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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Valve doesn't need much to make a Steam Deck 2 a huge success
2 Mar 2023 at 12:24 pm UTC Likes: 14

I would say 2025/2026 for a Deck 2: a more consistent development target platform than the standard PC upgrade cadence, but not as long as a console generation.

Things I'd like in a Deck 2:
  • Get rid of the bezels. Have a bigger screen. If the performance is there to be able to have 1920×1200, make the screen big enough so that's at a feasible pixel density, otherwise stick with 1280×800.

  • Have a better quality screen. Whether it's OLED or simply IPS with a more comprehensive gamut, I don't really care. Use whichever is best for battery life.

  • Have a kickstand, or a prop solution that comes in the box, since external controller support is already good.

  • Kensington lock slot so that game devs use it to demo their games, meaning they're necessarily making sure that running on Linux is a first class concern.

  • Have much better L1/R1 shoulder buttons. These ones seem like an afterthought, aren't especially comfortable, and aren't especially consistent. PlayStation controllers do these much better.

  • Have a power LED that can go amber when the battery is low.

  • Have some means, either tactile or backlight, to find the supplemental buttons.

  • Any magical new-fangled battery tech that lets you fit more battery inside.

  • Bigger base storage in the entry-level tier. 256/512/1 TB, or even 512/1 TB/2 TB

  • Better haptics. They've done what they can with what's essentially an audio output, but dedicated controllers with motors do a much better job.

NVIDIA 530.30.02 mainline Beta driver rolls out, plus a new Vulkan Beta driver
28 Feb 2023 at 5:07 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: XpanderCan't see the change in the nvidia-settings icons also but i guess thats my icon theme taking over maybe
hicolor is the ultimate fallback for icons. When looking for a particular icon, the DE will first look in the theme, and then step back through the Inherits themes, and finally look in hicolor. The reason you wouldn't see a change is because your theme isn't taking it over, although this change makes it possible for themes to do so.

Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates
28 Feb 2023 at 3:51 pm UTC Likes: 1

It might be worth starting to list Cosmic as distinct from Gnome for those people that are using Pop. Cosmic obviously has a Gnome heritage but so do Cinnamon and Mate.

Beat Hazard 3 gets a "Huge" optimization for Steam Deck
27 Feb 2023 at 12:32 pm UTC Likes: 2

I did enjoy the first one, which was Linux native.

Ubuntu flavours to drop Flatpak by default and stick to Snaps
25 Feb 2023 at 10:26 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: StenPettIt's all a bit "meh" in my opinion.

If you don't like snaps, don't use a distro that use snaps. If you don't like flatpak, don't use a distro that use flatpak. If you don't like either, then you know what to do.

It's all about having the option to choose what you want to use yourself. In the end, we all win regardless
I agree with your overall point, although the specific detail is the other way round. Every distro can use flatpak and every distro can use snap (although Mint arbitrarily puts hurdles in the way of user choice). Whether a particular distro comes pre-configured with either is just one of countless defaults that distros can pick, and users can change. You don't need to change the whole distro just because you don't like the default settings.

All the screeching and frothing about it (and about other topics) is entirely pointless.

Ubuntu flavours to drop Flatpak by default and stick to Snaps
23 Feb 2023 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: whizseI can't say I have a stake in this, but it's interesting to ponder that Ubuntu seems to have a habit of betting on the wrong horse, Mir and upstart, for example.
I wish that people would stop bringing up Upstart in discussions like these. Upstart predates systemd by 4 years and was at the time the best candidate to replace the ancient SysVinit which is why many, including Red Hat and Chromebooks, move over to Upstart.
The same is also true of snaps, Mir, and Unity. Snaps predate flatpaks and have features that flatpaks still lack. Wayland wasn't (and still isn't) a good choice for phones since it's for the desktop. There (still) isn't a convergent desktop environment that will work across phones, netbooks, tablets and the desktop, which was the aim of Unity.

Canonical's problem is that they want to push things forward but don't have Red Hat (IBM now) money.

Steam Mystery Fest live until February 27th
21 Feb 2023 at 4:20 pm UTC Likes: 2

Oh, the Broken Sword games and Voodoo Detective are included. They're good, too.

Steam Mystery Fest live until February 27th
21 Feb 2023 at 4:04 pm UTC

The Darkside Detective games are excellent, and play really well on the Deck.

Steam had 83,000 new customers every day in 2022
17 Feb 2023 at 10:58 am UTC Likes: 1

Another crazy growth statistic:

For instance, during the 2022 Autumn Sale, 1.4 million accounts made their first-ever purchase on Steam. That’s about 134 new customers every single minute, for seven days straight.

Shader cache downloads being a nuisance? Valve may have solved it
16 Feb 2023 at 9:42 am UTC Likes: 3

For those that are interested in the whys of the shader problem, this article [External Link] is a good read.