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Latest Comments by Highball
Linux share remains above 2% in the November 2024 Steam Survey thanks to Steam Deck
2 Dec 2024 at 2:50 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: Highball
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: GuestThe title led me to expect a rise in SteamOS Holo usage.
However, the data shows a -0.28% decrease.
Is this a mistake or am I interpreting it incorrectly?
It is correct. The point of the title is that the Steam Deck is what's still pushing the Linux number up.
While "SteamOS Holo 64bit" is the first OS on the Steam chart, we should not forget that the other 63%+ of the Linux Steam usage polled by comes from other distros.

Writing this because I think they deserve a mention too ;)
They are mentioned clearly in the article in the list. Don’t really get what you’re trying to say here. A title only tells so much, and focused on what is actually pushing the number.
I think he means, Steam Deck added a huge chunk. But pure desktop is growing as well. There was a point that Steam Deck was almost 50% of the Linux percentage. Steam Deck hasn't stopped selling well. I figure, with the continued growth and success of the Steam Deck, it's percentage declining means that more and more people are installing Linux to their gaming machines. I definitely haven't seen any trends of people switching from SteamOS on their Steam Deck.
Sure. I can understand that. My reply would be the same though, it's still the Steam Deck that has massively pushed the number up. So the title focused on that, and everything else is in the article list. TBH it feels like pedantic nit-picking at the title from kokoko3k. So I won't be entertaining comments on it further, I have much better things to do like upgrading the chart... :)
lol, I didn't even read the "thanks to Steam Deck" part of the title. Now it makes more sense. I mean, there definitely isn't a 2% Linux without the 36% Steam Deck at this point. The accelerated pace of tools and drivers undoubtedly a result of investment by Valve into the Linux eco system for Steam Deck. No Steam Deck, no accelerated pace. I'm with ya.

Linux share remains above 2% in the November 2024 Steam Survey thanks to Steam Deck
2 Dec 2024 at 1:36 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: GuestThe title led me to expect a rise in SteamOS Holo usage.
However, the data shows a -0.28% decrease.
Is this a mistake or am I interpreting it incorrectly?
It is correct. The point of the title is that the Steam Deck is what's still pushing the Linux number up.
While "SteamOS Holo 64bit" is the first OS on the Steam chart, we should not forget that the other 63%+ of the Linux Steam usage polled by comes from other distros.

Writing this because I think they deserve a mention too ;)
They are mentioned clearly in the article in the list. Don’t really get what you’re trying to say here. A title only tells so much, and focused on what is actually pushing the number.
I think he means, Steam Deck added a huge chunk. But pure desktop is growing as well. There was a point that Steam Deck was almost 50% of the Linux percentage. Steam Deck hasn't stopped selling well. I figure, with the continued growth and success of the Steam Deck, it's percentage declining means that more and more people are installing Linux to their gaming machines. I definitely haven't seen any trends of people switching from SteamOS on their Steam Deck.

New Steam Controller 2 and VR controller designs got leaked
28 Nov 2024 at 9:21 am UTC

Definitely a day 1 buy if the controller has 2.54 ghz wireless with mic built into the controller for voice chat.

New Steam Controller 2 and VR controller designs got leaked
27 Nov 2024 at 11:18 pm UTC

Quoting: kuhpunkt
Quoting: chickenb00I pass: the trackpads do not have prime real estate where your thumbs will naturally rest on the controller.
Why do you rest your fingers anywhere? I have mine on the sticks or the buttons the whole time.
Right, he wants his thumbs on the track pads the whole time. Would be awesome if they let you swap everything around like the Thustmaster controller.

Steam Deck comes to Australia on November 19
7 Nov 2024 at 10:20 am UTC

Quoting: Nod... and a big F you to NZ.

I keep thinking they might say "oh yea NZ too, we didn't think it was worth mentioning", but that hope is fading.
\

Bruh! You are joking. I obviously, wrongly, assumed New Zealand and Australia just went hand in hand. When I reserved the Steam Deck way back, I told my buddy, "if this steam deck plays a couple games half way decently, I'll consider it a success." Then who wasn't blown away by the Steam Deck and how well it works. The Steam Deck has really become a utility that just makes more and more sense to have it then not. It's basically an ATM for Valve. I really think somebody at Valve is just messing up by not pushing the Steam Deck in to more markets. Especially NZ and Australia. One but not the other???? That's insane. Valve must be trying to squeeze every penny out of every deal they make. I mean, I'm completely ignorant on world trade and import laws and all that. Just seems like the Steam Deck has proven itself over and over. Why keep the shackles on?

Linux hits exactly 2% user share on the October 2024 Steam Survey
2 Nov 2024 at 11:52 am UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: _wojtekI wonder... couldn't Valve just collect the stats without the "survey prompt" to get saner results?
Yes, and I'm sure they do. Valve can track the number of hours you put into a game per platform. When you make a review about a particular game, if more than 50% of that time was played on a Steam Deck, Valve will tag your review to reflect that. Valve's telemetry is definitely detailed enough to tell us how many hours each day are spent on Linux. Right, Valve collects telemetry accounting for the number of hours played per game each week on the Steam Deck. Then Valve gives us a stats page for the most played games on the Steam Deck per week.

Intel and AMD join up to form the x86 ecosystem advisory group to shape the future
16 Oct 2024 at 7:27 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: RandomizedKirbyTree47
Quoting: Linux_RocksMan, you can tell that Intel is in trouble if this is happening. This is like Microsoft with Xbox and them trying to act all friendly towards other platforms. If Intel was beating AMD hand over fist again or if Xbox was doing good still. None of this would be happening and they'd be saying fuck off to everyone else. lol
I think it's less about Intel beating or not beating AMD: in sales for new laptops running Windows, Intel is still winning by a lot. I think it's about Intel fearing ARM.
You can't really go by sales of new laptops. Intel pays their OEM's to not build laptops with AMD processors. If you go to a car dealer and the salesman says, you can have a car with any color you want as long as it's green. Then some economist runs the numbers and determines Green is the most popular color by a wide margin. Intel used to have awesome, Intel Inside, commercials. It was exciting to buy Intel. Now you go to a big box store and buy a laptop, statistically you'll walk out with an Intel processor. Intel was dying a slow death when I was working there. At that time they were signing deals to fabricate chips that had ARM cores and not Intel cores. That would have never been thinkable historically. And of course they eventually split off the foundry business from the chip design part of Intel. Tell me Intel has relied on the power of their purse for too long, without telling me they've relied on the power of their purse for too long.

Don't get me started on the Microsoft Tax.

Steam Deck officially comes to Australia in November
11 Oct 2024 at 8:59 am UTC Likes: 29

Quoting: LoudTechieI'm still curious what took them so long.
It's not chip restrictions, it's not copyright law, it probably isn't wiretapping law and it isn't the market.
Does Australia have some product safety law it failed to meet, such as "all gaming consoles should have minimally EAL5 rated hardware."
Could it be Chinese import/export restrictions.
The closest I get is that it's according to the american government [External Link] a "small competitive market", but that applies to a lot of their already released countries.
:huh:
I would speculate, the engineering challenges incurred when playing the Steam Deck upside down.

More info on the Valve (Steam) collab with Arch Linux and potential future hardware support
4 Oct 2024 at 6:14 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: WorMzy
Quoting: Jarmerso basically they want to make it easier for the developers of App XYZ (or Game ABC) to just push a button for deployment and BAM their app/game is available on x86 or Arm? Is that correct?
No, this is purely about the OS layer. At the moment Arch only supports x86_64, and lacks the resources/motivation to support any other architectures because providing packages for these is a timesink/chore right now. Arch has had vague plans to improve the packaging infrastructure (to make supporting other architectures easier) for a while, but hasn't gotten around to doing so. Valve have basically come along and asked how they can help.
That's how I see it. Valve has been doing this with other opensource projects as well. Most will remember that KDE received a bunch of funding from Valve. Valve strategy seems to be, fund open source projects for the features they want/need. Which is ideal. Valve doesn't have to hire or steal developers away from the projects they work on, which keeps the knowledge and efforts localized to the project. If something bad were to happen, everything is opensource and Valve can fork the code and walk away. So Valve isn't worried about losing their investment and the community doesn't split and fracture the knowledge, if you get what I mean.

6 years after Kickstarter, Orphan Age dev Studio Black Flag shuts without a release
4 Oct 2024 at 5:50 pm UTC

Quoting: M@GOidI'm sorry if this sound harsh but, they get no sympathy from me. People should know that money is not infinite, so if you drag development of something for 6 years, it will end with the project being canceled.

Gaming development is not a new thing. People should know how it works by now and have realistic goals, when they start a project like this.

We are in the 2020's and the writing is on the wall: don't buy anything on pre-release, not from a big studio, nor from a bunch of new kids that don't know what they are doing. If you loose money, it is on you.
100% this. In fact, I rarely buy a game day 1 now.