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Latest Comments by LoudTechie
LPCAMM2 upgradeable RAM for laptops sounds awesome
13 May 2024 at 12:44 pm UTC Likes: 2

Yeah, I expect this to show up in an incremental upgrade of the Steam Deck.
For so far as I understand it requires only a motherboard change and not a cpu change.

EA want to put adverts in your video games to squeeze you for every penny
13 May 2024 at 11:22 am UTC

Quoting: pb
Quoting: grigiI've recently been playing Cyberpunk, and what struck me is how they shove adverts everywhere (it's part of the game world, so it's on purpose). It also upsets the in-game npc's sometimes.
Interesting that if you go to the wealthiest suburb alone, there are significantly less adds there,
Also very little ads if you go to dead towns/pacifica.
TBH Cyberpunk was one of the first games that came to my mind. I wonder how people would react if some of these ads/billboards were actually advertising real-life products. Of course keeping within the mood, not Skittles or Always. There are many Cyberpunk-franchised products in the shops (I've seen energy drinks for example), maybe they could be advertised in-game too and blend well? (Sorry for giving them ideas :D bu I'm genuinely curious).
Ooh, how would you do that with performance metrics and would it stand up in advert distinquishability regulation.
Making the billboard clickable is probably the preferred option, but hard.
The distinquishability problem could probably be fixed with a warning at the start of the game.

NVIDIA switching to open kernel modules by default in future driver update for Turing+
13 May 2024 at 11:12 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlAnother thing to point out. The reason Nvidia are cool now with open source kernel module is becasue they moved most of their driver into their firmware blob which does remain a blob. So kernel module is just a glorified shim at this point.

So comparable to AMD their situation is still much worse. The only improvement is potentially better alignment with kernel releases. So don't think Nvidia is a lot more open source friendly now because of all this.
There is one advantage.
The firmware blob currently actively favors the proprietary driver by exposing less options to the nouveau driver.
With the open source kernel module this becomes either more easy spoofable or a thing of the past.

EDIT:
Another advantage I just thought off
Kernel modules can easily sandbox hardware, sandboxing a kernel module requires a complete overhaul of the kernel.

NVIDIA switching to open kernel modules by default in future driver update for Turing+
12 May 2024 at 10:36 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: melkemind
Quoting: Viesta2015
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: lejimsterI thought I had seen a lot of news related to Nvidia and open source projects lately. I wonder... Maybe they are involved in a piece of hardware Valve are making? We know Valve want the ability to fix driver issues as they arise which is only possible if the drivers are open source.
either a valve home console, or VR Headset or just steamOS general relase...

i doubt steamdeck 2 will go nvidia
Best case scenario would be a valve home console... along with an updated VR Set and have them both separate... it'd allow others to use any piece of VR equipment they wish and use it as a general PC if people wanted. :)
(especially with steam link on quest 3)
One thing we know for sure is that if Nvidia is doing something, the movtive is pure profit. Let's just hope it's not some A.I. thing that has nothing to do with gaming.
I disagree.
I really hope it has nothing to do with gaming or anything I use Linux for.
In general it's much better to be a beneficiary of a market in which you don't actively partake than one in which you do.
If companies aim themselves at your market they will take all kind of measures to lock you in.
If you're a side effect they won't care enough.

Collabora detail the improved updater for Steam Deck in SteamOS 3.6
11 May 2024 at 9:58 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: tfkSo, in layman terms, it does Bleep bloop Bleep instead of Bleep bloop bloop bloop Bleep, and that makes it faster?
Meh, more like:
it does Bleep Bleep Bleep Bleep instead of Bleep bloop bloop Bleep and that makes it faster.

Wine 9.8 released with Mono updates, ARM improvements
7 May 2024 at 2:17 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHow well does Mono actually work these days? I remember when an awful lot of people were of the opinion that it was basically pointless--that it would, much like Wine, find it impossible to really approach parity or real compatibility with that Microsoft thing it was imitating and would be forever chasing taillights. And, like with Wine, back when there were not a lot of resources put into it there was a lot of truth to the idea. But with Wine + Proton that is now pretty much not the case for games, basically because certain parties found it worthwhile to pour quite a bit more resources into it, so that Wine could improve faster than the taillights could recede. So did that ever happen with Mono? Is it good now?
Mono found a few powerful backers, but none of them are as determined as Valve.
It successfully provides dotnet 6.0 and parts of 7.0. With that it's technically two/three versions behind dotnet framework, but useful for most production applications, because grabbing the newest of the newest can cause issues.
It's also popular enough that some large market have started developing for it instead of the other way around.
It's the basis of the C# capability of Unity and Godot and populair for android applications.
As a(linux) developer in training I've noticed its limitations way too often, but I also respect that it can apparently run basically any game and android app.

SteamOS 3.5.19 Preview out for Steam Deck
23 Apr 2024 at 9:34 am UTC

For the rest of the industry "security improvements" means either that they found a way to secure the device against the owner or that they updated something to a newer version.
"Preformance improvements" can either mean exactly that, updating soemthing to a newer version or adding secret features for business partners.

Former Nouveau driver lead joins NVIDIA and sent a massive patch set
20 Apr 2024 at 9:45 am UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: GuestThis is bad news. Can likely lead to the Noveau Driver not being developed properly anymore. Perhaps its Nvidia's way of "shutting down" development on the open source driver with seeming like it is.
Why would they send lots of patches then?

I also lean to them enabling the free driver at least for good AI performance. Don't know if they care for graphics performance here in the same way though.
Yeah, these weird conspiracy theories need to stop.
Uhm, am I remembering incorrectly here, but I thought Noveau was a more or less dead project and there was another open source driver initiative for nvidia that was coming about a while back? Like one sponsored by them?

I had to switch to AMD a while back when I ran into an nvidia specific bug that the devs refused to fix... And then for the computer the 3080 went into, I ended up getting another AMD card because it worked with passing 3d rendering to a VM better :) (I should probably write up an article on how to get FoundryVTT onto 5 screens with one computer and 5 keyboard / mice...)
They still have six people in their team and are actively pushing and comitting. Nvidia indeed maintains their own(less popular one) and since it's Mit licensed they can use parts of it if they think it's useful.
Not everyone feels comfortable relying on the goodwill of a company that in the past has actively hampered such open source efforts and Nouveau is simply the oldest most entrenched project.

Former Nouveau driver lead joins NVIDIA and sent a massive patch set
19 Apr 2024 at 12:28 pm UTC

Quoting: TheRiddickThis MEME comes to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBAdbxjbTM0 [External Link]

Also its my understanding the open-source driver can't do CUDA, DLSS, HDR or HDMI2.1 etc... like its pretty vanilla and may NEVER see those features become a thing?
They support HDMI2.1.
Also it's 20< years not never. Patents aren't perpetual contrary to copyright and trademark.
Quoting: TheRiddickThis MEME comes to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBAdbxjbTM0 [External Link]

Also its my understanding the open-source driver can't do CUDA, DLSS, HDR or HDMI2.1 etc... like its pretty vanilla and may NEVER see those features become a thing?
They support HDMI2.1.
Also it's 20< years not never. Patents aren't perpetual contrary to copyright and trademark.