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Latest Comments by Caldathras
System76 fighting for open source being excluded from Colorado age checks
15 Mar 2026 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Salvatos
Quoting: CaldathrasYou are assuming that most people even care or know what operating system is on the device.
You’re putting words in my mouth. What I’m assuming is that if their devices annoy them, they will complain to vendors, and the vendors will lobby against the law when the customer service it requires or the bad press it generates become too much of a burden/liability.

Not at all, you did write
Quoting: SalvatosLinux runs virtually everything that's not a PC.
I simply pointed out the most people are not going to care about the underlying operating system on those devices. The discussion, after all, was that Linux and Linux alone would inspire a voter uprising.

I'm not saying that a voter uprising won't happen, just that if it does, it won't be Linux that inspires it. They won't care about the operating system, just the inconvenience the law is creating in their lives.

I can't see complaints to vendors initiating such political change. If the vendors had that much influence, the bill never would have been tabled in the first place. I don't think the vendors will care -- such laws are rarely retroactive.

Myself, based on the acceptance of the Microsoft Account requirement for Win11 and everything else the Tech Giants impose on them, I'm guessing that the California voters will just roll over and accept it. I could be wrong.

Do voters in California have the ability to initiate a mandatory referendum, that, if successful, the politicians are required to implement?

System76 fighting for open source being excluded from Colorado age checks
14 Mar 2026 at 8:37 pm UTC

Quoting: g000h
Quoting: Caldathras
Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.
This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users. Linux is not significant enough to overturn this law. Besides, the majority of eligible voters are indifferent sheep ... they are more likely to just accept or ignore the overreach.
Well the alternative is just giving up and result in Linux dying. Is that what you want? BTW California state includes Big Tech utopia Silicon Valley. Love to see Google and Meta trying to run without access to open source.

It appears that Meta is responsible for causing this political upheaval - Lobbying politicians in these areas. (Meta gets to avoid big fines if it passes age verification onto operating systems and app stores.)

I'm not sure how we went from Linux not likely to be the tipping point to inspire a voter uprising to Linux being gone forever if it doesn't. What does Silicon Valley or Open Source have to do with it? Linus Torvalds lives in Portland. The Linux Foundation can be moved out of California if necessary. For that matter, so could Google or Meta. Many Linux distros are not even developed and maintained in the US. Arch Linux is Canadian by origin. Linux Mint is based in Ireland. Canonical (Ubuntu) is based in the UK. Debian appears to be truly global. Almost every country has its own unique flavor of Linux. California is hardly a threat to the future of Linux.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Meta was involved.

System76 fighting for open source being excluded from Colorado age checks
14 Mar 2026 at 8:08 pm UTC

Quoting: Salvatos
Quoting: Caldathras
Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.
This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users.
They are. Linux runs virtually everything that's not a PC. What types of devices will fall under each law's purview? Smart watches? Routers? CCTV systems? Car entertainment systems? The farther it reaches, the more it hurts people's convenience and risks overcoming their complacency.
Certainly, the broader its effect, the more frustrating it will become. But it is not Linux that will be the tipping point. You are assuming that most people even care or know what operating system is on the device. Some of those devices likely already have age-gating tools built-in. From what I've read, M$ is already age-gating Windows 11 via their Microsoft Account requirement. When I set up such an account for my employer to enable extended update support on Windows 10, providing her birthdate was required. My employer wasn't the least bit fussed. If they've already accepted it on Windows, why would they object to Linux? Don't underestimate voter complacency, is all I am saying.

FYI - incidentally, I am not in support of this becoming law in any way, shape or form.

Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns brings the absolute classic to a modern audience
14 Mar 2026 at 7:25 pm UTC

Defender of the Crown is an absolute classic originally released on the Amiga
I remember this game! I played it on my Amiga 500. Good times.

Of course, I was legally an adult, not a child, then ...

Game age rating system PEGI to get big changes for in-game items and online play
14 Mar 2026 at 6:45 pm UTC

Quoting: JarmerAs a father of two very small children I absolutely love this and hope they push it even harder. I have absolutely loved games my entire life. I want my kids too as well. But: I have no patience or tolerance for these predatory parasites that attempt to prey on children with dark patterns and outright gambling.
This is really no different than the North American Saturday Morning Children's Shows from the eighties and nineties. They were just half-hour long commercials designed to teach children to be good consumers. Almost all the shows had toys and other collectables that they pushed on children. Nevermind the cereal commercials run by the networks between the breaks. The exploiters just shifted spheres when their target market did.

Fortunately, my parents had a hard heart regarding this kind of manipulation and were not moved by their children's pleadings.

D7VK version 1.5 brings Direct3D 3 support via Vulkan on Linux
14 Mar 2026 at 6:25 pm UTC Likes: 2

Wow, @mrdeathjr, for a DX3 game, MotoRacer 2 looks pretty amazing.

Unity announce expanded support for Steam, Native Linux, Steam Deck and Steam Machine
14 Mar 2026 at 6:16 pm UTC

Unity Engine games are one of the most problematic games for me to get running stable in Proton. They are the most likely to crash unexpectedly. I'd say that the Unity devs have a lot of work to do for both Proton and Native support...

Unity announce expanded support for Steam, Native Linux, Steam Deck and Steam Machine
14 Mar 2026 at 6:12 pm UTC

Quoting: sonic2kkGranted, I'm not sure if any launcher can integrate with it out of the box (iirc Heroic may be able to if it finds it installed from Steam, Lutris may do the same?), but it isn't necessarily a walled solution only for Steam; Linux ports targetting the Steam Linux Runtime will not necessarily only benefit ports coming to Steam but also those released standalone and/or through GOG.

Heroic has a toggle you can set to turn the Steam Linux Runtime on or off. It doesn't say which runtime and doesn't give you the option to choose either.

Lutris, at least up to v0.5.18, has its own set of runtime libraries that you can toggle on or off. There is also an option to manually set a library override folder which, theoretically, should work with the Steam Linux Runtimes. After v.5.18, I don't know because I won't be installing any newer versions.

Outside of any launcher, it is also possible to add a runtime override folder to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable, either permanently or temporarily, via the Terminal or script. You put it at the front of the list and Linux checks there first.

Valve detail Steam Frame and Steam Machine Verified requirements at GDC 2026
14 Mar 2026 at 5:38 pm UTC

Quoting: PaldinoX
but for the Verified status they're expecting 30FPS at 1080p
Oh lord, expect the incoming tidal wave of idiots thinking the Steam Machine will ONLY run games at 1080p 30fps because they don't understand how Valve's verification program works.
I don't get it either. I understood on first reading that 30fps at 1080p was just the minimum needed for a game to qualify for Verified Status, not the maximum performance of the Steam Machine. These are two different things, after all. I'm astonished that people could possibly be that stupid.

Valve posted a statement on the New York lootbox lawsuit
13 Mar 2026 at 5:36 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: EWGEspecially good for books, CDs, DVDs/Blu-Rays if you ask me.
No, nope, definitely not. Clearly asking you would be, in my case, a terrible idea. I'm picky. Random books, CDs, DVDs would almost all be worth zero to me. Less than zero, because they would take up bookshelf space and I'm running out already. So yeah, I wouldn't take mystery random boxes of that kind of thing if you offered them to me for free.
The same applies to me. Also applies to those random video game bundles that are put out every once and a while. I don't want digital clutter either.