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Latest Comments by Eike
Valve seeing increasing bug reports due to Steam Snap - other methods recommended
18 Jan 2024 at 7:04 am UTC Likes: 7

Valve posted asking people to consider using the official Valve .deb package
Please, please, please, please not!
I'm reading nearly every thread in the Steam for Linux forum, and we hear problems from people having used the downloadable deb for over a decade now! People should use what their distribution made of it, adding their dependencies and such. I cannot believe Valve proposes to actually use that!

Ubisoft think gamers need to get comfortable with not owning games
17 Jan 2024 at 6:31 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThen couldn't it just display the ads and then paint over them with the background colour? I don't care if they're there, I just care if I see them.
That sounds possible. Adding something is a thing the blocker could (always) lie about to the web site code.

Ubisoft think gamers need to get comfortable with not owning games
17 Jan 2024 at 7:54 am UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: ssj17vegetaGoogle taking bolder and bolder steps against ad blocking
Going slightly off topic . . . So, can someone answer me this question:
Why can't there be ad blocking that the websites can't even tell is happening?

I mean, like, normal well-behaved ad blocking as far as I can tell tries to justify its existence in terms of reducing bandwidth, by stopping the ads from being downloaded in the first place. And so, the websites can tell you're using them because they're telling the websites not to send the ads, I guess. And so in turn, browsers are willing to feature them in their easy-to-look-up add-on libraries, I guess, because they're playing nice and letting the websites give you a hard time for using them. But this makes them not so useful, right?

But I don't really care about the bandwidth. Couldn't an ad blocker just let the ads get downloaded but just make it so they aren't shown to you? Then the website wouldn't be able to tell the difference and you could have an ad blocker that worked. Is that not possible?
I fear yes, it might be impossible. Web went from mostly HTML to mostly JavaScript. Without it, many websites just don't work. But with Javascript, the website can check if the relevant (for the website owner) parts are displayed or not. Of course, the blocker could lie to the code, but it wouldn't know when it had to lie and when it had to say the truth to keep the page working.

Check out these Steam Deck Verified highlights for January 2024
16 Jan 2024 at 2:28 pm UTC Likes: 3

I started to play Opus Magnum [External Link]. On Steam Deck first, but that's just too fiddly there, so I'm back on the desktop. (And just during my play-through, the over six year old game got an update. :) )

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
14 Jan 2024 at 10:35 am UTC

Quoting: tuubiI don't really see this as being a problem any more than, let's say, when Linux transitioned from OSS to ALSA and some audio players and libraries never migrated over. That's perfectly normal. I've written software myself that wouldn't work on modern systems because dependencies have gone the way of the dodo, but that would only be a problem if that software still had some practical value to someone.
Personally, I'm ok with it, but I'm surprised I didn't hear more protest from users of the smaller environments. But then, the only Linux website I visit is this one, so I might not have heard lots of noise. :)

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
14 Jan 2024 at 10:33 am UTC

Quoting: LoudTechieLuckily X is not online so it will probably keep running on some offline computers.
But, X is supposed to be "network transparent" and should have loads of network code?!?

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
13 Jan 2024 at 3:32 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: EikeWhen the world moves on to Wayland (in the next decade ;) ), will this be the death of all those little DEs that won't implement a Wayland compositor?
A. Killing a category of small FOSS projects is like weeding Reynoutria Japonica. Only achievable for large organisations with full control over the infrastructure and able to aggressively retribute to anyone who actively opposes the removal process. a.k.a there will always pop up more.
B. FOSS is big on compatibility I remember reading about problems with a removed function 19 years after getting deprecated.
C. FOSS projects don't rely on users to persist(*COUGH GNU/HURD *COUGH) just developers to maintain them.
I don't have the feeling you answered my question. Loads of FOSS projects are dying a silent death every day, GitHub is full of their corpses (and full of all those thriving projects, of course).

Quoting: LoudTechieI promise you that a single decade isn't enough to weed out the small non-implenting DE's or render them incompatible with your distro.
What will run the little DEs in a decade, when X.org is full of problems nobody is fixing anymore?
X will never(on a scale of decades) become any worse than it currently is.
Software doesn't get worse without active interference just more of its problems get known.
Well, there's even a name for it, bit rot [External Link]. And the difference between getting worse and having more known problems is little. Truth is, software, especially software with network components, needs people fixing it up to keep it's level of security. Yes, theoretically, it already has all holes that will become known the next years, but in practice, a hole nobody knows is not a threat. And new ways of finding security holes are invented. (I'd be surprised if AI is not able to find security holes, e.g.). So, yes, in my humble opinion, software (with network code) not being maintained rot over time.

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
13 Jan 2024 at 3:27 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: EikeWhat will run the little DEs in a decade, when X.org is full of problems nobody is fixing anymore?
Just for the sake of clarity, are you talking of any particular DEs here or just some hypothetical ones that will never move on from X.org?
It's hypothetical, I only ever used KDE. I kept hearing about other ones, some E...3?, TWN, I got no idea. Like with many Linux topics, there seem to be many little alternatives to the big fishes. But I have the impression that getting ones DE to work on Wayland is quite some work that little projects might not be able to do. Is this impressions wrong?

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
13 Jan 2024 at 1:26 pm UTC

Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: EikeWhen the world moves on to Wayland (in the next decade ;) ), will this be the death of all those little DEs that won't implement a Wayland compositor?
A. Killing a category of small FOSS projects is like weeding Reynoutria Japonica. Only achievable for large organisations with full control over the infrastructure and able to aggressively retribute to anyone who actively opposes the removal process. a.k.a there will always pop up more.
B. FOSS is big on compatibility I remember reading about problems with a removed function 19 years after getting deprecated.
C. FOSS projects don't rely on users to persist(*COUGH GNU/HURD *COUGH) just developers to maintain them.
I don't have the feeling you answered my question. Loads of FOSS projects are dying a silent death every day, GitHub is full of their corpses (and full of all those thriving projects, of course).

Quoting: LoudTechieI promise you that a single decade isn't enough to weed out the small non-implenting DE's or render them incompatible with your distro.
What will run the little DEs in a decade, when X.org is full of problems nobody is fixing anymore?

Linux Mint 21.3 released with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support
13 Jan 2024 at 12:15 pm UTC

When the world moves on to Wayland (in the next decade ;) ), will this be the death of all those little DEs that won't implement a Wayland compositor?