It's good to see that more popular client-side anticheat systems are finally running on GNU/Linux, but this is not my biggest blocker. My menace is instead DRM.

The biggest area that I am still disappointed with WINE/Proton in is Visual Novels. I haven't yet come across a visual novel on Steam that doesn't work, but Steam doesn't have a lot of Visual Novels. More importantly, most of the visual novels do not have the option to read the story in Japanese. And most crucially, I've not been able to get Textractor to work through WINE on most games (aside from Higurashi? which actually crashes when I try to insert a hook now), which makes looking up words significantly harder.

I experimented briefly with trying to get Textractor to run through the same Proton version as the one running the Visual Novel, but I just couldn't figure it out and gave up. I suspect that the reason it doesn't work is some kind of obfuscation due to DRM. I tend to use Gazou-OCR, which has worked great so far (much better than KanjiTOMO ever did for me, for instance), but it's annoying to use on a GNOME desktop and often inserts bizarre spacing, making lookup more of a chore in Yomichan.

There is perhaps some irony that the only way to get Textractor working is to run the visual novel through WINE, and running it natively on GNU/Linux won't work.

The only visual novel experience that has been great on GNU/Linux is DLSite games. They give you a serial code, you start the game, you put it in, and it just works. Textractor inserts hooks without any trouble. The worst experience has to be DMM, which unfortunately has the biggest library of Japanese VNs. To play a game, you have to download a separate Soft-Denchi (software battery) runtime, which is purely DRM designed to watch you from the time you boot into the operating system. You're able to install it, but WINE is not able to successfully setup the UCManSVC service. So, when you open the game, it doesn't prompt you to login to DMM; it just crashes. So nothing from DMM works on GNU/Linux. They also have an even more invasive form of DRM which requires internet access to play the games.

Perhaps the worst part about all of this is that, after checking with some local Kopimists, I found that the cracked versions of these games work perfectly well on GNU/Linux. At least DMM lets you know whether the game requires DRM to function before you purchase it, unlike Steam. DLSite also tells you whether PlayDRM (the DRM that works with GNU/Linux) is required for a game, although not all games require it. I have yet to find a DMM game that does not require either invasive form of DRM.

Finally, buying a VN on disc may not work either. The most common form of DRM, AlphaROM, does not work with GNU/Linux. After spending several hours messing with aaru and mdf/mds in an attempt to copy the disc, DRM and all, and get it to work virtually, I found that visiting the SETTEC site and inputting a code that came with the game let me download a "profile" that I could put in the game directory to run the game. So, while it doesn't work on GNU/Linux, SETTEC (developers of AlphaROM) give you a way out. No guarantee as to how long this activation method will continue to work.

And then there are, of course, visual novels like Rewrite which require Japan's version of Windows; I doubt these will work on GNU/Linux. Changing your locale on Windows won't even bypass this because they don't want anyone outside of Japan to play the game; you need to download Japan's version of Windows from the outset.

So, my advice to anyone who wants to play Japanese visual novels on GNU/Linux is to buy from DLSite, maybe Steam if it has a Japanese version and you don't mind using Gazou OCR for lookups (or know the language well enough already), and be careful about buying physical.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualChromeOS is a good example of how usable GNU/Linux can be with the right motivation. Android is another example.

My wife has a Chromebook. I actually think it's a pretty bad example.

I've never used the operating system or one of the myriad devices, so I couldn't say. I also haven't used an Android device before.

These are just opinions I've heard repeated often—though I've never been a fan of Google's user interfaces. My question is: are there any GNU/Linux distributions with a better user interface and experience?

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: BeamboomThose who just want a consumer box to do their gaming on - why on earth should they install Linux to begin with

Lots of reasons, including it being free and open source? Duh.

... A regular consumer, regular gamer? Someone who just want a box to do their gaming on, they would choose Linux over a Playstation (or whatever) because they can access the source code???
Get outta here, man. You don't even believe that yourself. Had reality been like that we'd been dominating the desktops across the globe 2 decades ago. :D

Everything related to open source and what it stands for is for the tech interested. Simply put. "free and open source code" means nothing outside the tech community. Zero. Nobody buys a smart TV based on the OS being open sourced. They buy the TV with the features they want. Windows and MacOS are not on 99%+ of all desktops because "people" in general wants open source products.

Free software benefits everybody, even those who aren't programmers. With free software, the developers aren't in the same position of power as they are with proprietary software, so any of the changes they make can be undone by any other user. This benefits the average user who doesn't have any knowledge of programming because they get better software that doesn't attempt to exploit them. It's not about customization or even necessarily choice; it's about the freedom to choose software that respects the user.

That's something everybody can benefit from. Distributions like Linux Mint and Ubuntu cater to these users, of which there may not be an overwhelming amount, but is most assuredly not zero.

ChromeOS is a good example of how usable GNU/Linux can be with the right motivation. Android is another example.

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Quoting: metalinuxI politely disagree with the APT developers on this change. In my opinion, a new user to Linux coming from Windows wouldn't be in the terminal in the first place and even if they do have to use the terminal for something, the warnings in the output clearly stated:

[...]

With the user having to type "Yes, do as I say", so even accidentally entering the "Y" key will not execute the command.

Therefore, APT has done everything it can to inform the user that a major change will occur in their system. The impetus is now on the user. Like with anything in life, you should read and understand something to the best of your ability before accepting the terms and conditions.

The unfortunate reality is that using Linux without using the terminal simply isn't possible in some instances. This is made even more difficult by the majority of guides only providing instructions for bash and not a graphical application. Many new-to-Linux users will find themselves in the terminal, following these instructions, because they can't figure out how to do the same thing with a graphical application. New Linux users ending up in the terminal is not only common; it's an inevitability.

I disagree that Apt has done everything it can. I have issues with the way this warning is presented. The formatting of Apt makes it difficult to parse because everything is clumped tightly together, with no bolding, italicizing, or color usage at all. This would be okay if what you needed to type was "Yes, remove these essential packages", but what you need to type is much vaguer, and if it's the only thing you read, it should be much more obvious.

Personally, I might have limited the changes to these, because I think these are genuine UX issues.

Quoting: metalinuxI think the focus should be on guiding a new user to the appropriate documentation/resources, so they can learn why if they enter "Yes, do as I say", it could break their system.

Regardless of size, making changes to the wider ecosystem of Linux due to any YouTuber or "influencer" reaction, is not the direction we want to be going in. I hope this change by the APT devs can be reverted, but the decision is ultimately theirs of course.

Most users of Ubuntu-based distributions are not going to read documentation (and Ubuntu's documentation is quite old now, anyway), because the audience they target are not expected to. This would be different on Debian, I assume, so my opinion is that this particular change should have been made downstream to Ubuntu's version of Apt. The UX issues should have been fixed upstream, but removing the ability altogether and not indicating how this can be bypassed is probably not a change that should have made it into mainline Debian, because Debian doesn't target the same users as Ubuntu-based distributions tend to.

I agree that changes should be based on merit and discussion, not clout, which is what happened in this instance: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/merge_requests/196

Though perhaps, based on this commit message, the maintainers aren't that happy about making this change: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/merge_requests/198

Regardless, passing --allow-remove--essential isn't too big a stumbling block for those who know what they're doing.

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This is a positive development. The old warning, while it should have been enough to indicate something was wrong, was vague. Passing a less verbose and clearer option is, in fact, better for people who know what they're doing because they don't need to type as much.

Linus Sebastian approached Linux under the assumption that it was polished, late at night, with limited time. What is more likely to a new user? For the first command you execute in a terminal, Apt forces you to type out a line of text that encourages you to read about what Apt is and how it's used, or that installing—for example—a browser will remove your desktop environment, display manager, display server, and graphical drivers? "Yes, do as I say" could very well be interpreted as meaning, "yes, I know how Apt works."

The new user is not keenly aware of the system. They do not know what xorg or gdm are, let alone what dependency entanglement is. The only frame of reference for what an operating system is for most people is macOS and Windows. And there is no scenario where installing something on those systems will uninstall any other program, let alone essential packages. Keep in mind that this is the first thing that Linus did upon installing Pop!_OS. This is not a gentle introduction.

I don't think it occurred to Linus that installing a new package without updating the local database could result in breakage, because this is not how installation works on any other system—on Windows and macOS (for the most part), packages are not dependent on each other, which means this situation is impossible on those systems to begin with. The solution to this problem was simply, "sudo apt update", but it's not something you know unless you're familiar with package managers on Linux already. The guide Linus followed also wasn't wrong, because graphical storefronts on Linux are notorious for being slow and buggy. This very well could have been the solution to another user's issue. Perhaps it was simply assumed knowledge that the user should execute "sudo apt update" first.

I find Apt hard to parse, especially after seeing how well-formatted Pacman is, so I don't tend to read much of the output, either. Some of the suggestions when discussing this issue on the tracker improved Apt's formatting, so the next time I use a Debian-based system, I'll hopefully have an easier time with it.

I have to disagree with Linus's comment that "the terminal is a crutch", simply because POSIX shells are the only part of Linux that is consistent across multiple different distributions..for the most part. Yes, more developers should develop graphical applications for Linux. No, there aren't enough developers interested in doing that, maintaining them, and many of them do not know what makes good UI.

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