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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Stellaris: Nemesis expansion and the free 3.0 'Dick' update are out now
16 Apr 2021 at 10:24 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: TcheyAs a non-native english, Dick is never firstly a first name for my brain.
It's a surname in this case. Lots of the Stellaris updates have been named after sci-fi authors. But you do get to destroy the galaxy with this one, so it's appropriate that it's his turn now.

Stellaris: Nemesis expansion and the free 3.0 'Dick' update are out now
15 Apr 2021 at 5:09 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: TcheyWhy english speakers name things (and people...) "Dick" with all the side-meanings associated ?
It's named after Philip K., I believe.

System76 announce COSMIC, their own GNOME-based desktop environment for Pop!_OS
15 Apr 2021 at 5:19 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyI'd be willing to give it a whirl - but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of "mainstream" distros using it (particularly in the Debian / Ubuntu-based world), and I'm too lazy to muck around with it too much.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Kubuntu [External Link] and KDE Neon [External Link] are both prominent Ubuntu-based distros that use KDE. Kubuntu is one of the Ubuntu flavours, so it follows Ubuntu's release model, and KDE Neon is from the KDE project, putting the latest KDE release on an LTS Ubuntu base. It's easy enough to fire up a live USB of either to see if it's the kind of thing you might be interested in.

Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn
14 Apr 2021 at 2:48 pm UTC Likes: 11

Quoting: hardpenguin
Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.
No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.
Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.

Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn
14 Apr 2021 at 10:48 am UTC Likes: 21

Quoting: hardpenguinBooo.

I am pretty sure they had good reasons but it is a pity they did not care enough to share them with us.
It's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.

Vulkan Video announced with new provisional extensions along with Vulkan 1.2.175 released
14 Apr 2021 at 6:34 am UTC Likes: 2

With a bit of luck, this might be the kick up the bum that Unity needs to sort out the video decoding in their client. Do you have contacts you can suggest it to, Liam?

System76 announce COSMIC, their own GNOME-based desktop environment for Pop!_OS
14 Apr 2021 at 12:42 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: randylThis is a great development for System 76 users in my opinion. It doesn't solve the Gnome control freak issue for anyone else, but it's good for S76.
It does somewhat. By making it its own thing, with its own name, it makes it easier to be picked up by others if they want it, rather than "that set of patches that Pop has." Much like, say, Cinnamon or Mate did.

Xwayland work for hardware accelerated NVIDIA support has been merged in
13 Apr 2021 at 5:26 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeMy understanding also is that Xorg is not 100% dead, it's just resting. They've nailed it to the perch, so to speak. Beautiful plumage.

They are maintaining it, there were some modules updated like a month or so ago.
What changes there have been are to make XWayland work, which is being spun out into its own thing so that it will actually be released. Pining for the fjords.

Xwayland work for hardware accelerated NVIDIA support has been merged in
13 Apr 2021 at 7:47 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyRather, in real life there seem to have been many efforts to give X upgrades and overhauls to deal with various issues, and the developers finally hit a wall where they didn't see any way forward except to start fresh. I'm not a techie, but on a non-techie level I've been following all this for many years, and it seems the problem is that how applications, graphics cards and their drivers and so on want to interact with screens has changed a lot since X was first written; the whole paradigm just doesn't apply any more and getting it to pretend gradually became kludge upon kludge upon kludge.
Yep, pretty much.

X was state of the art in 1984. For comparison, the GPU as we understand it now was invented some 15 years later.

The biggest change is how multiple windows are combined - composited - to create something that's drawn on a screen. That's an extension for X rather than part of the main thing - support for bitmapped fonts and being able to draw dashed lines are part of the main thing - but it's where all the actual work is done. And the other parts of the functionality of X have changed, too: input handling is completely different now, and throwing bitmaps over the network is not really terribly efficient.

So Wayland makes the compositor the central part, uses more relevant input and output handing, and gets rid of the network stuff entirely.

There are aspects of Wayland's design, implementation, and history that, in my view, have hampered its adoption and desirability. But it's what we've got, since Mir didn't take off and X is no longer fit for purpose, so we have to make the best of it.

Xwayland work for hardware accelerated NVIDIA support has been merged in
13 Apr 2021 at 6:51 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: redneckdrowIs there any reason to use Wayland other than the perception of security for the end user?
X is entirely and completely unmaintained. Its known flaws will never be fixed; flaws discovered in the future will never be fixed. The people that used to work on it don't want to any more, and only work on Wayland now. Xorg 1.21 hasn't been released because there's no one interested enough to do so. It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible.
This . . . is an ex-X!
"X.parrot Server" occurred to me after I'd hit the Post button.