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News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Liam Dawe, 5 May 2026 at 6:20 pm UTC

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone
Quoting: Liam DaweMoving your personal Operating System is far far far easier than upping your entire social group to a different chat app, that has far less features and is more confusing. It's not realistic to expect that to happen any time soon either, especially as Matrix just overall - sucks.

Oh, and people keep bringing up this privacy stuff about age laws as if they only apply to Discord. Any serious chat app will also have to do similar things if they plan to run any services in countries where those laws apply. Thinking otherwise is daft, burying their heads in the sand level stupid.
Sorry, but that is mostly nonsense.
I run the GamingOnLinux Discord with over 8,000 people in it. I also run our Fluxer with a few hundred people in it. I also previously ran our Matrix rooms. I have a firm grasp on what I'm talking about here.

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneFirst of all Matrix has nearly every feature Discord has *snip*
It doesn't. Discord has an entire ecosystem of plugins and bots, for starters. But the biggest issue is multiple rooms per-server. Matrix attempted to do something like it with you banding together multiple standalone rooms, but it works nothing like Discord does.

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By adolson, 5 May 2026 at 6:02 pm UTC

I thought 13 tons was a lot, but doing the math I guess it's not, really... Still a good sign, but they won't have an issue selling anything they make, I feel.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By PlayingOnLinuxphone, 5 May 2026 at 6:01 pm UTC

Quoting: Liam DaweMoving your personal Operating System is far far far easier than upping your entire social group to a different chat app, that has far less features and is more confusing. It's not realistic to expect that to happen any time soon either, especially as Matrix just overall - sucks.

Oh, and people keep bringing up this privacy stuff about age laws as if they only apply to Discord. Any serious chat app will also have to do similar things if they plan to run any services in countries where those laws apply. Thinking otherwise is daft, burying their heads in the sand level stupid.
Sorry, but that is mostly nonsense.

First of all Matrix has nearly every feature Discord has: chatting, calling, video calling, desktop streaming, threads, servers, reactions, emojis, stickers, polls (even before Discord), file sharing (up to 100MB on official server ... 10 times more than Discord without Nitro) and on top encryption, specific chats for every use case (as my SMS app that also can Matrix by default), multi-accounting and so on. You even can bridge to Discord if you cannot let it go. Yes, it also has some drawbacks as no game integrations, less users (because no advertising budget) and some weird Nitro stuff nobody really needs. But if something sucks than everything centralized that have such a lock-in effect. Matrix is the solution to not lose social contacts any longer when a service provider or app sucks. Just change the server or the app and still have contact to everyone.

I already lost my contacts 3 times: ICQ, Skype, Discord (not counting PSN after I stopped buying new consoles). It's so annoying that this happens again and again and again (and even without Matrix it would happen again). I promote Matrix to fix this forever (yes, a last time people have to lose contacts).

About privacy stuff and age laws: just join a server outside your legislation or host your own server for you, friends and family. No need to stay on the official one. Also the company behind is working for around 5 years against age laws (does Discord do this?). Discord is not following any important GDPR laws, but hey, age verification in the worst way possible is done even long time before any law is applied to countries as those in EU.

The only thing I 100% agree with: it's not easy to get all the social contacts over to a new app. But hey, I used many years both apps at the same time to open the way for people who actually want to escape the golden cage. I am fine with your decision not to leave Discord or not to support alternatives. But please don't hurt people like me trying to build a better future for everyone by misinform people (muss less features or hard to use etc). Matrix will also become better like Linux when more people are using it and donate to the project (or contribute code), unlike Discord.

News - The new Steam Controller from Valve is out now - some early thoughts
By Caldathras, 5 May 2026 at 5:45 pm UTC

Much like the Steam Deck, it's designed to be repairable and easily opened. Just a few screws, and the casing will pop right off. Valve already confirmed spare parts will be available on iFixit, we just don't know exactly when that will be. So it's designed for the long-term and it's your device to open up and tinker with.
I'm mostly a keyboard and mouse player myself but I have to applaud Valve for continuing to support the consumer's "right to repair."

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By ElectricPrism, 5 May 2026 at 5:27 pm UTC

Valve focusing on scalpers would be a mistake, their goal should be to ramp up supply to meet the demand, not to waste energy going after a small percentage of purchasers doing what they want with their private property.

No matter what measures could be put in place, criminals always find ways around the rules, there's no point in punishing customers who want to eventually own 4+ controllers because someone __COULD__ lawfully resell their private property after they purchase it.

The RF dongle can support 4 controllers, and controllers have always been designed for Living Room TVs with the idea of having 2-4+ players. Limiting purchasing to 1 makes no sense, let the market dicate how many sales they want.

I know it's frustrating, but we also should know that by selling out, Valves hardware is now even more prestegious which will drive sales more, because psychologically people always want what they CAN'T have.

Memory is fuzzy, but this feels like the Steam Deck launch all over again.

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By Mountain Man, 5 May 2026 at 5:19 pm UTC

People on Reddit lamenting that there's not even the option to give Valve your money upfront, and then they ship as units become available, which would be the sensible way to do it. Instead, it looks like Valve is going to put batches up for sale, and then it's going to be another mad scramble between customers and scalpers until they sell out again.

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By ElectricPrism, 5 May 2026 at 5:09 pm UTC

I saw someone claim on X that Valve has 20,000 Steam Machines, considering they sold Millions of Steam Decks, that's going to sell out so fast, it'll be the Steam Controller all over again.

News - Unity AI out in Open Beta to give developers the fabled "make game" button
By Berny23, 5 May 2026 at 5:09 pm UTC

The future of slop games looks ... pretty terrible.

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By Aryetis, 5 May 2026 at 5:01 pm UTC

"update on expected timeline soon" ™
"Steam frame release early 2026" ™
"chocolate won"t make you fat" ™

Lies after lies after lies....

News - Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues
By dorron, 5 May 2026 at 4:50 pm UTC

Now give me Steam Frame and Steam Machine prices and release dates!

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Liam Dawe, 5 May 2026 at 4:39 pm UTC

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneI was using Discord 8 years, waiting all the time for privacy improvements (E2EE for private chats) and now it becomes even worse. So while these specific improvements are great, I don't care any longer.

People should probably not only move away from Windows to Linux, but also from Discord to Matrix (as almost full featured replacement). At least I don't want to get my unencrypted private chat analyzed via LLM to guess my age in a legislation where it is not even required. And Matrix is almost as decentralized as Linux is, which makes it much more robust against enshittification and bad laws.
Moving your personal Operating System is far far far easier than upping your entire social group to a different chat app, that has far less features and is more confusing. It's not realistic to expect that to happen any time soon either, especially as Matrix just overall - sucks.

Oh, and people keep bringing up this privacy stuff about age laws as if they only apply to Discord. Any serious chat app will also have to do similar things if they plan to run any services in countries where those laws apply. Thinking otherwise is daft, burying their heads in the sand level stupid.

News - The new Steam Controller from Valve is out now - some early thoughts
By Liam Dawe, 5 May 2026 at 4:31 pm UTC

Small update to clarify the Steam Deck test was on SteamOS 3.8, and with the JSAUX 11-in-1 Docking Station.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By dibz, 5 May 2026 at 4:27 pm UTC

Quoting: rustynail
Quoting: The_Real_BittermanThere are people not using the official flatpak? Geez ...
It's actually news to me, I think last time I checked it still wasn't official, and it had a bunch of issues like shipping an old version of discord for months because the current one used a version of electron that broke something. And of course they had to use some weird hack to make an old version work with current servers.
That's one of the main issues with Flatpak IMHO, although in fairness, that situation has improved recently in that it's become far more clear in various places that they're not actually official packages because they definitely gave that appearance prior to the changes. Couldn't tell you when that change happened since I'm not a fan personally, and don't touch them more then I have to.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By SlayerTheChikken, 5 May 2026 at 3:42 pm UTC

Lol, I'll keep that spyware garbage off of my PC. First it scans through the process list, then people try to integrate it into EVERYTHING they could possibly run.

I recommend just using it in the web browser, or not at all if you can get away with it. I moved all important chats to Matrix a while ago.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By PlayingOnLinuxphone, 5 May 2026 at 3:39 pm UTC

I was using Discord 8 years, waiting all the time for privacy improvements (E2EE for private chats) and now it becomes even worse. So while these specific improvements are great, I don't care any longer.

People should probably not only move away from Windows to Linux, but also from Discord to Matrix (as almost full featured replacement). At least I don't want to get my unencrypted private chat analyzed via LLM to guess my age in a legislation where it is not even required. And Matrix is almost as decentralized as Linux is, which makes it much more robust against enshittification and bad laws.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Leopard, 5 May 2026 at 3:26 pm UTC

Quoting: XpanderDoes that mean i can finally remove "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true

and it will be able to update itself?

this method worked well though. I just did my regular package updates when i felt like and discord was outdated until then.
https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/discord/-/commit/f7878d82996d76bd8016bd97defe2baa43cca469

Yes

News - Unity AI out in Open Beta to give developers the fabled "make game" button
By Brendan, 5 May 2026 at 3:16 pm UTC

Even before this--even before ChatGPT launched, to be honest--there were more new games published on Steam alone in a week than I could have gotten around to playing in a year. Then add in those that are published on other game stores, consoles, phone app stores, and itch.io. If you want to go back further, shovelware was a drag even in the twentieth century. I have no idea what the promoters of this technology would consider the best case scenario for it; I'm not sure they do either. But I'm certain it will mean more crap, less quality, and reduced visibility and sales income for people who actually invest time and care in their work.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Salvatos, 5 May 2026 at 2:54 pm UTC

Quoting: syylkIsn't the web version good enough? What critical feature I'm missing by not using a local app (which is probably just the same code wrapped in a local web client)?
I keep so many tabs open at all times, when I need to close Firefox to run a more resource-intensive game I like having Discord as a separate program. But other than that, I’ve wondered the same.

News - Pay off your debts to a greedy landlord in the seriously charming deckbuilder Cropdeck
By Arehandoro, 5 May 2026 at 2:54 pm UTC

"Pay off your debts to a greedy landlord"

Surely this game should be in the horror category?

News - Steam Controller goes out of stock as Valve get a ton of "Game Console" shipments
By HendrinMckay, 5 May 2026 at 2:48 pm UTC

Quoting: scaine
Quoting: HendrinMckay
Quoting: scaineWild that scalping is a thing, when Valve could have restricted (initial) purchases to only accounts over, say, level 10. Or restricted buying more than one unit to only accounts over level 10. This should be a reasonably easy problem to solve.

And maybe they did, and these aren't scalper accounts re-selling, just opportunistic steam players.

I'm lucky that I don't get FOMO over this stuff. Yes, I want a controller. No, I'm not buying through anyone but Valve. The scalping industry is so predatory.
Sadly, this would not have helped. There are tons of old steam accounts listed for sale that botters and scalpers can buy and do use for stuff like this already.
Pretty sure it would have helped, and along with a cap limit of two units per account and the scalpers jobs just became much harder and profit margins much lower.
Sadly, there aren't any mitigation's that folks won't find a way around. There was already a cap of two steam controllers per account that people were already getting around by buying non-limited steam accounts. Also, the level stuff does nothing, there are already sites that let you pay to level up steam account levels faster. Having had to deal with this for a company in the retail space with GPU's a few years ago, it is very hard to combat this in any meaningful way unfortunately. The scalpers will find a way, short of having some kind of lottery system which just pisses off paying customers.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By voytrekk, 5 May 2026 at 2:44 pm UTC

Quoting: syylkIsn't the web version good enough? What critical feature I'm missing by not using a local app (which is probably just the same code wrapped in a local web client)?
Push to Talk is the biggest reason I have it installed instead of using the web version.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By syylk, 5 May 2026 at 2:34 pm UTC

Isn't the web version good enough? What critical feature I'm missing by not using a local app (which is probably just the same code wrapped in a local web client)?

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Ehvis, 5 May 2026 at 2:26 pm UTC

Quoting: XpanderDoes that mean i can finally remove "SKIP_HOST_UPDATE": true

and it will be able to update itself?
Partially. It won't check if the runtime needs updating and only care about the Discord client files which could always update just fine.

News - Steam Controller goes out of stock as Valve get a ton of "Game Console" shipments
By RickTheMelon, 5 May 2026 at 2:14 pm UTC

Well, if nothing else, it does bode well for the possibilities of success for the Steam Machine doesn't it? If this was a bit of a test for Valve, they will have gotten a good idea that it will sell like hot cakes.

News - Discord is finally less of a nuisance to update on Linux
By Drakker, 5 May 2026 at 2:04 pm UTC

I have no trust in Discord. I'll keep running it in my web browser thank you. No way I'm running an app for that.

News - shapez 2 is a thoroughly chilled time building up a shape-cutting factory
By Cley_Faye, 5 May 2026 at 1:50 pm UTC

I was waiting for that one. It's eerily chill to just stack stuff in efficient ways.

I see the comment about performance issue, and granted I'm not at the "500k huge machine" level of things, but on the opposite side of things I've been surprised by how stable it is right now; I can have the screen full of stuff and it move smoothly… at the current zoom level (LoD kicks in in very visible ways). But I also lock the game at 60fps, it might help.

If having ton of stuff offscreen causes sharp dip in performances to the point of breaking the logic, that's bad… but time will tell. And it might get fixed later on.

For now, it's been nice. The whole UI is well thought of, and the game makes it very easy to experiment/add/change/etc. Not much to complain there.
If you're kind of an extrem player, you can even use a relatively simple text-based format to generate whole machinery and import them in the game… but nobody's going to do that, right? Hehehe

News - The new Steam Controller from Valve is out now - some early thoughts
By Yasri, 5 May 2026 at 1:39 pm UTC

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: YasriHey Liam question, how loud are all the buttons. I use the DualSense now and the PS4 controller in the past. All other modern dualstick controllers that I have tried have been louder. Help a can only play games when people are sleeping gamer out.
Hmm. It's mostly quiet. The thumbsticks have an audible click, as do the triggers when you pull them right down to the casing but neither are particularly loud. The back buttons have a slight click to them, but it's reasonably muted.
Cool thanks, will have to give the steam controller 2 a shot then.

News - Steam Controller goes out of stock as Valve get a ton of "Game Console" shipments
By pb, 5 May 2026 at 1:36 pm UTC

I only planned on getting Steam Frame, but this feature of the controller got me intrigued: "Infrared LEDs make Steam Controller trackable by Steam Frame’s cameras when you’re immersed in VR. Perfect for playing all of your non-VR games on a giant virtual screen." - I hope to see a hands-on test of that and maybe I'll grab it as well (when it's back in stock).