In case you’re wondering, the graph looks like this. There have currently been 16k new signatures today. The required pace to make it would be 10k a day. Yesterday the count increased by about 30k signatures.
TL;DR Keep spreading this to people you know, and keep signing. It’s working.
Until last week I thought it was done, but somehow it flipped around. Things are looking pretty good, with massive youtubers and streamers taöking about it.
I’m glad the ball is rolling again. This can change gaming and set a precedent for other things as well.
It flipped around because the founder of the movement, Ross, of AccursedFarms on youtube… released a video giving a status report…
And spending a good deal of the video explaining how Thor, PirateSoftware on youtube… has basically been making up bullshit and spreading nonsense about SKG for months now, actively campaigning against SKG, again, based almost entirely on him jumping to hysterical, catastrophic conclusions without factual basis
After that video… basically every single AngloSphere Gamer Youtuber has been putting out videos spreading the SKG messsge, and dogpiling on Thor for being a confused, overconfident narcissist… and Thor is now double triple quadrupling down with ‘im the real victim’ and other such tactics often employed by manipulative narcissists facing the revelation of their public persona as essentially entirely hypocritical.
EDIT: Also, as of right now, I’m seeing 723k…
Which is roughly +20k in only 6 hours from the time this OP was made.
EDIT 2:
If you’ve ever heard of, or seen the Freeman’s Mind series… yeah, that’s Ross, basically being Freeman’s internal monologue, and turning the entirety of Half Life into an action comedy bonanza.
He had more recently been attempting to get through all of HL2 this way as well, in addition to doing esoteric game reviews… untill he got so pissed about Ubisoft being able to just murder The Crew, and what is going on with all games in terms of consumer rights… that he started the SKG movement, and hasn’t had much time to work on his other stuff as much.
To be honest, neither did I… and I may have accidentally replied to the wrong comment, could have sworn someone was asking ‘why line go up so fast now’.
Probably not, I’m the one that’s hated and shunned and gaslit by the entire family because of how easily and often I point out that they are both hypocrites and objectively wrong about nearly every single political, economic or sociological idea they have.
But I do appreciate your validation, lol!
Yeah, got two bachelors degree’s simultaneously.
Managed to do it in 4 years + 1 summer quarter.
But uh yeah, I’m basically too knowledgeable for my own good, and the autism doesn’t help with dealing with abusive narcissist family members.
Oh well!
I ghosted them to the point they probably think I am actually dead.
I get accused of being a bot all the time now because I still enjoy writing long-form posts and, y'know, contributing what I can to the state of human knowledge, or what remains of it anyway. I can't blame people for being defensive about it. It's the AIs themselves I'm offended by, they're the ones doing wrong. We're all just trying to cope with the avalanche of unverified garbage they're putting out. It's digital pollution.
Yeah. I hear you there. Problem I usually have is that the odds of an accusation tend to scale less with posting style in my experience and more with level of disagreement, or whether or not the poster has personally witnessed something. Basically, “I didn’t see this with my own two eyes/dislike you, so this is obviously bot behavior.” It’s a conspiracy theorist-like attitude, and it’s predated LLMs entirely.
Nonetheless, I’m not happy that an entire new form of bot scrutiny has been introduced, and I absolutely cannot wait for GenAI/LLM hype to die the fuck down.
It’s an official EU citizens initiative, hosted on the EU web portal. The one maintained by the EU for the very purpose of digitally facilitating any and all citizens initiatives.
I get accused of being a bot all the time now because I still enjoy writing long-form posts
From cecilkorik, who I was replying to. That kind of bot accusation scarcely ever occurred before LLMs entered the picture. You posted too hastily here and missed a huge chunk of context.
Botting something like a citizens initiative, where every signature WILL get scrutinized by government would be seriously stupid. Or are you saying commenters like me are bots?
Is it really that hard for you to imagine the possibility… that people care?
Or are just not aware of the chain of youtubers doing a call to arms on this, getting millions of views, completely explaining the signature spike?
There is zero scrutiny possible for the form which is 100% based on trust that the signer is who they say they are adults where they say they are. If you want to be John Smith in UK, Paddy Murphy in Ireland and Jurgen Schmidt in Germany, you can be. There’s a reason none of these initiatives have done anything except keep people who care about something busy with dopamine graphing instead of doing something like boycotting relevant games and publishers.
And no, like to the EU, Youtuber noise is not relevant to me. Millions of views is literally nothing. You see the general state of the world, yes?
Right. Because caring about A means you can’t care about B. If you support legislation, you must be boycoting nothing, because no-one in the history of existence has ever done both.
You’re claiming mutual exclusivity where none exists.
You sound more like you’re scared of the implications of this passing, because you’d have us voting with out wallets rather than… actually voting. Nevermind that even games not worth buying should still also be preserved.
Pre-orders, micro-transactions and battle-passes are still a thing, no matter how much we’ve shouted about “big company bad”. This type of crap isn’t something we solve by any one method alone.
And you don’t need to engage with youtube or any other social media, to accept that the phenomenon they enable, occur. To dismiss that reality would be idiotic delusion.
Millions of views is a lot, when all you need to get started, is one of those millions to sign a petition.
I… What? Is that not a mutual exclusivity argument? For you to have a point, this time and effort would need to be better spent elsewhere. I not only disagree with that, but I have the time and energy to do the other things you are claiming will make a difference.
Man what the fuck are you talking about, it requires an EU, country specific verification document(s)/id(s), or the intraEU digital ID to verify you are an actual real person who lives where you say you do.
This is an official EU webportal for formal citizens initiatives petitions.
Like, ok, I guess you could just spam it with a bot/script, and then INTERPOL comes after you for fucking with an official government website, potentially hundreds or thousands of counts of attempted impersonation / identity theft and lying on a government/legal document.
Like sure, go do a DDOS on I dunno, whitehouse.gov, or your US’s state’s unemployment assistance application web portal.
Those are approximately equivalently stupid things to do.
OK buddy, cybercrime never happens and interpol will come arrest your python script if it did because you messed with an EU “government” form that might have resulted in them having to get a 60 year old Greek politican to ask what a EULA was
What happens if you try to just brute force guess at a bunch of possible credit card numbers and addresses and names in some kind of online store?
After maybe a couple of tries, 30 seconds or less of that… the system is rejecting your bullshit fake numbers everytime, and after enough, it auto ip bans you, sends an email to the security admin team, and your journey to getting a chat from INTERPOL or the FBI or what not has now officially begun.
This system doesn’t just accept any old random bullshit you give it.
It is not a random slapdash online poll.
Its only going to count up on that total signatures count if the system actually verifies the info you put in as being consistent with an actual, real, specific person in the system.
I again repeat: You are an idiot.
And I use idiot specifically: you are not only drastically misinformed, but determined, and seem to think very dangerous actions… are not dangerous… you think very unfeasible methods… are feasible.
Your idiot noises have no power over me, you contemptible boffin.
You aren’t worth explaining anything further to, such is the density of your thick skull, such is the extent of the gaping, cavernous void present in the part of your mind where relevant contextual information should be.
If you must pester me further, my server admin tutoring rate is $100 per hour, if you can’t afford the cost, just admit you’re lost.
What do you think the word boffin means? Do you mean buffoon? You should probably double-check your phrasing before quoting anime protagonists from memory
I think they will verify with the municipality of the person who signed whether they actually exist. Theoretically you could sign on someone you know this information for, but I think IP logging would burn you pretty quick if even one of those is bogus/duplicate.
Also, I don’t know whether such signatures would be counted before any verification would take place
I mean yeah, technically there will be some EU member states with different guidelines (due to different id/privacy laws) where maybe yes, a few of them could theoretically maybe be pumped up by a bot.
But uh, for some thing… you’d need a fairly well done bot net to even kind of pull that off for long.
As in like, a new and convincingly distinct bot/ip to burn for each signature, that is actually an ip that makes geo sense for the person/real world address it is spoofing…
As you say: basic ip logging.
If its all coming from… a single, or small number of ips… assuming the EU is at least as competent of a server admin as I am, yeah, that’s gonna look pretty fuckywucky in the logs, probably get noticed within 24 hours max.
And yes, I also seriously doubt there would not be some kind of verification of signees at at least some level, that would be initiated after all the thresholds are passed.
But its wildly innacurate to portray this as if… oh yeah any idiot vibe coder could just drill this up to whatever number after 30 minutes.
That was the way the internet worked back in 2006, or how stupid say Twitter polls are now.
Not the same level of inept incompetence going on with EU government websites.
That’s entirely backwards. I’ve boycotted these online kill-switched games pretty well, but that means fuck all because the general public is incapable of collectively caring about anything. Regulation on the other hand does have an effect, and should the initiative pass, EU is required to properly answer it.
Answering doesn’t mean doing anything, and all they have to do is generally wave in the direction of the overwhelming popularity and profitability of the products compared to the online petition that 0.2% of the EU’s adult population will have signed.
If the general public does not care, legislation will not follow. Filling out and promotinh a glorified change.org form is energy wasted on actually popularising your viewpoint instead of trying uselessly to get it in unpopularly.
Entirely discounting the fact that the EU has a track record of consumer friendly regulation. I agree, instead of doing what has the highest chance of success, let’s do nothing that could have an impact instead.
What on earth makes you think an online petition, which has never led to any of the consumer friendly regulation you mention, has the ‘highest’ chance? Or that the alternative to a petition is doing nothing?
All of that regulation came primarily from legal cases.
The fact that it isn’t just a petition, and if successful will put the issue before EU lawmakers. I’m presenting the alternative as doing nothing because you talked about voting with your wallet, and that is essentially doing nothing.
The reason I see this as having a higher chance of success than a legal case is the monetary limitation inherent to the latter. As far as I know there isn’t a big track record of successful ECI’s, so I would assume you’re basing your opinions on regular petitions. Correct me if I’m wrong.
No, I talked about putting this energy into convincing others to vote with their wallets, not just “doing nothing”. A boycott is an active campaign. It doesnt just mean not buying a product. It means not buying any associated product. Not even tolerating them in conversation.
I’m basing my opinion on how the commission has responded to similar successfully raised initiatives: “that’s already covered by legislation and up to EU states to manage”, “no that’s something we cant support, but feel free to appeal endlessly”, and in the most effective one, “committing to making a legislative proposal by 2023 but actually if thats ok we’ll make it 2026 and I suppose then if legislation is agreed it may be in place within a decade” (end cage farming, which polls at 86% approval already in the EU).
Yes, that’s what I was referring to; I didn’t mean you personally voting with your wallet, but in the broader sense. In my opinion there’s little chance of having success with this method in this field.
I’m not saying you’re wrong in basing your opinion on this, but I think the sample size is very small and not necessarily indicative of future results. I’m not saying the chances are sky-high either, but I think this is the best way forward, especially right now with the campaign having received a second wind.
If there are alternative roads to the same goal, I wouldn’t be against supporting those either. I believe this is the best we have right now, that’s why I’ve put it before friends, family etc. If you have a better idea, you should definitely do the same, but downplaying the potential of this campaign helps nobody but those in the games industry.
Citizens iniatives may be a form of petition, but the difference is they come with actual legal requirements.
This isn’t some change.org bs, a list of names totaling some arbitrary number. That’s why it has a hard deadline. And requirements for how signatures have to come from more than one country.
This is a pre-existing system for the people of the EU to force it to tackle an issue. Most EU countries have equivalent systems locally, as well. This isn’t new or unusual for us.
Legal precedent is how the US works. Where lawsuits catalyzing the setting of new standards for what is legal, is the most common way the law changes. If you thought that’s how EU legislation got done, then you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Almost everything the EU does, is based on proposals. Not legal cases.
Those can happen in the EU, too, but we have additional ways to propose law as citizens, and legal cases are more common on the national level, rather than the continental level.
If you can gather proof (signatures) of concern on a given issue, you can force a proposal through the door that normally has to come from elected representatives.
It does mean doing something: they have to spell out whether consumers should have rights on this or not. Currently it’s undefined, which is equivalent to “not.”
popularizing your viewpont
And the initiative works against that? You say the cause could have gotten more publicity without it? I really don’t see how that could happen, or understand the point in guilt tripping over it.
energy wasted
I’m starting to think this argument is energy wasted.
It should be said that I’m not against games detecting cheaters and banning them from online play. It’s very specifically kernel-level anticheats that I can’t stand on principle.
I’m against them being able to ban you from playing online in its entirety, which is something they can do because most online games don’t let you run the servers yourself anymore. Sure, if someone cheats on official servers, ban them from the official servers. They should still be able to play, cheating or not, on the server they run themselves, but that’s not an option we even have most of the time.
This one is such an overlooked part of this whole dilemma. The problem is NOT THAT the official servers not allowing clients without kernel level anti cheat. It’s just we don’t have an option to host our own servers anymore and we’re confined to following the rules.
Nobody wants to play with all the cheaters and the people who got banned because they couldn’t stop talking about how much they love CSAM in the lobbies.
I mean, look at twitter. After the recent mass exodus to bluesky there is anger because they are realizing their quarantine zone is REAL shitty.
I do wish more games would provide player run servers as an option. but I am under no illusion that that is going to be good for anything other than “Hey, remember when we all played Chivalry 2 for a few years? What say we play that on Friday night and then ignore it for another decade?”
That is a perfectly valid use case for a video game that I paid for though. I do exactly that with games like 007: Agent Under Fire (in split-screen), and I played games like Rainbow Six 3 long after the official servers weren’t there anymore. Agent Under Fire in particular is a lot of fun with all of the modifiers on, like moon gravity, and I wouldn’t mind playing some multiplayer games with friends with cheats like that one on; things that you wouldn’t want on in a ranked queue, but things that I should 100% be able to do with the product that I paid for.
That’s a strawman argument. First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option. Second, even people who want to run a public server would still be free to ban people (for whatever reason they wanted). We’re not talking about being forced to tolerate antisocial fuckwads.
As something nice to have? I fully agree (and said as much)
As an alternative to anti-cheat solutions/“solutions” as was being presented?
No, it is not an answer. Because it would indeed be forcing people to tolerate “antisocial fuckwads” or forcing people ti find private servers to play with each other like in the good old days.
First of all, plenty of people would be happy to self-host a game for their friends, if they were still allowed the option.
Exactly! Me and my friends often play on modded Factorio servers that one of us hosts. This is only possible because the developer doesn’t lock things down to only the first-party (official) servers.
We don’t play with cheaters either (you aren’t getting invited to our server if you are). We play with our friends because it is fun, in a way no official server could hope to work.
In my experience with TF2, many popular community servers have common-sense rules like no slurs, cheats, etc. The great thing about a player-run server is that, if you want, it can be stricter than official guidelines, as Valve for example is pretty hands-off beyond the obvious in-game cheats. It allows pockets of the community to shape the experience they want to have more adeptly than official servers ever could.
Back in the day, I LOVED Unreal Tournament (… I still do actually). And a lot of that is because I found servers with people who became friends I still chat with (hell, one of them is even in the same Warframe clan as I am).
But that is INCREDIBLY unapproachable and I know plenty of people who never “got int” UT or Quake or TF2 because they never found those communities and instead got stuck with random pubs full of assholes.
That said: That is not about anti-cheat. That is about matchmaking versus player run servers. Which is a very different discussion with nuances in all directions.
Yes, that’s part of the StopKillingGames agenda as well. Allow us to control our own servers! For fuck’s sake, it’s CHEAPER for them, because WE’RE paying for hosting. A dedicated server costs money! And it keeps people buying into the ecosystem after the initial sales high because you form communities and then tell people IRL how awesome the game is. Assuming you have time for real life friends of course.
I’m not against the existence of a matchmaking system, or even against it being the default. Just give us a tiny menu item “Dedicated Servers” somewhere and keep that one around forever, even when the publisher is long bankrupt because the CEO blew all their profit on sculptures of oddly shaped penises or something.
They see it as a threat to their business model. Without any other option, you have to be on the latest version, seeing the latest skins, and you’re unable to bypass their store and mod them in yourself. If I can help it, not giving me the option to run the server myself will be a threat to their business model.
“Butbutbutbut server side anticheat is haaaaaaard and requires us to actually think about what values are actually valid and understand our own internal game states. Kernel level anticheat lets us be lazy costs us less and requires less development time!”
Unless they deviate substantially from how they build games in genres like shooters, server side anti-cheat isn’t going to catch everything that kernel level anti cheat does. However, kernel level anti cheat doesn’t catch hardware cheating anyway, so if cheating is always going to be imperfect, we ought to stop short of the kernel.
That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything. But anything important can be sanity checked by the server when the client checks in, all without opening a vulnerability in your customers’ systems.
So much kernel level anticheat is about offloading the processing power to the customer, and unreasonable desires for control over the systems involved and overall game environment (and probably a decent amount of data mining).
A lot of cheats send completely legitimate information back to the server, and that’s what they’re seeking to stop with the client side implementation; I don’t think it has anything to do with costs. I haven’t heard of any data mining happening, and surely someone would have caught it with wire shark by now, but there are enough things that we know for sure about kernel level anti cheats to make it offensive.
I think the way to go about detecting cheats server-side would be primarily driven by statistics. For example, to counter wallhacks one might track how often a player is already targeting an enemy before they become visible. Or to counter aimbots one could check for humanly impossible amounts of changes in the direction of mouse movement, somewhat similar to how the community found out a bunch of cheaters using slowmo in Trackmania.
Add in a reputation system that actually requires a good amount of playtime to be put into the highest tier of trust for matchmaking and I think one could have a pretty solid system that wouldn’t have to rely on client-side anticheat at all.
That’s the thing, you’re never going to catch everything
The problem is that the things that aren’t caught? People don’t say “Ugh. Easy Anti-Cheat suck”. they say “Ugh, fucking Battlefield is un fucking playable. BOYCOTT IT!!!”
There are alternative methods that may be even more effective (I personally think this is a genuinely great use case for “AI” to detect things like tracking players through walls and head snapping). They also have drawbacks (training and inference would get real expensive real fast since it needs to be fairly game specific).
Whereas kernel level bullshit? It clearly works well enough that the people who have the data (devs and publishers) are willing to pay for it.
And if it reduces the risk of a particularly bad exploit hurting the reputation of the game and tanking it harder than Concord?
Which is why “fighting back” is so difficult. We, as players, are asking for the devs/publishers to trust us. But we have also demonstrated, at every fucking step, that we won’t extend even an iota of trust back and will instead watch thousands of hours of video essays on why this game sucks because of a bad beta.
Was it Delta Force that made everyone lose their shit because it “accidentally” warned people would be banned for usb thumb drives?
Because… that is coming. No, not the thumbdrive. But scanning your various devices to detect hardware based cheats. Which… is likely also going to be pushed by logitech and razer to get ahead of the crowd that are sick and tired of needing their bullshit software to properly use mice and are looking toward alternatives.
Look if companies could implement successful anticheat without kernel access they sure as hell would, regardless of cost or effort. There is a TON of money to be made in competitive fps games alone, and they’re pretty much all overrun by hackers
Here, step into this 200GB repo with about 50 third party plugins and someone else’s game engine and find all the states that aren’t exactly like they are on the design docs, and do it at scale, across a cluster of servers that all have to interact.
20 years ago, i’d be right there with you.
It’s actually hard for a big game to do those things. The people making the cheats are as good as the developers and only need to find one nick it the armor every time.
FWIW, I’m against kernel-level anticheat, and I didn’t downvote you :)
Final Profit: A Shop RPG is an RPG about a deposed elf queen who opens a humble shop and slowly advances through the ranks of the Bureau of Business with the eventual goal of defeating Capitalism from within. It’s unique. It has some incremental game like mechanics, and can get a little repetitive in the mid-game, but it has a surprisingly compelling story and a lot of unfolding mechanics that keep it interesting all the way through.
Roughly a 30 hour playthrough with many endings, NG+ and some optional challenge modes that remove or change some of the most obvious strategies for advancement, so if you finish it and still want more, you can play through again with a somewhat different experience.
Man this made me feel guilty downvoting. Great game, a real surprise packet for me, think I got it in a Humble Bundle and tried on a whim and had a great time.
Think it’s an Aussie dev (single person?) too, and still getting pretty frequent large content updates
The dev is also very responsive! I left a (positive) review with some critical feedback and they commented on it very quickly and had a bit of a dialog with me about the comments I’d made; they ended up revising the Steam page based on review feedback (mine and others), too, which made me want to support them even more!
It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.
That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.
The worst part is, there are certain ways a top down spritework game can look unique, and even put some personality on the characters. But the classic NES RPG look just seems so arcadey and wrong to me.
Fuck PEGI, their ratings always sucked and weren’t useful at all. Full blown swearing? 13+. One cigar through 500 hours of gameplay? Adults only. Never cared, never will.
exclusivity deals, forcing them to drop from steam even after they first announced release on there. They also target crowdfunded games like phoenixpoint.
Even if they have fixed that specific issue, why would you believe they have fixed anything else?
first comment on the reddit thread>thlm 5mo ago Epic Games Launcher Incorrect Default Permissions Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability CVSS SCORE 7.8 This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Epic Games Launcher. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the product installer. The product applies incorrect default permissions to a sensitive folder. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of SYSTEM. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 2024-07-16 - Vulnerability reported to vendor 2024-12-04 - Coordinated public release of advisory 2024-12-06 - Advisory Updated That timeline is disgusting
So in essence, its not bad because it trys to compete with steam. Its bad because they really dont try to compete and just do anti-user things. And people dont care because “yay free games I’m never going to look at again”.
If you want to see what actual competition looks like at the moment, take a look at GOG.
I don’t hate times exclusives that much because that’s done extra cashflow for the dev to be able to either finish their game or polish it further. I still don’t think we’d have gotten Alan Wake 2 at least the version we got without that epic deal. I also don’t know if square would’ve bothered even entertaining the idea of porting all of the kingdoms hearts games either.
Already did and it’s glorious! Steam works beautifully and the only final thing that I’m missing is Adobe products.
I recommend, if you want to try Linux, that you try out the ‘Debian’ distribution, and use the ‘KDE Plasma’ desktop environment. It makes for a very Windows-like experience and really assisted me with the transition between OSs.
PopOS (scroll down to the “Pop_OS with Nvidia” link).
It is tailored for Nvidia cards, is Debian(Ubuntu) based, & super friendly for new users.
EDIT: Here’s a link to the 24.04 release that provides only the Cosmic desktop environment (no X11, no gnome or kde). This is what I use, but it’s in alpha so user beware.
Drivers being outdated is not a big deal, unless you use recent hardware, then it might make sense to make a jump to current testing release (trixie), or just stay on testing indefinitely.
Also it being “barebones” is a good thing in my eyes, since I can configure it how I want.
It’s definitely a good thing if you’re interested and knowledgeable enough to build what you want. I was just arguing it’s not the best choice for a casual user because a lot things they’ll want won’t work out of the box.
Even updating to the next stable Debian version requires editing system files and running the command line.
Drivers can matter quite a bit if for example you’re on an Nvidia card and the Debian drivers are 2 years old. It happened to me and caused dlss to not work in some games. And with Nvidia you can’t just move to testing, you need to backport the driversc and that’s quite involved.
I definitely agree with most of the points but I don’t get what do you mean that you can’t move to testing, because that’s what I literally did recently by upgrading from bookworm to trixie with no issues whatsoever and I have Nvidia card, although older one (GTX 1060 3GB).
When I tried it, testing was on the same version of Nvidia drivers as stable so it didn’t solve my problem. It was possible to manually backport them, but it wasn’t straightforward to do.
But for average users, they accomplish 90% identical tasks, but Krita, while less mature, is more intuitively designed (superiorly designed I would argue), and uses better algorithms for things like select & fill.
Also Krita is less ugly. Sorry, I’m notoriously shallow.
So Mint is the ‘distro’, which is actually based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. In simple terms, a distro is a bundle of programs and configurations assembled for you. Basically, Debian is a stripped down version of Mint.
A ‘desktop environment’ is a separate program(?) that changes what your desktop looks like, and they can be downloaded on any distro. So you can try out KDE Plasma on your Mint installation! The one that you’re likely using right now is called ‘Cinnamon’, which I personally didn’t like and turned me off of Linux my first time trying to switch over years ago.
Something cool about KDE Plasma is that you can download themes and make your desktop environments look really cool. For instance, sometimes I like to rock this Windows 7 theme: www.pling.com/p/2142957/
Oh okay! Thanks, that’s helpful. So EndeavorOS has pretty frequent updates then? I’m ngl since switching I look forward to them, which is funny! It’s like “oh cool my computer got better and also new toys instead of worse and more bloated!”
Ahh I should’ve done this years ago but better late than never
Yeah, it should get updates exactly the same as arch. And I’m the same way, I check for update every time I log in lol. It does feel nice that you’re always up to date
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
I’m willing to troubleshoot infinitely over matrix for free and have 15 years of experience, feel free to message me!
If it works for you, that’s great, but you’re lucky so far and it’s a ticking timebomb.
I used to give manjaro to a lot of people because i was an arch user and supported a bunch of linux users, it was a massive mistake, arch is just a strictly better version of manjaro, the things manjaro claims to do it doesn’t do well because it’s just kind of hacked onto arch. Let me give you an example of something stupid that manjaro does:
normally, in linux, all packages are upgraded centrally, however, manjaro has decided to make an exception for the kernel, and now the kernel is versioned, and each version upgrades separately… this can result in you being stuck with an ancient kernel. I had to go into peoples computers, boot into a console, manually swap out the kernel, and put on the latest one, because the updater wouldn’t update due to the newest drivers being incompatible with the old kernel.
This happened enough times, that and the concerns raised in manjarno make me think it really isn’t for anyone. The team is laughably incompetent (they can’t even get their certs sorted out? really?) and you don’t want an incompetent team running your desktop.
If you’re enough of an expert to fix these things… just use arch, it’s strictly better. If you don’t know what you’re doing, an arch based distro is a terrible choice and you should go with bazzite.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I completely disagree. Debian is not beginner-friendly. Go with Bazzite if your focus is gaming.
It is a gaming-focused distribution. It’s also an “atomic” distribution, which basically means it’s really hard to break it. It’s more like Android or IOS where the OS and base system are managed by someone else. They’re read-only so you can’t accidentally break them.
For example, instead of trying to manage your own video card drivers, they come packaged with the base system image, and they’re tested to make sure they work with all the other base components.
I’ve been using Linux since the 1990s, so I’ve run my share of distributions: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. Even for someone experienced, atomic distributions are great. But, for a newcomer they’re so much better.
I find this interesting as I’m a beginner with only about 3 months of Linux use under my belt, whereas Ive used Windows since I was like 5 years old, and I found Debian to be a really good introduction to Linux. I was originally recommended Mint, like many are, and I found the experience to be a negative one as opposed to my later experience with Debian. (Note I have no experience with Bazzite or any other distros).
The additional ‘bloat’ in Mint obfuscated from me various aspects of Linux. It insulated me from learning how Linux is different from Windows, and that actually hindered me from understanding the OS. By starting with Debian I got a feel for using the CLI, setting up my drivers, package installer, and desktop environment. And, while those aspects can be complicated for new users, i think its somewhat necessary that they get a feel for them if Linux is going to be recommended as their OS.
Debian is fine as an introduction to Linux, if that’s what you want. But, as a beginner, you’re going to screw up, and Debian doesn’t do anything to protect you from that.
Atomic distributions let you use Linux but make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot. It’s much harder to break the system in a way you can’t just reboot to fix it.
It all depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to learn Linux by using it, then by all means, go for a traditional distribution. Debian is nice, but I’d go for Ubuntu. But, if your goal is to have a stable system that you can’t screw up as a beginner I’d go with an atomic distribution. If your goal is to play games, Bazzite is hard to beat.
You can still learn Linux if you use an atomic distribution. Configuring and using the desktop environment is basically the same. But, you don’t need to worry about your drivers, and you don’t install packages the traditional way. If you want to learn those things, you can run a VM or a distrobox.
Has your fiancé had to update drivers? Has he had to upgrade to a new release? Has he had to figure out how to install a version of something that isn’t in the Debian stable repositories?
If the only application your fiancé uses is Firefox, then he might go a long time before having any kind of problem. It all depends on how he uses it.
If it’s a her, you mean fiancée, fiancé is used only for men. And, it’s basically a chromebook in how she uses it. But, chromebooks are designed so that you never have to do any system administration. You never have to upgrade drivers or figure out how to get to the next release.
She probably hasn’t had to deal with that yet, but eventually the system will have to be updated. Over time, cruft piles up and makes it harder and harder to upgrade and manage. Atomic distributions are designed to be much more like chromebooks. Someone else manages the upgrades and the tricky choices, and then you just install their base image.
Autocorrect on my phone always chooses fiancé for some damn reason but I showed her how to update when I set it up for her and she’s been keeping up with it checking once a week and she’s had a couple questions I’ve had to answer but less then when she was just trying to do basic things on windows so it’s been great for me
How does Bazzite fare when I want to do something a bit different. Install docker, Python, PHP, sqlite, etc. I’d normally just install them, but does this work for Bazzite and other atomic/immutable distros?
So, there are multiple ways of installing things. For GUI apps the standard way is flatpaks. Some non-GUI things are installed that way, but it’s less common.
The method I like for apps that have a lot of interdependencies is to use a distrobox. If you want a development environment where multiple apps all talk to each-other, you can isolate them on their own distrobox and install them however you like there.
I currently have a distrobox running ubuntu that I use for a kubernetes project. In that distrobox I install anything I need with apt, or sometimes from source. Within that kubernetes project I use mise-en-place to manage tools just for that particular sub-project. What I like about doing things this way is that when I’m working on that project I have all the tools I need, and don’t have to worry about the tools for other projects. My base bazzite image is basically unchanged, but my k8s project is highly customized.
If you really want to, you can still install RPMs as overlays to the base system, it’s just not recommended because that slows down upgrades.
Awesome, thanks for the explanation! I’d been put off Bazzite and other immutable distros because I had seen threads saying you basically needed flatpak for everything, but it sounds like that’s not true.
I don’t need a project at the moment but I will give this a go once I am ready for one!
Yeah, I only use flatpak for GUI apps that don’t need any special handling. To be fair, that’s a decent number of the things I use most often: Firefox, Thunderbird, Signal, Kodi, Discord, Gimp, VLC. I think it’s also how I installed some themes for KDE / Plasma.
Console stuff I’ve either done in a distrobox using the conventions of that OS (apt for the Ubuntu one, DNF for the Fedora one), or I’ve used homebrew. But, I haven’t used too much homebrew because I want my “normal” console to be as unchanged as possible.
There are a few things I’ve used distrobox-export to make available outside the distrobox.
It took me a little while to understand how you’re supposed to think about the system, but now that I think I get it, I really like it. My one frustration is that there’s an nVidia driver bug that’s affecting me, and nVidia has been unable to fix it for a few months. I think I’d be in exactly the same situation with a traditional distro. The difference is that if they ever fix it, I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks until the fix makes it to the Bazzite stable build. I suppose I could switch to Bazzite testing and get it within days of it being fixed instead of weeks. Apparently just use a “rebase” command and reboot. But, I’m hesitant to do that because other than the nVidia driver, everything’s so stable.
I moved to endeavouros. First time using a rolling release, and I was struggling with some webdev stuff cause node was on a recent non-lts build and a few other things.
Not a problem for building, cause I already have that containerised. But things like installing packages was refusing, and obviously couldn’t run dev workflows.
Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
I know vscode is still Microsoft (and I’m sure I could get it to work with vscodium), but the dev container workflow is fantastic.
Absolute game changer.
And I know I can easily work on a different platform, os whatever. And still have the same dev environment.
Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
Yeah, it’s a game changer. Especially if you have different projects on the go. I’m used to having to deal with an ugly path with all kind of random things in it because I need them for one project. But, with containers / distroboxes / toolbx you can keep those changes isolated.
As long as you’re running KDE, it will feel familiar to a Windows user. I started with Kubuntu which was great until I had a system update, and it completely shat itself. Wanted to try Bazzite next, but the installer wouldn’t work properly, so I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I’ve seen no reason to switch since.
If you’re into primarily gaming, try PikaOS. It’s Debian based and uses the same tooling, but it’s on an optimized kernel. Is generally geared toward gaming.
There are other gaming specific distros of course, this is just the “Debian”-related one. I would not recommend the real debian if you’re mainly into gaming. It’ll need manual intervention and/or optimization to get games running, or at least get them running well. It’s not impossible (it even hard if you’ve got but is Linux experience), but just harder than necessary.
Outside of Steam, how have you found gaming compatibility? I know Xbox Gamepass doesn’t work as that’s very specifically a Windows app, but how about other standalone games/platforms?
Microsoft has their own controller protocol, xinput, it only works with xbox and PC
Sony and Nintendo both use BT HID, but add their own non-standard extras to deal with trackpads and gyros, on PC there are drivers to deal with this (inc. w/Linux kernel, extra on Windows)
For Wireless, Sony and Nintendo both use standard Bluetooth, you can pair a Switch or PS4/5 controller straight to a PC (though you will need extra software on Windows)
Microsoft uses either their somewhat proprietary 802.11AC implementation (only works with their dongles - you will need extra software on Linux, fully supported in Windows ootb) or standard Bluetooth, their BT has the highest latency of any of the 3 major controllers, but their 5ghz 802.11AC has the lowest. BT mode requires no extra drivers and will work fine ootb on Linux or Windows. You can’t use a headset plugged into the controller or connected by BT (to the controller) if you’re connecting the controller via BT.
MS has additional trigger rumbling/tension on the Xbox One/Series controllers, in Windows it will only work with MS Store apps - it won’t work on any Steam game :( on Linux it will work, but nothing really supports it either.
Sony has a much better implementation in the PS5 controller, nothing outside Sony published games use it though - but it’s compatible on Windows with additional drivers (DS4Win) (not sure about Linux here)
For Nintendo Switch on Windows you will need BetterJoy (previously, BetterJoyForCEMU) to support switch controllers properly, this also makes a DS4Win style gyro server, so anything that support ds4win will support Switch gyro too.
Yeah this is a solved problem with a lot of third-party systems though like 8bitdo has, since they just allow you to swap modes. Granted, sometimes it’s a bit wonky since for example the Switch won’t support analogue triggers but eh, it works for everything and everywhere, so I’m happy to have a single pad that has everything anybody can utilize.
Also, the button layout on switch controllers is different (A & B is swapped compared to XBox). This mostly matters on emulators, although you can remap the buttons, it can get confusing that they don’t match the games’ instructions on screen.
This comment is how I always hope my info dumps go when someone asks me a technical question about something I have good experience in using. 10/10 comment, love it.
Sony has a much better [trigger rumbling/tension] implementation in the PS5 controller, nothing outside Sony published games use it though - but it’s compatible on Windows with additional drivers (DS4Win) (not sure about Linux here)
It also does not work wirelessly. The controller itself and its basic rumble obviously do, but you will not experience the fancy haptic features unless the controller is connected via USB.
How it’s been four years and Sony hasn’t released a dongle to solve this problem is beyond me. Especially now that they are releasing more and more games on pc.
I have my pc in my living room, and while I’d like to just go wireless, I’ve currently decided to compromise with a super long cable just so I can get all the dualsense features.
I also have a PS5 controller, as far as I understand, haptic feedback is not humble, it is a resistance in the triggers (L2 and R2) só a game can make pull the trigger be harder of softer depending on the situation.
I don’t know how many or which games uses it seem how many games still does not correctly display PS controller icons and etc and fallback to the MS iconography.
As far as I know haptic and maybe the mic/phone are the only things that does not work over BT. But I also think I read that some things that does work with BT does not work over USB
I got a Dualsense controller because it looked comfortable. Then Returnal came out and I experienced the haptics and triggers… Absolutely insane. Even the lil controller speaker makes satisfying sounds on a perfect reload, or when you pick up certain things.
You’re right about driving games, though—playing Pacific Drive with it is completely awesome. The triggers vibrate on rough terrain along with the haptics, and the brake trigger feels like you’re actually pressing a car brake down.
I wouldn’t recommend either of those games WITHOUT a PS5 controller after trying it. They would feel so… flat. I’m looking forward to playing more games that support the triggers and haptics.
Haptic is different than the adaptive triggers, it’s like a way more 3D rumble. If you have a Dualsense controller, I HEAVILY recommend Returnal if you’d like to really feel the haptics and triggers. It’s AWESOME.
Pacific Drive is another game that takes full advantage of the haptics and triggers. They really being the game to life.
Yeah sometimes their choices are bad, that is like 1/3 of the whole point of government. To stop businesses from just doing whatever nonsense they want.
I seem to remember MS claiming they were opening the “first AAAA dev studio” (The Initiative). Since then, the studio has been radio silent, lost a bunch of talent, and needed help from Crystal Dynamics to work on their first game (Perfect Dark reboot).
It originated as a marketing term for Skull and Bones, right?
Realistically, its a corporate buzzword that is supposed to mean that the game delivers an exceptionally high quality experience, graphically, narratively, gameplay wise…
…but what it seems to actually mean is that the budget and manhour count and development calendar time ballooned to far greater than the original plan/estimates due to incompetent management.
At this point, I propose that ‘AAAA’ applies to basically any extremely costly game backed by a huge publisher that owns many development studios, that has been in development for over 4 years before any kind of release, ie, stuck in development hell, execs convinced its going to be a massive hit such that they sunken cost fallacy other games or even other studios out of existence so they can keep funding their uber project.
With a definition like this, Skull and Bones qualifies, so does Concord and Suicide Squad.
Basically… it doesn’t have to be from a grandiose marketing campaign attached to a AAA game, its more about being stuck in development hell and continuously funded to the point of destroying other parts of the business making it, like a financial cancer.
I tried to recover my Mojang account and migrate it three times. Each attempt gets a stock response asking for certain info (receipt, email, username). When I provide this, I get a response from a different support user asking for the same thing I just provided. After three to five back and forths (with the same questions and the same answers) I get busy, frustrated, and leave it for a few weeks.
Once I have time, I start over and the exact same thing repeats again.
I wrote it off as a loss last year with an asterisk of “another reason to fucking hate Microsoft”
Yeah, I bought it during beta testing and my account was attached to an old email. Gave up trying to migrate years ago. I’m actually surprised they still haven’t deleted it already.
Wait untill people realize that Ross Scott has had a running show, ‘Freeman’s Mind’, going back to basically the fucking machinima days, where he just does a playthrough of all of Half Life and voices Gordon’s inner thoughts.
We are going to need another petition to get Ross an honorary title, a goddamned bust of an upraised fist in an HEV suit, clenching a crowbar, with ‘For Exceptional Valor and Dutiful Service in the Defense of Video Gaming’ emblazoned on its base.
Whats wrong with PirateSoftware? He runs a ferret rescue which doesn’t claim any tax incentives and he teaches people about security and ethics, I’ve never heard of him having beef with anyone.
Yeah he seems pretty positive and helpful, so did his bias mislead him on this one?
Also I wasn’t even sure he was still a huge fan of his former employer—but now that I think of it I guess he was really pleased with his time there, cuz he’s proud of his ban wave strategies and stuff
He tends to be condescending, toxic, and dishonest. I happened to watch this video the other day that covers a fair bit of stuff including the stop killing games petitions, if you’ve got 20 minutes.
completely misrepresenting the stop killing games initiative.
bitching for quite a while that “someone” pulled a mob during a world of warcraft raid causing a wipe, going back to see who it was to remove them, seeing it was himself and then justifying why it was now the right call.
running away from his group in world of warcraft in a fight claiming he has no mana, while he’s wasting moves to drain the last of his mana and he has ways of getting around half of it back. This was during some kind of creater guild thing where if you die you lose your character. So abandoning his team to save himself and lying about it.
banning/blocking everyone who criticizes or corrects him on these things
DMCA’d and threatened legal action on an indie dev for a parody game that included him as a cockroach.
Pirate has a history of, grooming, digital labor theft, lying, sexism, scamming, being an asshole, to name a few things.
Hell his current persona isn’t even his first one. He never actually worked on blizzards security team, he was a support staff. Half his stories have been proven to be lies.
About the only thing that’s true is family connections got him a job there.
But the man his a raging narcissist and a grifter. The whole pirate software persona is just his latest grift.
Everyone has beef with him literally everyone. But he makes sure to ban from anything he can to keep them out of his chat or other places his community gathers.
Hes been grifting lying and grooming since second life. He just changes his name and moves to a new community when shit blows up in his face and it becomes too much of a problem.
His entire professional shtick is to make sure people don’t learn about his past and to lie and make himself look good
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