First of all, enforcement won't happen unless someone makes a complaint to a consumer protection authority. And even then, software gets more leeway than let's say hardware or electronic devices in general when it comes to level or duration of support.

1. Rocket League, which provided macOS and Linux versions in 2016, but cancelled them in 2020?

They offered refunds to every Linux player, no questions asked. I know, I was one of the people who refunded the game after hundreds of hours of playtime. That seems reasonable to me, and I feel like authorities would agree.

2. Portal 2, where the native version is broken on Wayland with fractional scaling?

That seems like a corner case that didn't even exist when Portal 2 was launched. It's an old game after all, and they still list Ubuntu 12.04 in the system requirements. :grin: I do get your point, but I doubt this would put them in trouble. Mostly due to the age of the game.

BTW: Does gamescope solve the problem? If it does, that seems like a reasonable fix.

3. Several unnamed indie games where the game won't launch because the library versions are too old/new?

Support doesn't have to be forever, unless that's what they promise. But you can make a complaint to the authorities if you feel scammed. I'd bet that these games would get a pass though, if they work on the specific distributions and hardware they promise to support, and there's a mechanism to request a refund if they do not. Usually they'd just get a warning to update their store pages with a clear disclaimer, and to provide a fix, a workaround or a refund to the complainant.

Unity just writes worse Vulkan calls than DXVK; nothing to be done.

I have a feeling authorities would consider Steam Play / Proton a reasonable workaround. I wouldn't, if I specifically buy a game for offering a native build as I am wont to do, but that's pure ideology and wouldn't actually stop me from playing.

PS: I'm no lawyer, just a consumer protection enthusiast. :grin:

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI agree that there should be a separate rating system that indicates the developer's level of support for the platform. But it should not be legally binding, because nobody would do it and I don't think it's fair.

Whatever level of support you promise at the time of purchase, you're bound to provide. Otherwise you'll be breaking consumer protection laws. At least in the EU. There's nothing Valve can do to make these promises legally non-binding, and I think that's how it should be.

Obviously limited support is fine (for software), as long as you disclose it properly on the store page.

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Thanks Liam! Enjoy your well deserved break.

And happy holidays to the nicest bunch of gamers I've ever had the pleasure to interact with. I'm glad you all found Linux.

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The open world broom racing looks fun.

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Quoting: clatterfordslimThe question is why are Xfce going with Wayland? I have used Xfce for years now and it is fine as it is. Why try to fix something that does not need fixing?

I get what you mean, but apparently X11 is almost unmaintainable at this point, with decades of technical debt. The fact that it was mainly X11 maintainers and developers who came up with Wayland in the first place, declaring X11 maintenance only, should lend credence to this idea. They should know what they're talking about, right? I didn't even see any controversy over this back then, seemed quite unanimous.

Oh and as the article states, Xfce apps will still be able to support X11 along with Wayland.

It's undeniable that Wayland has had a bumpy road (on desktop; I've been using it on my phones for a decade), but if the experts are to be believed, it'll end up being worth the pain. Not that it has even been painful for me personally: X11 has been serving me just fine.

When the day comes that they've finally ironed out the kinks and Wayland reaches proper feature parity, it comes with nice bonuses like properly tear-free displays even on multiple monitors with different refresh rates, proper colour management (and HDR), etc. Not to mention proper security. X11 has always been rather bad at that.

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Quoting: Craggles086So Wayfire is basically Compiz for Wayland yes?

Should add a lot to the default Xfce.

Compiz was a fun toy, added nothing useful to Xfce. If Wayfire is Compiz for Wayland, I suppose I can just ignore it? :wink:

On a more serious note: I'm glad Wayland support is finally progressing, but as long as my apps and games work fine on X11, I'm not too bothered. I just hope Xfce keeps being excellent at working how I expect it to work and getting out of my way.

The Thunar and Panel tweaks look nice.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: legluondunetDebian and Debian-like distributions are not, to my experience, the best Linux distribution for gaming, their packages are not enough often updated and lack libraries dependencies. Arch and Aur are the way to follow for Linux gamers, SteamOS is ARCH based.
For the DE I suggest a light one to keep your resources for gaming, like XFCE.

Depends on your gaming. For heavy gaming with graphics-heavy AAA-type stuff, I expect you're right. I play mostly indie games that don't require either really heavy resource use or twitch reflexes (so I don't worry about frame rates). For light games like that, none of this stuff matters much, so just "whatever makes the nicest desktop" is also fine for the gaming.

Things that can actually make a difference, like the latest graphics drivers and kernels, are easily available for Mint, Ubuntu and pretty much any other mainstream distro. So Mint is perfectly fine even for heavy AAA-type stuff.

The "library dependencies" bit is a non-sequitur. No commercial game depends on bleeding edge libraries.

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Quoting: Liam Dawea seriously janky RPG called Arcanum

It wasn't that bad for the time. Near contemporaries like Fallout 2 and Planescape Torment were just as janky, if not in exactly the same way.

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Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: tuubiIf the world were sane and software patents were not a thing, none of this would be necessary.

I'll take 20 year patents over life+95 years copyright any day of the week. Also I do think there's at least some level of creativity involved in making software, so I don't think the 'software is discovered, not invented' thing holds water. That said I'll agree that patent trolls and defensive patents are clear signs that the patent system could do with improvement. I just don't know how you would improve it without causing patent offices to need entire legions of employees to be able to do their job properly.

The real harm software patents do to innovation and healthy competition is too serious to ignore. Software patents need to go and patent trolls need to find a new grift. FSFE [External Link] has a decently concise write-up on the subject, although it could be better.

But sure, if someone thinks of a system that makes software patents actually beneficial to society at large, bring them back. Keeping them around until that happens does more harm than good.

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If the world were sane and software patents were not a thing, none of this would be necessary.

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