’t native to Steam, such as my GOG collection, Window 3.1 stuff like Stars!, modding, and assorted Japanese locale games.
SteamOS isn’t going to be the “Windows killer” people think it’ll be. I’m a massive Valve and Steam fan but SteamOS isn’t any better than any of the other major distros when it comes to gaming.
I think it’ll feel like pop os. Pretty much set up for gaming right out of the box, but anything deeper and you’re forced to touch the terminal. What I do think it has going for it however is the publicity of Steam, plus a promise on Steam’s part to continue to dump a bunch of resources in to making it a better experience. I’m not expecting mass migrations, but it will likely be what gets all the folks on the fence to switch over, at least among gamers
Terminal usage is inevitable with Linux. It’s not as scary as it seems and can actually create a sense of accomplishment when you use it. Pop is a solid distro for sure but you don’t need a “gaming distro” to game on Linux these days (not that Pop is a gaming distro specifically). There’s actually a Linux Experiment video where he proves this with a thorough test. All major distros work fine for gaming.
I encourage people to not go for SteamOS unless you’re setting up a PC you want to use solely as a home console, or if you’re flashing it to a different handheld.
That, all coming from a big Valve fan. I simply don’t think it’s a good idea for people to get their hopes up over SteamOS somehow being a no-terminal, peak gaming Linux experience. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to hold off until SteamOS gets its full PC release, because most major distros today will work just as well. It’d literally only benefit people to start learning Linux now so that by the full SteamOS launch, they’ll be more informed as to whether it’ll be something they’ll find useful enough to use as a daily driver.
I understand where you’re coming from. I myself prefer using a terminal for most things, and use arch (btw) for the PC I game on. I understand that learning Linux is the best move for folks, but I don’t see that being an option, at least initially, for people on the fence.
I know that, from a Linux user’s perspective, it is the wrong move, but I have plenty of friends that want a “no terminal, gaming ready” distro before they make the move. I see it more as a first step, removing the barrier for making the switch to Linux. Once they are already there, it’s much easier to convince themselves to learn Linux a bit deeper if needed over time.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just naive and hopeful, but there are a good number of my friends that I think will make the switch to Linux that wouldn’t have without SteamOS.
The way I see the root kit anticheat situation is that because Valve has their own Linux based OS, these companies making anticheat are probably going to end up tailoring it to whatever kernel Valve (or whatever the biggest/most widely used distro made by a large game corporation) uses to ensure people aren’t cheating.
With a kernel that can be swapped out for another with varying degrees of difficulty, why wouldn’t they just tailor their work to whatever the biggest corporate game company supporter of Linux is using? If SteamOS (or any other distro made by maybe someone like EA, heaven forbid) ends up becoming what these anticheat devs see as the defacto Linux distro for gaming, I guarantee they’ll probably just focus all their efforts on making sure SteamOS (or whatever it ends up being) works as best they can and hanging out everyone else to dry.
A real “Wanna run the latest CoD (or something similar) on your device? Make sure you use the kernel we say you have to use!” kinda situation is what I foresee happening.
There’s also an OpenBSD song with a few lines of lyrics that I think could sum up what could (and sadly most likely will) happen, in metaphorical Odyssey kind of way:
Corporate monsters, many closing passages\ Tempting harpies\ 13 years of treachery
Though it’s definitely going to be more than 13 years.
I tried, but I just can’t go back and play Oblivion after playing Skyrim with all the quality of life mods. I’m waiting on the Skyblivion release to revisit it.
I’d say TES as well, but with Oblivion > Morrowind. I had trouble getting used to it being more toward the RPG side than Action. But it’s rewarding if you see it through.
I couldn’t ever get into oblivion since skyrim was my first Bethesda game and a lot of oblivion felt like (to me) slightly janky skyrim. I was able to get into morroeind though because it was just so diffrent.
And I’m from the other end where I came from Morrowind and couldn’t get into Oblivion because it was so generic compared to the earlier game. Monsters leveling to the character made it so safe.
I remember when the monster that was spawning everywhere changed type I knew I had leveled up.
I actually did. After waiting 10 years for a new TES game after Skyrim, I got bored and installed Morrowblivion. Played that all the way through. Then I played Oblivion with some visual mods. It was still quite fun, though I didn’t do a full play through. If I hadn’t already done a full play through, then Oblivion would still be an awesome game after playing Skyrim.
I assume that when they die they’ll wake up from their wizard coma and it will coincide with some sort of cool plot point. Maybe his wizard body gets kissed by a frog or something.
Might be an unpopular opinion but I feel like complaining about loading screens being hidden in gameplay is pretty much just looking for something to complain about. The game has to load assets. That’s a fact. Is it not better that it’s done in the background than giving you a generic loading screen every time?
People gave Starfield shit for all of the loading screens during travel. Now OP is complaining about them finding ways to make it more immersive. The gaming community is ridiculous.
It is more that the people who act like these opinions come from the same person are ridiculous.
“You say your favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry but yesterday someone else said his favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla. Humans are ridiculous!”
That is why I used the word “community” in my reply ;-). Community means multiple people. You can look it up on dictionary.com if you need to confirm the definition.
Try reading more carefully next time. Maybe read slower or try to pay more attention.
People gave Starfield shit for all of the loading screens during travel. Now OP is complaining about them finding ways to make it more immersive. The gaming community is ridiculous.
xD great you used the word “community” so what?
You are saying that “people” said one thing then “OP” said something different and that makes the gaming community ridiculous?
And after pointing out that this makes no sense because you still treat it as two different opinions coming from the same entity, you counter with “thats why I used the word community.”? That makes even less sense xD
The irony telling me to pay more attention.
You are ridiculous :D Lay of the weed maybe then you can formulate a cohesive thought.
At least Starfield has pretty screenshots to look at during the loading screens. And if you use photo mode, it’ll shuffle your pictures in with the default ones.
You are correct, it’s been on a downward slope since about 2021 but had a another sharp dip this morning probaly following the news they were delaying Asassins Creed
A rushed game is usually pretty bad, a delayed game is eventually good. While I dont hold AC in very high regard, im glad they told people that it needs more time to cook instead of throwing it out there half-baked.
I don’t know, the first one was cobbled up together from early access by programmers at a marketing firm and while janky (part of the charm some would say), it was quite an achievement.
The approach which should have delivered better results was wrecked with takeovers and company drama then dumped to the public in a bad state.
It’s not much of a delay. It was supposed to come out in 2 months, but delayed another 2 months. Doesn’t seem like much time to get any real work done.
They also cancelled their premier at the Tokyo game show days before schedule. I have to wonder if they’re worried about the backlash that a lot of games are getting lately (Dustborn, Concord, etc) and just trying to push the game a little bit further out to avoid controversy?
I’m the kind of person who has no issues with moving on from a game with only 20% of the achievements/trophies unlocked after beating the final boss. If it’s not fun, it’s not fun.
I think the only two games I set out to 100% were probably Super Mario World, or Donkey Kong Country 2.
Ah dk3, the one I’ve NEVER beat. I always set out to do it and grow bored first. I think by the time I started playing that really good games existed like halo and the like.
Superliminal was cool, but I just didn’t enjoy it. It was fun for a bit, but I feel like the mechanic overstayed it’s welcome for how simple it is. There’s not very many unique ways to use it. That’s probably why Valve abandoned the idea too.
Still, it’s interesting and worth a shot. Plenty of people love it.
I feel portal could be replayed if you focused too hard on the puzzles the first time through, there were quite a few secrets worth exploring in that world, though none too deep unfortunately
I feel like portal 2 can get by on a playthrough every so many years based on the writing/VA making it enjoyable even if you half remember the puzzles.
I was going to write anti chamber, because I never want to play it again, but %'s 30-90 of the way through the game I was itching to start over. It had me so hooked, but then the ending just took the wind out of the sails so hard. Heck maybe 10-98% of the game had me itching to replay it.
Awesome game. I was high on cannabis when I played it, and managed to beat it in one sitting about 10 years ago. I want to play it while high on shrooms, that would be even crazier.
Soul like everything, but that's just me being too clumsy for any challenge. I do hope some people could stop complaining other games being too easy tho. Not every game needs to be Soul likes.
Also this, but because it’s got the quality of an Indie game. Before people jump down my throat, compare the animations, sound effects, graphical fidelity, and voice acting to any other AAA game. Even the combat, which people usually extoll as the best thing about them, is just dodge->attack over and over again. Don’t even get me started on the pathetic “storytelling” in those games.
You can be sure that even the Epic version will still require the Ubisoft launcher. That is how all of my Steam purchased Ubisoft games are with the exception of the first Assassin's Creed which predated the Ubisoft launcher. All of the others require it regardless of how I bought it.
I'm going to wait for at least two or more years after release for the new Prince of Persia. My days of paying full price for Ubisoft's games are over and recent statements from the CEO make me reluctant to ever buy their games again.
For anyone left behind, Minetest is a community-developed alternative.
It’s more of a game engine/launcher + highly moddable, so the base game is rather minimalistic, but you can simply install more extensive games. For example, for a very Minecraft-like experience, MineClone2 is your best bet.
Minecraft. Back when I started playing, it wouldn’t even tell you what recipes existed, yet gave you a 2x2/3x3 grid with hundreds of types of items/blocks to figure it out yourself.
Without external resources I would probably never have figured out what the 2x2 empty grid in my inventory was meant to be! I watched so many videos and read numerous wiki articles it could have been a college class.
The early builds had few enough things you could make that it wasn’t really that hard to intuitively figure out but in it’s current state it would be near impossible to figure out how to make some things without recipes to guide you.
like early alpha builds I think the only thing that would have tripped you up hard would be trying to make dynamite firestarter, or shears even then you could experiment for a while and figure it out.
I think the issue was it wasn’t clear what items were available to craft. If I had known that axes, pickaxes, shovels, etc. were all in the game then it might have been easier, but even making the crafting table (2x2 wood planks) wasn’t very intuitive. Honestly, there wasn’t much of a clear path forward with most of the recipes. Advancements and the recipe book later helped a lot, but it was pretty hard to play during beta and alpha without the wiki or a mod like TMI.
Then there’s redstone. I feel like even today, redstone is completely unexplained in the game, and while you can kind of figure it out on your own, many of the intricacies are left unexplained (repeater locking, timings, comparators, how redstone is passed/not passed through different kinds of blocks, gates, etc). Without taking some time to learn about digital logic and basic computer engineering concepts on your own, redstone is basically magic dust that does a thing when put in a specific configuration.
Also, being pedantic, but shears weren’t added until beta 1.7. Wool dropped from sheep before that. That being said, alpha had a lot of really weird mob drops (why did zombies drop feathers?) and there wasn’t much use for wool anyway beyond decorative purposes and hiding doorways with paintings until beds were added in beta 1.3.
Oh yeah, I forgot, it’s been a decade you used to literally just punch sheep and I vaguely recall when that update dropped. I recall eventually just looking stuff up, but a lot of it I figured out on my own first. Redstone is absolutely something that really needs an in game guide that the game completely lacks, nothing about it is intuitive at all, even if you know how digital logic works it behaves a little strangely.
I always played the game to build cool forts and castles so wool was definitely useful to me to make them look good.
zombies dropped feathers because the game didn’t have chickens until sometime after 2012 (0.3?) and you needed them for arrows alphas are just like that. The Rust alpha was similarly nonsensical.
I always thought part of the appeal was just discovering the world and how it works, but it’s so established at this point it’s better to just have a guide in game.
Is that part of the quote? Because I just saw “priced like an entry level PC, not like a console”, which was more ambiguous than saying “priced like a console”. One man’s entry level PC is $300, and another’s is $1000. I have a mini PC with the power of a PS4 Pro, which I’d easily consider entry level, and it cost me $530 about a year and a half ago.
It's possible I'm just interpreting the quote wrong. I figured they were making the distinction between "console" and "entry level PC" as a way to say "The price isn't set yet, but don't expect this to be $400-500"
Yeah, leaving it ambiguous like this leads to wild speculation, and I think you misquoted that with your own assumptions. You might be right, but Digital Foundry seems to think $400-$500 is possible. Given the cost of my own mini PC, which is older and requires higher margins than Valve can get away with, I would even believe $400-$500. But we just don’t know. Everyone’s best guess for the price of this thing has a low floor and a high ceiling, which will make this all really funny once we know the actual price.
It’s not particularly great hardware. It’s fine, but not great. The most obvious thing is 8GB VRAM, which is bare minimum for modern gaming really. Add in that they’re buying in bulk, that price seems reasonable.
I know they don’t have the same supply chain at all but Apple sells an entry Mac Mini for $600. That makes me feel like a similarly priced Steam Machine is possible.
Apple mini is a hard comparison to make because the cheapest mini is a loss leader. Add a bit of extra ram or extra storage, which you have to do since the base model is very limited and the only way to get it is through Apple because everything is soldered together, then it is suddenly more than a $1k PC. They make the profits up with those upgrades which are practically mandatory and grossly overpriced.
The base M4 model is 16GB ram and 256 GB of storare and it costs $600, “cheapest minipc ever with such performance”.
The 512GB storage model costs $800.
May I point out that 256GB of ssd storage does not cost $200.
The 24 GB model costs exactly $1000.
No matter how much ram prices are ramping up right now, 8GB of sodimm ram does not cost $200…yet.
Anything else above those specs throws the Mac mini into $1k+ territory. It can go all the way up to $2600.
Now, Apple rarely publishes manufacturing numbers to the public. But historically this has always been their strategy. A base product that seems too good to be true (because it is) that leaves buyers wanting a bit more. For which they get skinned alive, price wise. Of course, I can’t be 100% certain that the base Mac mini is sold at a loss. But evidence suggests the $600 mark is priced exactly to act as a loss leader.
You didn’t present one piece of evidence that $600 is a losing price point for the base model (and you even stated that explicitly). All you’ve done is shown that Apple is known for their outrageous markups; something we all can see with our own eyes.
Given they’re greedy enough to markup storage and ram so much; I’m willing to bet they won’t bother with techniques like “loss leaders”. I bet the margins are just extremely tight but that profit is above zero.
That’s just pointing out upgrades carry a large price, not that the base model is at a loss.
Which is a super common strategy in pre built, especially in systems that can’t in theory take third party upgrades. Commonly a mobile platform will charge a hundred dollar premium for like 20 dollars worth of UFS storage. At least at some points PC vendors have done DIMM SPD lockouts to force customers to first party so they can charge a significant multiple of market rate for their parts.
I doubt anything in Apple’s lineup is sold at a loss. They might tolerate slimmer margins on entry, but I just don’t think they go negative.
I’m right now in the process of building an “entry level PC” from components, here defining it as new currently produced off the rack parts, no used, no refurbished, and with a Ryzen 7500F and a Radeon RX7600 “AMD can’t decide whether their cards get an XT or not, so why should I?” I price it out right at $900. To go much below that, I’m gonna have to resort to some jank.
Dumpster dive a core i5 10400F Optiplex, stick a GTX-980 in it, install Linux Mint and you’re making 120FPS in CS:GO for the price of a foot pic.
Your entry level PC is what I would have called high end as little as four years ago. I built a machine in 2021 with a Ryzen 5 5600x and an RX 6800 XT; it still runs the latest UE5 games at high settings. I would call that above and beyond entry level.
It’s a little hard to comment on high end 4 years ago with low end now because technology marches on, but no I don’t think it would.
I also built a PC with similar specs for my cousin (we’ll call her Lila) to that in October of 2022, Ryzen 5600X/Radeon RX6800 (non-XT). Built that rig for my cousin. Socket AM4 B550 chipset, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. I had a budget of $1500, $500 alone went to the GPU. The 6800 was two years old at that point. Solid mid-range PC that can handle 1440p gaming with no questions asked…okay one question asked: “are you sure you want ray tracing enabled on an RDNA 2 platform?”
You could go higher. 32 or even 64GB of RAM, a 5800X3D CPU, a Radeon 6950XT or RTX-3090 would provide much more solid 4k gaming with significantly better ray tracing…for a couple more grand.
The machine I built last year, a Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE for myself. I spent $2000, I got socket AM5, 32GB DDR5-6000, a 16 thread CPU, and the third-to-highest GPU in the range. This thing does 1440p ultrawide or reaches into 4k with aplomb and ray tracing is worth turning on. You can still go up from here; the 7900XT and XTX are even more powerful and again Nvidia offers even higher, and there’s several CPU SKUs above me. Mine is a mid-to-high end PC, I expect it to be relevant for 5 more years, then I’ll buy a Ryzen 11800X3D on clearance for it.
Meanwhile, the PC I’m building now is for a 12 year old (Lila’s daughter, let’s call her Maggy). 16GB of DDR5-5600, a spec’d down 6-core without integrated graphics, the pack-in Wraith Stealth cooler, and a x600 tier GPU for a solid 1080p experience, more than enough for the hand-me-down 1080p60 monitor she’s gonna get with it. This computer is the same generation as mine, but less than half the price at $900 and change. And I honestly struggle to build much lower than that without resorting to used parts, new old stock, or jank.
High end would be the high end of the market components, right? So RTX 5090 ($2k+) or RX 9070 ($700+). High end CPU would be Ryzen 7 9800X3D for $400. Add a motherboard and copious RAM and you’re looking at $2k+ for all AMD, $3-5k for Nvidia.
Mid tier would be somewhere in the middle, so cut those numbers in half ($1-1.5k). Low end is what you can get away with, so cut the mod tier in half again, though going below $700 would be hard for anything but the most casual of games.
Personally I don’t think I would say that most people would consider a $1,000 PC to be entry level. To me entry level means something that a kid could save up their pocket money for in a reasonable amount of time maybe with a paper route to supplement. I’d say entry level ends at about $700 just to throw a number out there. For $1,000 you could get a PS5 and a PSVR2
But it’s also a handheld console so that doesn’t really track.
An entry level gaming PC doesn’t have to have a battery and it doesn’t have to have a screen which are big expenses. You can’t just take the price of the steam deck and multiply it because so much time has passed between the releases of the two products and they’re not equivalent anyway. It’s an apples to oranges comparison.
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