Quoting: mphuZ

Quoting: pbPersonally I find this fascinating that China is so Windows-centric.

Not for long. In the next 1-2 years, the Chinese will significantly completely abandon Windows (even pirated versions will be cut) and switch to HarmonyOS [External Link].

They write [External Link] that its microkernel is 3 times more efficient than Linux. Other sources also say that it will be possible to launch Steam + native streaming of games on DX12.2

I wondered about that. I thought HarmonyOS was Huawei, and they only had 10% of the PC market in China. All of the other mfg would have to write driver's for the HarmonyOS kernel. Which means they would need to have two engineering efforts for HarmonyOS and Windows. I'm sure they wouldn't go cold turkey into HarmonyOS.

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Can someone recommend a GOG Linux game that doesn't work out of the box? I randomly(ish) bought and downloaded a game called Silver because:

Works on:
Windows (7, 8, 10, 11), Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04)
Release date:
August 31, 1999

I thought for sure this is not going to work. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04. But everything worked. I was shocked and disappointed, haha. The last update according to the change log in GOG is from 2018. Seems like they have something figured out.

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Quoting: whizse

Quoting: HighballEdit: Back in the day, WINE released a libwine library for Windows applications. If you programmed with libwine that would make your program compatible with Linux using WINE. I don't know how much use it got or if it ever got any traction. But, I've said this before, Valve should be developing a libproton library. Or at the very least investing in libwine and promoting that. Future games starting with libproton and Vulkan would be 100% compatible with Linux at that point and use 1:1 translations just like WoW64 does for older Windows programs and games.

I think Winelib is still a thing, at least the user guide [External Link] looks up to date?

But its a native port by any other name. With the same problems. You need active developer support, you have two versions to keep up to date, you need to manage dependencies etc.

Hmmm, that is not how I remember libwine(Winelib). What a mistake. Valve definitely needs a libproton(Protonlib, haha) then.

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Quoting: EagleDeltaHonestly, I get really annoyed by the "Proton/WINE isn't native" arguments. If WINE or Proton were Emulation tools, I'd agree, but where emulation tries to mimic hardware and other aspects that simply can't be done "natively", WINE and Proton's other tools are actually rebuilding the Windows and DX APIs for use within Linux. As such, Proton/WINE are absolutely native but the very definition of what an API does. I'm speaking of this as a Software Dev myself that works with various APIs every day. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if WINE/Proton isn't "native", then no API is native.

Agreed. Most people don't realize it, on Windows, WoW64 is a translation layer as well. It stands for Windows (32bit) on Windows64. All the old Windows 32 bit games are going through a translation layer. Any games that install to the Program Files(32) folder all run through WoW64.

Edit: Back in the day, WINE released a libwine library for Windows applications. If you programmed with libwine that would make your program compatible with Linux using WINE. I don't know how much use it got or if it ever got any traction. But, I've said this before, Valve should be developing a libproton library. Or at the very least investing in libwine and promoting that. Future games starting with libproton and Vulkan would be 100% compatible with Linux at that point and use 1:1 translations just like WoW64 does for older Windows programs and games.

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!GMTK Jam 2024 engine popularity [External Link]
a link incase the img above doesn't work. [External Link]

!GMTK Jam 2023 engine popularity [External Link]
a Link incase the img above doesn't work. [External Link]

GMTK Jam charts back to 2020 [External Link]

Godot is now a Bulwark. I doubt Unity is going to do anything to earn back all the good will they lost.

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I really want to turn this on for all the boss fights in Diablo IV. I always think, how the fsck did I die. Then I remember, I suck at video games and I'm just going to see my self do something dumb and basically killing myself over and over. Glad the feature is there for everyone else.

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Quoting: sarmadIs the Mono project still needed now that .NET itself supports Linux?

Mono is open source for the legacy .Net SDK. So, Mono is just needed for older applications. As you are indicating, the newer .Net already supports Linux and Mono doesn't support it.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Highball

Quoting: Marlock

Quoting: Highball

Quoting: MarlockQuick question: what system has a copy of grub installed (not by windows, because it's never used by windows) but doesn't have linux so it's ok to replace/block grub?

Any system.

Please elaborate

You can point Grub at any kernel to load. Haiku, Redox, whatever. LILO was popular back in the day. Nothing is stopping anybody from getting rid of Grub and switching boot loaders. You can even point one boot loader at another boot loader. That's how most people dual boot Windows. Grub loads, then start WinLoader, then WinLoader starts onekernel.

I had the most success keeping Windows on a separate drive where it could do whatever it wanted with the boot sector, and then grub on the primary drive would simply hand off to WinLoader on the secondary drive. Installing Linux and Windows on the same drive was a bit like playing Russian roulette. You never knew when Windows would break things.

Really this is the only way to avoid the MSFT hassle. Here is a Gaming thread for HD2 with a guide on how to dual boot Linux and the author's recommendation is to have two drives, install one OS to each drive.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/2/7599331177361006128/?tscn=1724068733 [External Link]

Setup each OS with only one drive connected at a time. Then after that, use the UEFI boot manager to select which drive you want to boot from. I mean seriously after twenty years, MSFT is still randomly blasting the boot records. This guys solution is basically a silver bullet for Linux newbies. Side note, he barely speaks English and single handily converted more people to Linux in one gaming thread than I have in twenty years. Seriously I'm not sore about it at all, hahahaha.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismYou know how some people backup the header of encrypted disks:
 
sudo cryptsetup luksHeaderBackup /dev/<your-disk-luks> --header-backup-file luks2-header-backup-$(date -I)

If somebody wants a project make a interface equivalent to Etcher that optionally backs up the MBR + Linux / Windows boot partitions.

Then next time Windows fucks this up. ( Which they have been for decades and we haven't done anything about it. ) A person can load a Live USB, create a new backup in the broken state and run the Restore tool to revert the changes to before Microsoft screwed the pooch.

Who knows maybe what I'm imagining already exists, there's a lot of fine people out there who do amazing work all the time on our apps.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair [External Link]

Honestly I don't know how well it works. I haven't dual booted for close to twenty years and this tool didn't exist then as far as I know. At that time, all you had to do was live boot off a CD and chroot to your Linux partition, then rerun your boot loader install command, and it was all back to normal. It's a minor inconvenience for seasoned Linux users, but newbies immediately think Linux sucks and doesn't work. Obviously MSFT's intention. I don't remember a time that updating Windows didn't rewrite the MBR.

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This is another important factor. Hours played is something I look at to determine if I would even read a review. If they let me filter for reviews by Steam Deck players, this will be really helpful.

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