On shader compilation: Steam already downloads pre-compiled shaders if your machine has a familiar configuration. This would definitely have a familiar configuration, so it shouldn't have to compile its own shaders for games from Steam.

On streaming media: BPM has easy access to a browser using the shoulder buttons. Valve will likely just lean on that rather than picking and choosing services unless the providers of those services put something in the Steam Store. They will have to make sure they have hardware accelerated playback and decryption for DRM out of the box, though.

On the OS: gamescope has features that are perfect for this kind of device. In particular, automatic decoupling of render resolution and refresh rate from display resolution and refresh rate, with automatic upscaling. I expect the device will be running Wayland and gamescope for those features.

On the size: I think that bigger than the Switch will be the sweet spot. 8 inches and 1080p. That gives more room for battery and cooling, and game designers struggle with low resolution interfaces. 1080p is a resolution that they already test for. I'd personally prefer 1920×1200, and there is movement back to 16:10 displays, so that would be good, too. That combination would have a sharper image than the Switch, but not so tiny that it's hard to see, and not so high a resolution that you're burning battery for things you can't see.

One thing that they really have to change from what we've heard is the name. "Steam Pal" is a terrible name. It sounds like something made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

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I find myself wondering how much these changes represent the other Liam and team being given some autonomy internally, and how much represents a culture change at Nvidia as a whole. It's getting results for us either way but, as we saw with Croteam, the former is fragile with respect to personnel changes.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThere is still not really a reason to move to Wayland. Like sure maybe architecturally it's better. But as a user and needing my things to actually work correctly, then why would I move to Wayland?

The people who used to work on X11 don't want to any more. They only work on Wayland now. No one else has taken over the X11 work. Wayland will become adequate or it won't, but, either way, there's no viable alternative.

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...Northgard...

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Quoting: scaineI honestly wouldn't have minded just "Pop", but Pop!_OS is just crass.

They could have tried to fit a # or a smiley face in there, too. My brain just immediately replaces whatever it is with simply "Pop" anyway. Although now I'm gonna be thinking of them as the po-po.

Quoting: scaineGoogling Pop!_OS issues is fun too - google ignores the !_ and you often find references to "popos" which is an old blighty nickname for the police (apparently now popular in Hong Kong too).

"This real hip-hop
And it don't stop 'til we get the po-po off the block"

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Quoting: Termyif i recall correctly, it's more about better compatibility with games doing something outside the official windows-system-calls?

No, that's a different thing. It's syscall user dispatch that bounces stray Windows system calls back to Wine for processing.

This one is about adding capabilities to futex that weren't thought of back in 2002 - including some that are in Windows' later implementation, which are used by developers making applications for Windows - without breaking userspace applications that are already using the original futex.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: gustavoyaraujoI have 3 Steam Controller and I should say it's an awesome piece of hardware, I hope Valve will keep supporting it to work with Steam.

Same here. The nicest support is when they properly support the Steam Input API. Then it should detect which controller you have, and map the in-game button graphics to correspond to it! One of the most annoying things I encounter in games these days is that they standardize on the Xbox button layout, even if you're using a playstation controller. Not enough developers utilize that though.. :(

That really winds me up. Games generally have a PlayStation port; they've got the assets already, and the means to choose which to display. But... they don't.

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More easily translating Windows' behaviour to Linux was obviously the primary initial motivation, but I don't think it will end up as the only one. Being able to wait for one of many signals seems like the kind of thing that would be generally useful; there's a reason Windows has that function, after all.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: ElectricPrismImagine we could do for GIMP what has been done for Blender, what an amazing thing that would be.

Will never happen while it's called GIMP.

Unfortunately, the project for GIMP-that's-not-called-GIMP withered on the vine.

It's a obscure non-contextual meaning in one language that is not the native language of most people. You can't expect the general population to care.

I'm not bothered by the name. Sure, stating from the outset that your product is in some way subservient or hobbled isn't the best marketing move, no matter how hilarious the initial devs found it, but whatever. There are other products whose names are gibberish (Tumblr and what-have-you) or way worse (the Toyota Shit, for example).

Liam's right that there are some people that are bothered by the name. Glimpse showed us that there aren't enough people that want to use and improve the Gimp, but are bothered by the name, to make it actually viable.

Personally, I think the non-responsiveness of the Gimp project to the GTK and Python transitions is what's doomed it, way more than the name, and some other project will steadily acquire more advanced functionality and eventually take over that niche entirely.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: ElectricPrismImagine we could do for GIMP what has been done for Blender, what an amazing thing that would be.

Will never happen while it's called GIMP.

Unfortunately, the project for GIMP-that's-not-called-GIMP withered on the vine.

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