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I already signed the EU one. I think this is a good move.

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Seeing so many members of the gaming and tech communities announce their support has made the last few days very exciting.
Just to name a few: PewDiePie, Cr1tikal, Asmongold, Jacksepticeye, Michael Bell of Bellular News, Louis Rossmann, Steve Burke of GamersNexus, Jeff Geerling, and so many more.

It's been very uplifting.

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That's a whole 'nother argument, but I do agree. Much like buying something, and then features that came with it suddenly behind a paywall - it all needs to stop.

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this looks awesome! Next time I need to tinker with my proton versions I will give this a try instead of up-qt.

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It's not just about games...
When MasterVolt pulled the plug out of the cloudservice of the Web soladin 1500, a month later my solar panels stopped producing.
It should be illegal that if you buy something, that it requires the cloud to be functional.

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I don't like sharing my login credentials with 3rd party apps. Is it possible to use Heroic with GOG installers that I manually downloaded? Does it have any disadvantages, like missing auto-applied game fixes (UMU integration, or similar)?

A second question, is it possible to add the whole Heroic/Lutris UI to Steam instead of individual games, and still control it using gamepad, when I start it from the Steam Deck gaming mode?

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Thank you for making a post about my application, it means a lot to me!

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@d3xt3r yeah I get it. This is why I switched to KDE. I like GTK/Adwaita, but the devs are such a pain. At first I was a big fan of them, but the more I got to know the DE the more I understood that they just live in their own bubble. At this point it would be too much for me to rewrite my application in C++ and Qt. If only they listened to the community they could be so much more, but it is what it is.

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Heroic is also exploring adding other stores, but they are committed to only adding those when they have good cli option so it can be natively incorporated to Heroic UI.

https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher/issues/4605

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Thanks!

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Still a great deal most of the time for the games you get though IMO.

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Desktop Linux with the Deck excluded has been at the same level as Mac for a couple of months already.

https://i.ibb.co/hRNbFjGW/Steam-Deck.png

Your graph shows some interesting patterns.

For instance that the Linux desktop trend seems to drop right after Steam Deck released. This is not unreasonable since I expect quite a few Linux users to own one and some of them will simply have been counted as deck instead of desktop.

Deck growth also seems to have stalled for a while now (growing with Steam instead of faster). Liam's graph even shows that its share has been dropping steadily. So desktop usage is going up faster than on first inspection.

This is probably all somewhat speculative (especially the second observation) because I suspect that proper statistical tests would not show much confidence with the limited data set. This is made even more difficult when you realise that the "Steam Deck" graph is not an independent data set. It is likely that most deck users are also desktop users, interlinking the data and making proper analysis even more difficult.

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Nice to see CachyOS going quite strong already.
It is so far my most favorite distro I ever used.

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If you remove the local peaks and subtract the SteamOS values, then you get that approximately 1.6% are Linux desktop users. Which may not sound like a lot, but it's starting to approach MacOS level now and on the whole user base of Steam this is still a lot of people.

Desktop Linux with the Deck excluded has been at the same level as Mac for a couple of months already.

https://i.ibb.co/hRNbFjGW/Steam-Deck.png

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Fun fact: I got the survey twice yesterday. First on my laptop, then on my desktop. I suppose Linux market share gonna blow up in July...

It's a hardware survey, not a user survey. Two machines both being sampled is intended behaviour, regardless of who's using them.

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Valve will of course know if an account has done it multiple times.

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Fun fact: I got the survey twice yesterday. First on my laptop, then on my desktop. I suppose Linux market share gonna blow up in July...

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If you remove the local peaks and subtract the SteamOS values, then you get that approximately 1.6% are Linux desktop users. Which may not sound like a lot, but it's starting to approach MacOS level now and on the whole user base of Steam this is still a lot of people.

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Nearly 6% of English-using Steam users is pretty good. It would be nice to make inroads with gamers in China, too, but that's an uphill struggle.

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I hope they enable age verification with the German government ID card. It allows you to prove you're above 18 without revealing your age or any other personal details.

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I just hope for Steam Deck 2 they cut it down to at max 2 models. 512GB and 1TB would be fine.

I fear valve will not makes a steam deck 2, instead they will release steamOS for more third party handhelds.
I hope i'm wrong.

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To add to that ^, GNOME devs HATE themeing, and actively go out of their way to discourage people from it. In fact, they even went to the extent of making an entire website for it: https://stopthemingmy.app/

This extreme user hostility is why I boycott the GNOME ecosystem.

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The analogy with driving also works in reverse to show how absurd the new laws are. What if the government suddenly started requiring all vehicle be equipped with a gps module constantly streaming its position to the authorities because "it will protect the children".

You're aware that something along these lines is already in place?!?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall

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@RavenWings: Yeah you can really go nuts with Window Behavior. My best use of it so far is an application I wanted to auto start but without a window, only running in system tray, but the app had no option for it. I'm sure you could do that a million ways with scripts but Window Behavior worked for me :)

Thanks for taking the time to write about your experiences. It was an interesting read. Most of the things I rarely use but I'm eager to test Steam search, Firefox PiP and KolourPaint. What if they are broken and I just didn't realize? :O Let's hope Wayland keeps getting better at a decent pace. I mean the situation with full screen games doing what ever is just wacky. Beyond All Reason keeps opening on the wrong screen and I can't for the life of me make it not do that. It's not a huge thing as I just move the window over when the game starts but still. It's wacky.

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Great guide. BF4 is very playable. The only downside is having to play as Russia 💩.

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Seems to be an unpopular opinion but - good riddance. I'm tired of this wild west era of the internet where any platform can have anything on it and not be held responsible. Sure, no implementation will be perfect, but why not make the haram stuff a bit more difficult to access, eh? If this is what it takes to expose a few less people to traumatizing or shocking content all willy-nilly.

Now, I too, feel that the implementation of these being left to the free market is a bad idea. I want a transparent trust-free ubiquitous social service (from the government) identifying people and confirming to platform holder whether I am qualified for the content (jurisdiction & age). I will not give my ID to Google or platform partners (who mess things up completely in case of smaller platforms).

Thanks for writing this. My little one, eight years young, started using Google this week. Yes, I will have to steer that, but I appreciate some content to be behind age verification check.

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Seems to be an unpopular opinion but - good riddance. I'm tired of this wild west era of the internet where any platform can have anything on it and not be held responsible. Sure, no implementation will be perfect, but why not make the haram stuff a bit more difficult to access, eh? If this is what it takes to expose a few less people to traumatizing or shocking content all willy-nilly.

Now, I too, feel that the implementation of these being left to the free market is a bad idea. I want a transparent trust-free ubiquitous social service (from the government) identifying people and confirming to platform holder whether I am qualified for the content (jurisdiction & age). I will not give my ID to Google or platform partners (who mess things up completely in case of smaller platforms).

Laws such as the UK's "children safety act" give too much power and too much data to the government. The problem with that is not necessarily what happen immediately but rather what could happen in the long run.

Let's say UK introduce some form of government controlled online ID and tracing system. Amongst other things, this system is to be enforced on crypto currencies trading. It makes sense to not let teens play with high risk (sometime borderline legal) investments after all.

Skip 5 years into the future. The economy isn't doing well, mass layoffs are happening and there is a lot of unrest. The majority party then has a genius idea: let's blame it all on crypto currencies being used to manipulate the market. They promote new laws making owning crypto wallets illegal. Luckily, with all the data collected in the past 5 years they can easily fine/jail/whatever all the traitors who abused the system.

Governments should not be seen as perfect entities always acting in the best interest of everyone. Don't get me wrong, they are necessary and for the most part a huge boon to our societies. But they have their flaws, as such people must be entitled enough privacy to guarantee their freedom.

I agree. But can we expect better if the privacy-minded people, when asked for their input on these policies, are simply yelling "nooo".

I would consider myself a privacy minded person so here is an alternative, barely fleshed out idea, just to prove that other approaches are possible:

Owning an internet connection now requires a licence, just like driving a car. Obtaining said licence requires passing a test about general knowledge (identify phishing mails, what's an ip, so on) and, most importantly, your responsibility as an adult when letting children use internet (and how to protect them).

The main difference with the current laws being passed is that, in this scenario, the government is only judging your ability to do something, not tracing everything you do with it.

The analogy with driving also works in reverse to show how absurd the new laws are. What if the government suddenly started requiring all vehicle be equipped with a gps module constantly streaming its position to the authorities because "it will protect the children". Also, the police must have a duplicate of your keys, in case they need to check you haven't abducted a kid on your way to groceries (certainly they will never lose them, nor will there be any abuse, ever).

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Seems fine to me, honestly.

Freedom is all good and dandy, but some things are behind age checks for a reason, and the internet has frankly been way too lax on those for ages.

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That's not what this article says though... It explicitly states that NVIDIA will be ending driver support for the aforementioned cards.

I actually took what I said from the article. :)

..."they've now confirmed the 580 series will be the last supported for GPUs based on"...

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The alternative is to just not do it and pretend this is a defensible position. I don't think "but having my OS actually run software is hard and users who insist on it are being unrealistic" is a defensible technical position.

"I'm not going to do this in my free time; it's no fun" is an understandable position, though...

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