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Latest Comments by CatKiller
The weekend round-up: tell us what play button you've been clicking recently
8 Aug 2020 at 2:26 pm UTC Likes: 5

I've been playing Dishonored. I got most of the way through it on the PS3 back in the day but got distracted by something else and never went back to it.

That one and the sequel had good reports on protondb so I picked up both of them on Steam, although I've only tried the first one so far. It works perfectly in Proton, although the Xbox button prompts when I'm using a PS3 controller are quite irritating.

Racing game 'DRAG' with impressive visuals enters Early Access on August 11
7 Aug 2020 at 6:40 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Liam DaweHere here.
It's actually, "hear, hear," from the earlier, "hear him! Hear him!" [/pedantry]

The fab physics bridge-builder Poly Bridge 2 gets a huge free content update
4 Aug 2020 at 3:00 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: JanneDoes the new game have a wider array of different challenges, or does it suffer from the same issue?
It's still really the same game, with the same sorts of objectives. There are some new mechanics, but it's mostly big quality of life improvements and more deterministic physics. If you don't have either the second one is the one to get, but if you've already got the first one it's a more tricky decision.

Looks like the recent upwards trend of the Linux market share has calmed down
3 Aug 2020 at 3:59 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Alm888Seriously though, this hardly matters. So far we did not see many core underlying shifts in OS distribution channels, with only one company (I forgot which one, Dell or Lenovo) starting to optionally provide pre-installed Linux on some notebooks. The rest are just "recommending" (yeah, we know of the deal they made to get certification/cheap licenses) "Windows™ 10™". ;)
Actually, it's both of them. Dell have been doing so in earnest for quite a while with Project Sputnik, and Lenovo have started doing it recently. Both of them are upstreaming any changes they need to make.

That's showing good prospects for the professional market segment. Boutique and build-your-own has generally been fine, and still seems to be doing well.

Chromebooks have got the cheap-and-nasty segment (the old low-margin netbook segment of things that people will buy on a whim) covered, which will help lower expectations that all computers must come with Windows. Those customers have zero interest in Operating Systems in any form.

The last segment is the "gamer" pre-built segment, and that will take longer. It's reliant on AMD getting more penetration - since Optimus has always been a disaster - and more recognition of Linux as a gaming platform, and manufacturers actually giving a damn. Given that the market is simply a higher-priced version of the cheap-and-nasty segment, and manufacturers can't currently be bothered to even make their blinkenlights work, that's still quite an uphill task.

Godhood to ascend Early Access on August 11
30 Jul 2020 at 6:05 pm UTC

It's a shame they faltered so close to the finish line. Hopefully they'll have enough sales to keep going.

Free and open source 3D creation suite Blender gets funding from Microsoft
29 Jul 2020 at 4:29 pm UTC Likes: 11

Quoting: LinuxwarperWhat's their intentions with funding Blender?
Primarily it's marketing: they get a good PR boost for peanuts - much less than the cost of an advertising campaign.

However, there's also the concept of "commoditise your complements." That means that all of the things that people use with your product, that you can't control directly, should have lots of competitors that people can also use with your product. If you sell cars you want there to be lots of petrol companies whose petrol your customers can use: you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single massive petrol company who might eventually produce their own car to be used with their petrol.

It doesn't have to be nefarious, it's just a standard business decision. You can see the same thing with Valve's Linux support: they don't want to be dependent on Microsoft, so they're investing in ways to make the OS a commodity that their customers can swap out as they see fit.

What play button have you been clicking on lately?
26 Jul 2020 at 1:05 pm UTC Likes: 1

Back to F1 2017 for me so far this weekend.

No 10nm-based Intel CPUs for desktop users until 2021, 7nm-based CPUs delayed
24 Jul 2020 at 9:32 am UTC Likes: 2

However, it's not good if Intel continually get further behind like this, otherwise we eventually end up in a reverse situation of what we had before with Intel and AMD. Ideally, when Intel sort their yields out, they can come back stronger again which will then keep competition healthy because that's what benefits us consumers the most.
Intel won't fail completely: if they can't sort out their own yields they can get TSMC to make their chips. It's a step down from when Intel led on process, but it's still an option. I expect that after their big stumble with 10 nm they'll get back on track over the course of the 7 nm node, though.

Sorting the mess of vendor specific lighting apps, OpenRGB has a new release
23 Jul 2020 at 12:16 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: ArehandoroThis is something I could make use of! I have a logitech mouse that, in the night, if I'm gaming with the controller the lights just made me bllind. I'll give it a go tonight and see if I get somewhere... or break my PC completely :D
For mice, Piper can already control lighting, as well as sensitivity and button bindings.

Linux support for ASUS ROG laptops is coming along nicely
21 Jul 2020 at 12:36 pm UTC Likes: 2

I'm looking forward to a time when tools like this are no longer necessary because we have an abstracted general standard interface instead, rather than a different reverse-engineered utility for each vendor (at best). Like we have with Piper, or LVFS, or hwmon. It's an uphill struggle, though, since OEMs want to be OEMs with their "added value," and they aren't really interested in us.