I think the best explanation from that thread was ...

I am a lawyer and a huge gamer. In fact, I somewhat specialize in law that relates to video games. I see a lot of people asking why the video game company has any control with our ability to play on what is essentially a rented PC when we own the game. The problem is that this is a false premise. You are not actually buying the game. You are buying a license to use the game in certain ways and the actual owners of the property rights of the game are permitted to decide the exact ways you can use that game. It is kind of like if you purchase a ticket to enter a museum, you don't own the museum and the actual owners of the museum can tell you exactly how you can behave and where you can go once you enter.

It makes sense. This is essentially new tech and the developer's lawyers aren't ready for it yet. Still, I think this thought expressed what I was feeling about the matter even better ...

Publishers are greedy and want money on top of the sale of the game that they'd get if they supported the platform.

I think that summed it up the best for me.

That being said, it doesn't really affect me. I don't game online. I am usually offline when I can find time for a little video gaming. (No Internet at home. I have to do my O/S updates, Steam game installs and Lutris game installs at work, after hours. I have a great boss!)

Besides, there is one great big negative to using GFN -- the ongoing subscription fee! You pay it whether or not you're able to use it ...

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Happy Birthday, GamingOnLinux! :woot:

The only gaming news site I read. I also love the guides.

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@TheRiddick and @Klaas

An impressive wish list but I'm not sure we'll see Vulkan support anytime soon. Not sure about multi-threading though.

One of the developers on the OpenMW team (AnyOldName3) has said "We'd have to drop OSG support in favour of VSG support and that would mean OpenMW would become incompatible with lots of hardware it currently supports.". He says they lack the manpower to implement both.

OpenMW on Vulkan API?
https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?t=7469

VulkanSceneGraph and vsgopenmw are unofficial experimental forks. There are apparently no short-term or long-term plans to integrate vsgopenmw into the main project at this time. The most recent comment on the matter was in March 2025 (see above link).

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Too bad you don't have an AppImage.

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You know, it's a funny thing. Every time Wine or Proton move through to a new major version, it breaks my prefixes and the games won't launch. I have to roll back to the previous Wine/Proton version to get them running again.

There's something to be said about Liam's advice on not using Proton Experimental or System Default as your default runner setting. Stability.

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@Vortex_Acherontic

If the game is on Steam, simply run it from flatpak Steam and it will keep working. If they are not on Steam, then run them via Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, Minigalaxy, Faugus Launcher, Cartridges, Bottles the choices are endless they all have the 32bit runtimes made available to them. This way nobody needs to package said application as a flatpak.

Provided that the launchers' 32-bit runtimes are not dependent on the upstream 32-bit libraries, I think this would be a great solution.

I've already had success with both Steam's and Lutris' runtimes to get finicky native games to run. I assume this is what you're alluding to ...

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This excites me and makes me nervous at the same time. I'm always happy to see a new version of OpenMW.

The last time they did a version update (0.47 to 0.48), the launchpad PPA deleted my installation and wouldn't let me reinstall 0.47, even using the GitHub installer. That was Mint 20.3 when it was still under active support.

Now, I've got 0.48 running on Mint 21.3. Upgrading to Mint 22 resulted in OpenMW failing to run, so I fell back to Mint 21.3. If the PPA tries to upgrade to 0.49, will I face the same problem I did with 0.47 to 0.48?

When you look at the PPA files, there is literally only one file for jammy (22.04) or noble (24.04) -- the core executable and other dependencies are not listed.

I'm seriously thinking about dropping the PPA altogether and just using the GitHub installer.

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@Vortex_Acherontic

But forcing every distribution to drag around 32bit libs just for Steam ... I don't think Valve should be allowed to hold us all hostage with this.

It's not just Valve's Steam client, you know ...

if ppl would have adopt Flatpak

If people would have to adopt Flatpak? ... What happened to free choice here? Why should I be forced to use it if I don't want to use it?

@Eduardo Medina

Windows doesn't kill anything, it keeps very old components for decades

Huh? Since when? These days, old Windows software runs better on Linux than it does on newer versions of Windows. Admittedly, M$ isn't as ruthless as Apple but still ...

Also, refer to the quote from @CajunMoses

Microsoft has the audacity to block users of older technology from using the most recent version of its desktop OS.

In case you didn't know it, Windows 11 enforces planned obsolescence by unnecessarily requiring specific hardware security features that are only available on new computers (mostly 2019 or later), forcing the discard of perfectly good hardware to use Windows 11. For those of us who prefer the quality of older hardware, M$ is giving us the finger.

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@Cyba.Cowboy

You might want to reread the second paragraph or check out the Nvidia link. Both say that the upcoming 580 series will be the last for Maxwell, Pascal and Volta GPUs. It's not happening immediately.

@mi1stormilst
Or, in my case -- since I game on a laptop -- I don't want to to spend any more money on a new laptop ...

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@Leahi84

I was in the retail computer industry at that time. I kept having to reassure customers that the computers we were selling were not affected by the problem. I could not believe how the media blew things up completely out of proportion. But, then, given the media's behavior since then, I am not all that surprised anymore.

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