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I've gone and set up a Matrix account and am ready to move there when this takes effect. With how many breaches Discord has had, I just can't trust them with info this sensitive.

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Y'know, I don't mind the art style, but I do think it's holding this game back a bit. Maybe more than a bit. On one hand, I recognise the author looking at it - and that's not a bad thing. On the other hand, I feel like the author has stopped developing. I do find it slightly unpleasant how large some of the UI is, same for the text boxes etc, and the same goes for the large-but-simple art. Doesn't feel great to look at sitting in front of a monitor, and it ties into how the game doesn't feel satisfying to control with a mouse. That last part sometimes feel like an art that's bound to become a lost one. UI elements just don't click and clack like they used (much more often) once. It's always been a pet peeve of mine.

Normally, I wouldn't lead with all of the above, but for a massive game like this... it is a problem if I feel all of it since minute one. It will only fester and grow.

So, yeah, there's stuff. I suppose this many games in I would've hoped for a bit more polish in places that are maybe not very obvious? The game overall is fun to play, though. Great core idea that's well developed, solid mechanics, a lot of personality... I just probably won't be joining the "GOAT!" crowd on this one.

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Quoting: CorbenIRC was never gone... it's now libera.chat after the freenode takeover

Yeah, I still use IRC actively on a very regular basis, and I've still got a not-quite-disingenuous opinion that no other internet chat system has managed to eclipse it. Though with less rose-tinted glasses I'd have to acknowledge that IRC still has many problems of its own compared to the kind of administrative capabilities available in its newer competitors (not to mention its essential non-"richness" of the text it shuttles around the system). Still, the fundamental service remains, IMO, one of the best.

That Freenode -> Libera thing is actually a wonderful example. Freenode got shitty with a sort-of hostile takeover thing, and within a week or so it was Business As Usual at Libera. Folks had to re-register nicks, some channels got renamed a bit, some channels jumped ship to places like OFTC, and not everything was perfect, but the sysops still all had their familiar tools they'd been using for years, and mostly all users had to do was update a hostname. In the end, everyone's day-to-day experience remained virtually unchanged, just on a different network.

Anyway, I also feel compelled to point out that Libera is hardly the only bastion keeping IRC alive, though it's one that Linuxfolk are likely to be familiar with.

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Quoting: gbudnyI always thought that Quake 3 was a black sheep among games for Linux. I wish this game hadn't been released because this decision could have saved Loki from bankruptcy.

I do not think that is entirely fair to be honest; as you yourself pointed out, the bigger issue was Loki's tendency to over invest and stretch their resources far further than their income stream could support. Them ordering way too many Collector's Edition tins was just a symptom of a wider problem.

Regardless, by black sheep, I meant more Call to Power's standing in relation to the rest of the Civilization franchise more than its standing on Linux. Although based on the small sample here, it does seem to have a more positive reputation among at least a subset of Linux gamers than I have seen elsewhere. Quite effusive in fact.

Quoting: gbudnyFor example, you probably need the French version of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux to use installers and patches for this specific version, but you can't change it to English. Please correct me if someone tried it.

There are separate patch installers for both version upgrades and language conversion listed:
[https://www.lokigames.twolife.be/products/civctp/updates.php](https://www.lokigames.twolife.be/products/civctp/updates.php)

I was able to change my Linux install from English to French and then to German. That may have been useful for me to experiment with before as there were several cheap German boxes of Call to Power for Linux listed on eBay, while the English version I did finally buy cost me quite a premium, while also still being shipped from Germany ironically enough. Too late now though.

I did pick up a very cheap French copy of Call to Power for Windows just for the CD audio to prevent further wear on my expensive Linux disc; the eBay listing never mentioned that it was in French, but it was from a Quebec seller and you can see French text if you really squint at the picture of the jewel case, so caveat emptor I guess. By copying over the English data from my Linux install and modifying the civpaths.txt file was able to convert it over myself manually, although again, the CD audio was all I was really after. No idea why French versions of older games sell for as cheap as they do to be honest.

Quoting: gbudnyDid you find any commercial games for Linux published in 1997?

I have never really thought of it in those terms before, but I certainly can not think of any off the top of my head. You certainly listed all of the notable ones from that period.

On a separate but related tangent, whether Call to Power was the first or second Linux game to be sold at retail is somewhat muddied by the fact that Macmillan Publishing announced their boxed Quake releases on May 13, 1999 (my fifth birthday) while Call to Power did not start shipping until May 15, 1999 despite being announced months earlier.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20081005014949/http://happypenguin.org/html/qlinux.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20081005014949/http://happypenguin.org/html/qlinux.html)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20011201235040/http://www.lokigames.com/news/archive.php3?051999](https://web.archive.org/web/20011201235040/http://www.lokigames.com/news/archive.php3?051999)

So you might need to get into an argument over store stocking, logistics, pre-orders, and the like.

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a gentle reminder for everyone who cares about protecting themselves from identity theft (gov's certainly don't - they are counting on it being rampant to gain widespread support for international digital ids) to minimize the external services you use on your internet/phone as - this is just getting started. get a phone that can run lineage or graphene os, what services do you use that aren't self hosted? anything social media related consider it a matter of time til the same requirements will apply. i would be particularly concerned about things you may be subscribed to and pay, to then be potentially be locked out after an unannounced update occurs requiring id, so you can disable alter your paid subscription (eg spotify). the other one would be perhaps another service with your data or photos on it.

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Thank you for writing this article!

I always thought that Quake 3 was a black sheep among games for Linux. I wish this game hadn't been released because this decision could have saved Loki from bankruptcy.

I know it's an important game for Linux, but I didn't spend much time playing it. It's on my list of games that I have get back to playing.

I appreciate that Loki ported Civilization: Call to Power to Linux. Some games created by other companies from 1999 didn't always support the fullscreen mode: Quake: The Offering, Quake II: Colossus, Hopkins FBI, Theocracy, etc. You can use failsafe session to force a fullscreen mode in them.

Weirdly, the first Loki game had some unresolved bugs because they invested a lot of time and money in building installers for Linux x86/PowerPC/Alpha/Sparc. Additionally, they created boxed versions of games that support four different language versions, and I don't even mention other releases. It was a huge investment made by Loki for a system like Linux, with one or two games released every year between 1994 and 1998. I don't know any other games that have so many boxed versions for Linux. The list of patches is also long, and some names are confusing:

CivCTP-1.2-alpha-german.run
CivCTP-1.2-alpha-europe.run

I even see patches for the Italian version, but I'm not sure if the box version for Linux was published.

Does anyone have the Italian version of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux?

@Hamish

Loki also bolted on extra multiplayer modes, as well as putting out a sprite editor and installers for switching languages.

I could be wrong about it because I didn't check it out. I have other language releases of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux, but I only opened the English version. I suspect that you can't use any of the French/German/Spanish installers with your English version. These boxes are a bit smaller than the English version of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux.

For example, you probably need the French version of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux to use installers and patches for this specific version, but you can't change it to English. Please correct me if someone tried it.

LGP didn't make this mistake, and they always released one patch for all architectures, and their games frequently had different language versions on the same CD/DVD.

@Hamish

Did you find any commercial games for Linux published in 1997?

It's the only year when I didn't find any commercial games released for Linux. I hope it's not true because it would be depressing to wait for over a year for Quake 2 and Ultima Online:

1994 Doom, Doom 2
1995 Abuse, SimCity
1996 Inner Worlds, Quake
1997 Nothing?
1998 Quake 2, Ultima Online

Maybe someone remembers it.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: apocalyptech

Quoting: JarmerOMG I love this so much because it will destroy discord. YESSSSSS I ragehate discord so much so anything that takes measures to destroy it is the best thing ever.

Heh, while I don't hate Discord with the same fervor as you, I am certainly not a fan. Perhaps this'll end up encouraging more people to start adopting open platforms for online discussion, over corporate-controlled walled gardens! Though through the cynical eye of historical observation, I think it's more likely that the majority will just grumble about it and acquiesce anyway. Alas!

if we can make the best platform for once instead of demanding people to use an inferior product...

im not saying that open source is aways worse, but we tend to enter the party when its already in the middle or over, we need to find an way to fund cool projects and make then more competitive with closed solutions before its too late for then to compete...

As far as I can tell, open source development also tends to be more kind of steady, a long gradual push, punctuated by bursts of activity when some talented energetic person joins and suddenly adds some stuff.

Closed source development tends to be more front-loaded . . . there's a big push at the beginning, lots of money and hustle to get the product out the door, then nothing much, bugfixes if you're lucky, until it's time for the next version, when there will be a big push to find some new features to bolt on. Eventually the product reaches maturity, and will start to get worse as they either add bells and whistles because, or if it's dominant in its field they will start to enshittify it.

So at the beginning, closed products tend to be better. A couple of versions in, open source software starts overtaking, and then after a while is likely to end up better than the closed product just by virtue of not being a product. But it takes time, quite often too long to get any adoption.

Also, most commercial, closed projects have the advantage of better and broader marketing, which gives the closed project the advantage in exposure and adoption by potential users. Whether or not the open source project is superior.

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Oh man, multi-stage rockets Besiege-style is going to be amazing (and very shades-of-KSP, I suspect). Can't wait for the new "I built one machine to solve every single level in Besiege" videos to come out. 🙂

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I really liked this game. Have 2 copies of it.
It does work on modern systems with a few glitches (no music from CD, but just fire up rhythm or something)

Underwater cities are powerful, and space ones can be insane.

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Researching for this reminded me that C-evo also exists for those wanting an alternate take on the Civilization formula; it is fully supported under Linux through the C-evo: New Horizons and C-evo Distant Horizon forks.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: apocalyptech

Quoting: JarmerOMG I love this so much because it will destroy discord. YESSSSSS I ragehate discord so much so anything that takes measures to destroy it is the best thing ever.

Heh, while I don't hate Discord with the same fervor as you, I am certainly not a fan. Perhaps this'll end up encouraging more people to start adopting open platforms for online discussion, over corporate-controlled walled gardens! Though through the cynical eye of historical observation, I think it's more likely that the majority will just grumble about it and acquiesce anyway. Alas!

if we can make the best platform for once instead of demanding people to use an inferior product...

im not saying that open source is aways worse, but we tend to enter the party when its already in the middle or over, we need to find an way to fund cool projects and make then more competitive with closed solutions before its too late for then to compete...

As far as I can tell, open source development also tends to be more kind of steady, a long gradual push, punctuated by bursts of activity when some talented energetic person joins and suddenly adds some stuff.

Closed source development tends to be more front-loaded . . . there's a big push at the beginning, lots of money and hustle to get the product out the door, then nothing much, bugfixes if you're lucky, until it's time for the next version, when there will be a big push to find some new features to bolt on. Eventually the product reaches maturity, and will start to get worse as they either add bells and whistles because, or if it's dominant in its field they will start to enshittify it.

So at the beginning, closed products tend to be better. A couple of versions in, open source software starts overtaking, and then after a while is likely to end up better than the closed product just by virtue of not being a product. But it takes time, quite often too long to get any adoption.

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The problem here isn't age verification per se. In theory, that's not such a terrible idea for many things that are online. The problem is that we can't trust any of the people who want to administer it.

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Quoting: amatai

Quoting: TevurI never tried Call to Power II, though. Is it still worth to invest some time into it?

The game was released before its development was over and it shows. The game then somehow went open source and the community finished it but last I tried 10 years ago I did not manage to compile it for Linux. It may be easier now.

It is actually not necessary to compile anything (although that might depend on Linux type you are using).
Just search for `Call to Power II download` and go to CivFanatics site....

Also there is official CivCtP2 project on github...

There might be also other/different sources of donwloads 😊

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I had a crash with ProtonGE-29 with RE8. Sadly it takes three hours to have the crash. Not sure if it was NTSync also involved. Changing to Proton 10 by Valve made it work. Now that i checked the requirements to file a bug report to ProtonGE it might be bit too big of a hurdle cause id first have to test out Proton experimental first.

Also would have to test with NTSync on and off so it would probably take me like 20h or something to do a bug report. Glad that it's working with Proton 10 with video playback and all. I only used ProtonGE cause i thought that the video playback would have been broken on base Proton, but it turned out that it wasn't.

I think that with Steam the base Proton is best to be used and with Heroic ProtonGE with UMU.

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Quoting: TevurI never tried Call to Power II, though. Is it still worth to invest some time into it?

The game was released before its development was over and it shows. The game then somehow went open source and the community finished it but last I tried 10 years ago I did not manage to compile it for Linux. It may be easier now.

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Oh, neat! I thought Endfield would be relegated to just dwproton's domain.

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Quoting: pb

Quoting: NumerfoltI have been using Kate all the time and was wondering why they would use KWrite instead. Then I opened up KWrite for the first time and thought that it should be quite a good replacement.

Maybe I'm stupid, but isn't it the same program? If I open Kate and KWrite, they look the same. When I open About, the only difference is the name at the top, both show the same info, including "(c) 2000-2024 The Kate Authors" (sic!). However, the kwrite binary is 4x smaller than kate, so I'm probably missing something. Maybe KWrite is like Notepad and Kate is like Notepad++, if you forgive the comparison. ;-)

[edit] Ok, I'm starting to see small differences, like integrated terminal and git in Kate. So I guess it's more like an IDE and KWrite is just a text editor?

Kate has integrated sintax checks for shell scripts too.

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For young Me, Civ Call to Power was the real Civ III.
I liked the first one and played Civ II mostly at friends homes. I only bought it in the Test of Time version, which sounded cool on the packaging but was pretty crap.

I never tried Call to Power II, though. Is it still worth to invest some time into it?

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Quoting: ROllerozxaDiscord is the last bastion of social communication for a lot of people who have nowhere else to go, and it's sad to see it's going downhill quicker than I expected.

Totally agree, I think a lot of people are super hesitant to even consider leaving discord because their social lives are held hostage by the platform. Although, it'd be great if this could be the push to get my friends onto something like stoat or another open source alternative.

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Quoting: Tares

Quoting: ChrisznixI was always too old for discord, it was too confusing for me. I missed the magic of early IRC channels or BBS/Forum stuff.

My thoughts exactly. I wish IRC would come back.

IRC was never gone... it's now libera.chat after the freenode takeover.

Also:
https://xkcd.com/1782/

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Quoting: ChrisznixI was always too old for discord, it was too confusing for me. I missed the magic of early IRC channels or BBS/Forum stuff.

My thoughts exactly. I wish IRC would come back.

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RAR support added to Ark, KDE’s un-archiver

Nice. 😊

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Quoting: EikeI had something close with the Steam Deck. It had an update, I turned it off and put it into the case. Some hours later I wanted to take it out - and turning off didn't work! (There was another update the next day, so I guess it was a bug.) That smelled of hot, nearly burned plastic...! It still works today, so lucky me. ("Luck in the bad luck", as a German saying goes.)

I had the same thing happen to me. Every once in a while the Deck bugs out and doesn't do a full shutdown. And since it doesn't seem to have automatic shutdown due to heat it just sits there and roasts itself. 😭

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I think they are going about this all wrong, most folk are use to a certain level of age-verification. You go into a shop to by alcohol, or other age-restricted items and you'll be asked to prove yourself.

It's not new, what is new, is the scope of that age-verification. You go to that local shop, and show a driver's license, it between you and the person behind the counter. You go back later and the same person behind the counter will nod your items straight through.

They remember you had a valid license, but they didn't take a picture of it, or have the details memorised.

The scope of your personal details is limited.

I don't think they've got the scope right.

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Goodbye Discord.
Hello next one.

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I'm just happy to see Valve being more open to official mod support generally speaking after they cease and desisted the TF2 Source 2 port for s&box.

TF2 Classified is awesome for its weapon creation framework, there's so many modded new weapons ready to be used on any server

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Quoting: apocalyptech

Quoting: JarmerOMG I love this so much because it will destroy discord. YESSSSSS I ragehate discord so much so anything that takes measures to destroy it is the best thing ever.

Heh, while I don't hate Discord with the same fervor as you, I am certainly not a fan. Perhaps this'll end up encouraging more people to start adopting open platforms for online discussion, over corporate-controlled walled gardens! Though through the cynical eye of historical observation, I think it's more likely that the majority will just grumble about it and acquiesce anyway. Alas!

if we can make the best platform for once instead of demanding people to use an inferior product...

im not saying that open source is aways worse, but we tend to enter the party when its already in the middle or over, we need to find an way to fund cool projects and make then more competitive with closed solutions before its too late for then to compete...

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Quoting: Sakuretsu26.0 is really 2026-02-11 or is it 2026-03-11?

Yes, it's 2026-02-11 in [MESA's Release Calendar](https://docs.mesa3d.org/release-calendar.html#release-calendar). And it's also typical for MESA to release it's first major version of a year in February, so it's within expected schedule.

:).

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lol Hopefully this will be enough to shake people awake and off to...

Murmer + Mumble
Matrix
XMPP & Jitsi Meet -- the tried and true old fashions
Mattermost? No personal experience here
IRC -- v3 is nice

Quoting: GoEsrI'm left wondering when governments will come for Steam accounts. My account is over 18 years old, so maybe they'll implement the same system Nexus Mods did.

Yeah.. I've been wary about this for a little while now. Before I began using Privacy.com, at some point I gave them my actual debit card. That ought to have been enough for them to figure out I'm over 18. Especially since it's been years since.

Even still, all the more reason to maybe buy Valve's HW and stick to GOG & Itch for buying games. As alluring as those 90% off games are... it doesn't matter once one is locked out of one's account!

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I was always too old for discord, it was too confusing for me. I missed the magic of early IRC channels or BBS/Forum stuff. It was seperate, but i liked it that way.
Discord looked like... TEAMS. I am forced to work with teams, and i hate every little bit about it.
As well there are some instances where i could not avoid discord (the dirtywave m8 forums, a great little hardware music tracker), i was very very strict about what info i gave there.
As for screen sharing and streaming, i never have had use for that. My mumbleserver runs flawlessly for years on peanuts, and it does everything i need. Steam chat and irc do the rest.
What i really dislike about the recent developments is the implication for people herding us cats, like Liam does here. He can not say "i don't care, i will use XYZ"... :(

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