Latest 30 Comments

[quote=Doktor-Mandrake][quote=eggrole]

Quoting: Pyrate

Quoting: MinoscerebMy use case for Lutris over Heroic is for those game setup files I find laying on the ground after they fell off a truck full of game setup files. The customizability shines better there, even if both programs are capable of the same end results eventually.

Quoting: Doktor-Mandrake

Quoting: MinoscerebI like lutris for the setup scripts for old gamss

I have almost completely switched to Heroic for no good reason other than "I like it", and I too find old setups that have fallen off of the back of the truck from time to time. You can install them fine with Heroic. It is as simple as Add Game -> Select Executable (or installer) and go.

I'm referring more to the community scripts on lutris

Take something like Quake for example, that might only include the windows version, lutris will give options to install linux source ports, or automatically apply fixes to old games. Heroic doesn't have such feature AFAIK.

Another reason I like to keep both around is because they both seem to handle controller inputs differently. I've had some games where controller doesn't register on heroic, but registers on lutris

Granted I could just add it as a nonsteam game and enable steam input, but that kind of defeats the purpose for me having drm free games not reliant on a closed platform

With Heroic with my DS4 controller i use environment variable PROTON_DISABLE_HIDRAW=1 to get my controller to work for all games. With some games like Metro Exodus though the Playstation mode is better, but then it's as easy as just removing the environment variable from the games list of env variables.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI said Valve wasn't a natural monopoly,

I was thinking about that natural monopoly thing as it relates to these lawsuits. I wonder if part of the problem is that some people are actually thinking of Valve's Steam store as if it is a utility that distributes video games rather than the for-profit business it actually is? A side affect of being the best-known and pioneering player in digital game retail, perhaps?

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: CaldathrasThe fact that the library administration is getting rid of all the self-help / how-to books troubles me, however.

I wouldn't care at all about getting rid of the self-help books, but the how-to is a different story. How-to books are useful. Self-help books are for the most part a racket, and one which is actively bad for people both psychologically and politically.

Yea, I was thinking more of the "how-to" and "do-it-yourself" categories and somehow "self-help" fell in there. Definitely meant how-to and DIY. Thanks for catching that.

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So Nvidia GeForce Now will get native Linux,
GOG will get native Linux hopefully with Proton support.

Steam still has the majority of games playable on Linux

And if you want anything else there is always Etch.io or any emulator you want to install.

Plus GOG would be crazy not to include native support for the Steam Controller 2, if they want to get on to the Steam Machine.

Crazy times for Linux

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: CreepioI still play Dirt 3. It runs perfectly on the Steam Deck and provides loads of fun even to this day. I cannot say the same for many modern racing titles. I waited years for Forza Horizon 4 to reach a reasonable price, but by the time I was ready to buy it, it had already been pulled from the store. What is the point of waiting for a game to be affordable only for it to be killed at the six-year mark?

It's absolutely not the same. FH4 still works well as of today, including online features such as pvp races and eliminator game mode. The only exception is that they killed the festival playlists, effectively making some of the achievements impossible to unlock, which is a bummer. Anyway, delisting a game from the store because the licences expired is absolutely not the same as making the game not launch after the servers are shut down.

Yeah, I guess you're right. And to add further insult to injury, I can't even buy DiRT 3 from Steam anymore. So, yeah. I gave a bad example. Sorry about that.

I think the principle of what I'm saying is, I wish they would sell games forever, and at the very least, if they don't want to sell them forever, they should still be completely or almost completely functional. I don't understand why they won't just sell the games forever.

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I didn't really expect Square Enix to allow Final Fantasy to be DRM free.

Good to see these available. I have them in my Steam account, but I think the 3D remakes are delisted now. That said, they are the worst versions of the games.

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Quoting: CaldathrasThe fact that the library administration is getting rid of all the self-help / how-to books troubles me, however.

I wouldn't care at all about getting rid of the self-help books, but the how-to is a different story. How-to books are useful. Self-help books are for the most part a racket, and one which is actively bad for people both psychologically and politically.

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Just an expansion and upgrade? LOL
Higher resolutions (up to 4k)
Higher frame rates (up to 240fps)
And AI filters that were previously blocked on the electron app.

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Quoting: KimyrielleBut hey, that's just what should be done. I have ZERO faith in any lawmakers on the planet to introduce "business unfriendly" legislation, unless people start dying left and left. And that won't be the case here, so...

Maybe your are this synical because you don't live in the EU, but in the recent years multiple laws have passed to improve the environment, consumer health and animal welbeing, to name a few. And these laws were definitely not friendly for (local) businesess. You should really look into it, I hope it makes you a more positive person :)

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Quoting: wytrabbitAt least 90% of the games on my Steam wishlist and in my library are recommendations from GOL 😀

My backlog is rather daunting though.. 😅

I was going to say the same thing. I ignore social media and advertising.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, can't resist getting my final points in, sorry.

Sure, taxation is distinct from profit . . . taxation is much more legit, because it gets used for the public good. But you and I both know the sense in which people describe the such-and-such-company "tax", e.g. the "Microsoft tax" on (nearly) every PC, so there's no point in a semantic argument that ignores what's being said.

I said Valve wasn't a natural monopoly, like a power utility. You're a good guy so I don't think you were intending to twist words there. Valve certainly has sufficient market dominance to be able to have a significant ability to set prices and create barriers to entry. Antitrust law, when it was a real thing, never required 100% of the market to deem something a monopoly. There was certainly a time in the US when Valve would have been long since broken up . . . also Microsoft, Oracle, Alphabet, Meta and plenty of others. I happen to like a lot of things about Valve, certainly compared to many other dominant companies, they have quite strongly resisted the process of "enshittification" that most dominant platforms embrace, but that doesn't make them not a dominant firm with a huge percentage of their market.

As to the right to decide profit levels . . . yeah, governments get elected, businesspeople don't. I might be willing to say Mohamed bin Salman shouldn't have that right . . .
Businesses operate in and depend on the legal and physical infrastructure created and defined by the countries they exist in, most need the educated workforce governments educate, and so on and so forth. This goes right down to the level of defining what businesses are--limited liability corporations in specific were created and defined by the state and cannot exist without state charter, but the same thing is largely true, if less dramatically, for other forms of business. Business as we know it cannot exist without government. Where government disappears, businesses don't make profit, paramilitaries just take their stuff. And abusive levels of profit are bad for countries and the people in them. It is totally a good idea to regulate them and it has been quite normal in many countries a good deal of the time. The current political climate in which business can do no wrong is a historical anomaly . . and one that we can see in real time generating more and more instability.

No problem. I just didn't want to get into a lecture about business bookkeeping details and the math involved.

Taxation: I suppose, when you think of it informally, like the "Microsoft tax" euphemism, I can see where you're coming from. Of course, that was a contractually enforced fee on sales of hardware, regardless of whether it actually shipped with M$ software (if I recall the controversy correctly). As opposed to a commission fee on every legitimate sale of the game on Valve's platform. A bit more honest if you ask me and less "tax-like".

Monopoly: Thank you. Now that you mention it, I can't recall the last time a business faced an antitrust investigation in the US. Has Canada ever pursued it up here? The last I remember was IBM wiggling it's way out of being broken up by restructuring. I think I recall some talk about going after Google at one point.

Profit Levels: Well, you're thinking of corporations (which probably shouldn't be allowed to exist) while I'm thinking of single proprietorships or partnerships. Very different business structure. Really, though, the government has little incentive to limit the profit level of a business. They tax the net profit of a business. The more net profit a business has, the more taxes the government collects.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI do care that you're in business; it puts a certain perspective on what you say. It means you have a certain point of view, one belonging to a particular self-interested community, and after 35 years, one that it will inevitably be hard for you to see. I've worked in a library for 35 years; at libraries, our bias is towards public service and finding out the truth.

Ooh, that could be taken as somewhat harsh, but I don't think you meant it that way. It might surprise you to know that I am actually quite jaded about the business conduct we see these days, particularly with corporations. My entire working life, I have made a point of working for small, locally-owned businesses when I wasn't a business owner myself. The three times I have tried working for a large corporation, the experiences were absolute disasters.

This "growth at all costs" business mentality that kicked in in the eighties has always troubled me. I think a business can and should be content with breaking even, or maybe just a little extra profit above that to reward the owner for their efforts (and, believe me, we sacrifice a lot of ourselves for our businesses). I'm a big fan of the idea of employee-owned businesses. I am a firm believer that there is such a thing as "big enough", after that a small business should encourage sharing the market with other small businesses in the same field. Cooperation rather than competition.

"Finding out the truth," eh? Sounds noble. Of course, the truth is always relative. 😉 I have a great deal of respect for our local librarians. The fact that the library administration is getting rid of all the do-it-yourself / how-to books troubles me, however.

Edit: Corrected use of the wrong word - wrote "self-help", meant "do-it-yourself". Thanks @Purple Library Guy

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Quoting: fenglengshun

Quoting: DirgeI know a lot of people use the distro as a NAS OS due to their ZFS implementation. I'm interested in seeing what they implement in order to break out and into more broad environments.

Same. I prefer having the same distro on my machines, and so far I'm liking CachyOS. I'd want to see what the server edition offers and see it tested before using it on my repurposed old laptop.

I've been running a Cachyfied-Arch on a homelab mini PC for over two years and it's been amazing. The performance is incomparable to any other traditional server distro that most people normally recommend, plus the added benefit and flexibility of being able to easily install the latest version of pretty much any Linux package, makes me happy to recommend Arch/Cachy for any experienced Linux folks looking to use it as a sever OS.

But for a more serious (production) or install-it-and-forget-it type scenarios though, I'd recommend a lightweight immutable and atomic distro, such as uCore OS - because Arch/Cachy ocassionally breaks or needs manual intervention, and that might not be acceptable for some server scenarios.

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Quoting: tmtvlYou loved The Spirits Within? I was baffled at why it was called Final Fantasy aside from 'we have the trademark, might as well slap it on this completely unrelated project and try to get more eyeballs' (the Baldur's Gate 3 strategy).

Having no experience with the games themselves, I enjoyed the quality of the animation and the story really resonated with both my wife and I.

I have to admit that afterwards I started to look more closely at the games and was somewhat confused because there didn't seem to be a counterpart in the games themselves. It had nothing in common with Advent Children, which I bought on DVD and only watched once.

I am surprised to learn that Advent Children was considered the highly successful movie while The Spirits Within was deemed a failure. I guess because I am not invested in the Final Fantasy franchise, I've always felt it was the other way around.

Looking back at it now, they should have just titled it The Spirits Within and left Final Fantasy out of the title. I see your point there.

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Look, I don't know the stuff that goes on in the background of all the various distros. All I can say is that I hope Bazzite keeps on trucking. I very much like using Bazzite, it is very convenient for my desktop, and I do not want to have change distros.

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Something similar should be done to force streaming sites like Netflix into offering an option to "buy and download to keep" digital copies of their contents. Keep like in download on my personnal server legally and use on a Plex server (example). I'm tired of seing content that I like just disapear from these services.

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Quoting: F.UltraAgain none of this, including the DSA, have anything to do with the 30% that is under discussion. Also the Fortnite vs Apple have no releveance for Steam since Steam does not have the same "you must use our payment platform for in-app purchases" as Apple have. I still fail to understand what point you are trying to make here?

Then that's on you if you can't make the connection. That's all I can do to show that Valve is - in fact - not singled out - i.e. LupertEverett's statement is false.

To the rest of your claims:
There's even a message (e-mail? I'm pretty sure it was covered here, too) from Sweeney directed at Newell which explicitly states it's about the 30% of the App Store.

The same with the DSA: One part is explicitly about the 30% because it forces Apple to allow payment processing outside the App Store.

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Quoting: gradyvuckovicI just want to point out that there are A LOT of talented artists out there who would love to get some exposure, artists who would love a chance to get their work shown off in such a highly visible place such as the front page banner of a major online game store. Look at the exposure that the artist Nemu got with her 'Steam Delivery Girl' on Steam. There's many out there who would be very happy for a very reasonable fee to do this kind of work, and it's not a huge cost for a company like GOG to pay that. This comes off as lazy, cheap and disrespectful to me. Just a giant FU to artists.

Great point. By investing on a real artist, GOG could have a "Steam Delivery Girl" moment of their own, but they decided to take the easy way out and look how badly that ended for them.

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Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: F.UltraGood luck ty a Fortnite vs Apple suit was because Apple forced Fortnite to use their payment system for in app purchases. So far I have no idea how this somehow makes LupertEverett:s comment that both Sony and Apple take 30% incorrect.

Here I empahsised the relevant parts of the quotes.

Quoting: LupertEverettThe fee, that is... 30%...

You know... the same amount Sony and Apple also gets, yet somehow it is only Steam who is constantly put on target for it.

It's all about the 30%. But since you're conveniently omitting the EU DSA from your argumwnt shows me that you obviously already got it.

Quoting: pbYou absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

Games in Steam are always DRMed (you cannot start the game twice via Steam). Even if the publisher provides it DRM free.

yes? Again none of this, including the DSA, have anything to do with the 30% that is under discussion. Also the Fortnite vs Apple have no releveance for Steam since Steam does not have the same "you must use our payment platform for in-app purchases" as Apple have. I still fail to understand what point you are trying to make here?

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Quoting: CaldathrasI've never played any of the Final Fantasy games. I always thought of the franchise as mostly a console thing, and I've always played my games on PC. Never got around to it once there were PC releases.

Loved the first animated movie, though!

You loved The Spirits Within? I was baffled at why it was called Final Fantasy aside from 'we have the trademark, might as well slap it on this completely unrelated project and try to get more eyeballs' (the Baldur's Gate 3 strategy).

Interesting that you thought of FF as being a console thing, which for the longest time it was, when my introduction to the series was FFVIII on PC (which was a benefit as Chocobo World was inaccessible for Western PlayStation players due to not having the PocketStation).

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Quoting: jrtwtf it's not even a script. This is the most Nvidia-way to distribute a flatpak.
For those who want to try it without running a random installer:

App-ID: com.nvidia.geforcenow
Flatpak Repo: https://international.download.nvidia.com/GFNLinux/flatpak/geforcenow_repo

For ease of use here is a flatpakref: https://gist.github.com/jrtberlin/9002737b9b74d2e3e59ca664de92a84d

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Quoting: F.UltraGood luck ty a Fortnite vs Apple suit was because Apple forced Fortnite to use their payment system for in app purchases. So far I have no idea how this somehow makes LupertEverett:s comment that both Sony and Apple take 30% incorrect.

Here I empahsised the relevant parts of the quotes.

Quoting: LupertEverettThe fee, that is... 30%...

You know... the same amount Sony and Apple also gets, yet somehow it is only Steam who is constantly put on target for it.

It's all about the 30%. But since you're conveniently omitting the EU DSA from your argumwnt shows me that you obviously already got it.

Quoting: pbYou absolutely can. There are lots of DRM-free games on steam and downloading the files is the only thing you need to do in order to run them. Obviously you can't do that with games relying on Steam DRM (at least not without using workarounds), but that's something the developer put in there, and not valve. Valve does not require any kind of DRM for games sold on Steam.

Games in Steam are always DRMed (you cannot start the game twice via Steam). Even if the publisher provides it DRM free.

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wtf it's not even a script. This is the most Nvidia-way to distribute a flatpak.
For those who want to try it without running a random installer:

App-ID:
flatpak install -y --user GeForceNOW com.nvidia.geforcenow
Flatpak Repo:

flatpak remote-add --user  --if-not-exists GeForceNOW https://international.download.nvidia.com/GFNLinux/flatpak/geforcenow.flatpakrepo

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I'm going to try the demo - could be fun!

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I just want to point out that there are A LOT of talented artists out there who would love to get some exposure, artists who would love a chance to get their work shown off in such a highly visible place such as the front page banner of a major online game store. Look at the exposure that the artist Nemu got with her 'Steam Delivery Girl' on Steam. There's many out there who would be very happy for a very reasonable fee to do this kind of work, and it's not a huge cost for a company like GOG to pay that. This comes off as lazy, cheap and disrespectful to me. Just a giant FU to artists.

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The fuck is that trailer...!?

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Quoting: DirgeI know a lot of people use the distro as a NAS OS due to their ZFS implementation. I'm interested in seeing what they implement in order to break out and into more broad environments.

Same. I prefer having the same distro on my machines, and so far I'm liking CachyOS. I'd want to see what the server edition offers and see it tested before using it on my repurposed old laptop.

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One more question in the thread mentioned in the article was what I thought was another meaningful response:

Quoting: RedditorHave you considered offering Antheas a job on CachyOS Handheld Edition? He was the one who made things work at Bazzite and would be a great addition.

Quoting: ptr1337Could be a great technical enhancement, but we keep us away jumping into drama 😬

Further emphasizing a desire to avoid potentially troublesome entanglements, along with the Playtron comment.

Their current focus is probably on the server edition that was hinted in [their end of year blog post](https://cachyos.org/blog/2025-christmas-new-year/).

I know a lot of people use the distro as a NAS OS due to their ZFS implementation. I'm interested in seeing what they implement in order to break out and into more broad environments.

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Well, the CachyOS was very good in responding to the various threads on Reddit and their forum when users (me included) has some issues with the updated ISO's installer.

At the very least, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and trust them as a team because they were on it when there were issues.

Hope CachyOS can work on my long term because I really enjoyed the distro so far.

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Steam Deck higher than nintendo switch lol

yeah the AI tools usage is inevitable at this point i guess
research and brainstorming doesn't sound like a job for generative AI though.
I can understand using AI to do some tedious tasks that nobody likes to do but yeah, sad.

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So, he tends to push changes before they are fully ready so he can play with them. Examples are day one Fedora releases regardless of whether it works properly (although we got good at that), yanking X11 in early 2024 as Chris Titus (first big youtuber) was reviewing Bazzite, breaking a lot of his software and causing him to ragequit the review, introducing Bazaar too early while it had memory issues and crashed on low end hardware, switching to iwd the day Phoronix announced there are rumors Intel stopped maintainance and breaking enterprise WiFi and WiFi on a lot of Intel devices, using Ptyxis as the default terminal (decent software, but Konsole is fine), bundling the Steam client plus problematic codecs so Bazzite cannot ship on hardware, and putting an assortment of unnecessary packages that we then have to maintain (8 Gnome extensions, etc). There are more, but you get the idea.

Between this and seeing that [my thread](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/fast-moving-fresh-apps-and-deprecation-dilemma/9078) are among the [top read](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/2025-the-year-in-review/11418/3), it feels... Relieving to realize I wasn't going insane with my concerns. Regardless of what actually happened, I'm glad to realize that my concerns, which I finally voiced when Bazaar was added before it was fully ready (in my opinion), is actually something that wasn't totally insane.

I'm willing to wait on more on this before passing any judgement, but I just feel a huge relief to realize that my concerns weren't totally insane and that at least one of the core devs privately has similar concerns.

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