Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: NanobangLiam, I'd like to suggest adding this, whole-cloth, to your already existing Proton/SteamPlay primer. This article was exactly the kind of concise-but-clear info someone like me wonders about. Really excellent work! :grin:

We have a dedicated page, which links to a proper guide ;)

How dedicated is it? Is it a truly fanatical page, or just quite conscientious? :wink:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: DefaultX-od

Quoting: Purple Library Guy2) No. I don't use or like the Gnome shell, so I don't care what they do with it.

Well according to this article the vast majority using Ubuntu and that's basically means gnome + Fedora which is gnome too, so Canonical helping to improve what's de facto is the standard now.

What do you use?

If I cared what the majority do I wouldn't be using Linux in the first place.
Nonetheless, I don't hate Canonical; I'm actually glad Ubuntu is there, because they make Mint possible. I use Mint with Mate. My fallback would be Cinnamon. One of these days I might try KDE again. Gnome Shell is way down the list, just not to my taste. I used to like Gnome 2 though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I like the concept but I have to admit I've largely given up on the privacy front. It's like, the bastards have my information and there's no workable way to live in the present without that being the case. When the revolution comes it won't matter. :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: DefaultX-od

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: DefaultX-od

Quoting: tmtvlNeat. Too bad it's Ubuntu, we don't need Canonical to grow too big for their shoes.

Jesus Christ what's wrong with you people, why you can't just be happy?

Give it up. You are not going to single-handedly hector people, with one-liners yet, into ceasing to dislike Canonical.

They are doing pretty good job to increase performance of gnome shell, isn't it a good reason to stop hate them?

1) I don't hate Canonical. Distrust, yes. Disrespect their technical decision-making, indeed. Hate, not at all. There's people and outfits I hate--ExxonMobil, for instance. It's different.
2) No. I don't use or like the Gnome shell, so I don't care what they do with it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: soulsource

Quoting: EhvisAs someone with an aerospace engineering background, I should really put more time into this game than I have. Ok, where to fit this in the todo list. :dizzy:

Whoa, you will probably love the Ferram Aerospace Research [External Link] mod (the author is no longer active, but there's a fork [External Link] for recent KSP versions).

I was hoping to find a mod that would replace the two body physics implementation with a three body one

But isn't that a Problem? :wink:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: DefaultX-od

Quoting: tmtvlNeat. Too bad it's Ubuntu, we don't need Canonical to grow too big for their shoes.

Jesus Christ what's wrong with you people, why you can't just be happy?

Give it up. You are not going to single-handedly hector people, with one-liners yet, into ceasing to dislike Canonical.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Linas

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LinasI find Googles direction for Chromebooks very confusing. [...] full-blow VM [...] This is the exact opposite of simple.

Users don't see any of that though. My wife has one. All she ever uses a computer for is web browsing, email (in the browser), and occasional small documents.

That's exactly my point. Your wife is the original target demographic for Chromebooks.

By adding Crostini they more or less acknowledge that you need a real Linux distribution if you want to do some productive work. Like run Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, or anything else that even a non-techie user may want to do from time to time. But then they do it in the most obscure way possible, so that a non-techie user never will.

Ah, I get your point now. Yeah, sure enough . . . I've been saying for a while that if Google want to move ChromeOS up from their little niche, they're going to have to give in and admit that a browser does not an OS make. And they're sortamaybe doing that, but they really seem adamant to un-cripple it as little as they possibly can, and maybe less.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think the "the proportion of Linux is larger at home" thing is likely a part of it. But while that explains a sudden jump, it doesn't explain the continued rise--at this point, lockdown is becoming less stringent most places, people have been going back to work for a month or two, but the share is still rising.
I'm wondering if there's been an odd interaction between Covid and the Windows 7 end-of-life problem. Might be a lot of people who were thinking "Blast it, I have to do something about my computer" suddenly had time to actually deal with the issue, and some of them dealt with it by going Linux.

As to the Steam down-tick, I notice that Simplified Chinese went up again. Honestly, Linux share and Simplified Chinese share on Steam seem to practically mirror each other. More Simplified Chinese, less Linux; less Simplified Chinese, more Linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: LinasI find Googles direction for Chromebooks very confusing. It's supposed to be this simple unbreakable mom'n'pop computer. But then they add Crostini, which is a full-blow VM, which doesn't even allow calling the host kernel, or direct access to the hardware. Literally everything is virtualized. That's why it has taken them forever to implement basic features such as clipboard sharing, or access to the filesystem. This is the exact opposite of simple.

Users don't see any of that though. My wife has one. All she ever uses a computer for is web browsing, email (in the browser), and occasional small documents. These days a bit of teleconferencing (in the browser). Since that's basically all the Chromebook offers, it's very hard for her to end up accidentally doing something different which would confuse her. So it's a pretty good fit, and it cost very little money--like a third to a quarter as much as my laptop, a fifth or less as much as my daughter's Macbook Pro, less than most phones--and it's been pretty durable.

Even for her it's not perfect. We both find Google Docs annoying--you can make a document, fine, but if you want to do something with it, like save it somewhere, Google Docs is very reluctant to accommodate you and insists on metaphors which are quite different from every other office program in existence. Similarly, ChromeOS doesn't really want you to find files, like on your computer, because as far as Google is concerned they're all supposed to be on the web. But on balance, for use cases like hers the little buggers offer very solid value for money.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: NanobangWhenever I think of Google using Linux, I think of how Google make things from that can't be used in Linux.

I can't get any more excited about Chrome OS than I can about Android ... both of which are based on Linux, but neither of which are actually Linux --- thus the need for a VM to run Linux's Steam client.

I really don't feel gaming on Chrome OS is any more appropriate to Linux gaming than gaming on Android is, really.

All that stuff is irrelevant to this case. What's relevant is, Chrome OS has a significant amount of desktop-like market share, and this will allow people with a Chromebook to buy and play Linux, but not Windows, games on Steam (except perhaps via Proton). And they've clearly got plans to grow that share further.
Therefore, if this happens it will drastically increase the market share for Linux gaming. It is, potentially, a really huge win.

Heck, no matter how dim I think this is when they could instead just allow ChromeOS to be more than crippleware, the fact is that it completely sidesteps all questions of whether ChromeOS is "real" Linux* because the games will be running on Ubuntu.

* Android is technically Linux . . . but it's not GNU, which makes it drastically different from normal Linux. As far as I can tell, ChromeOS is true GNU/Linux, just with an unusual desktop environment and deliberately crippled. It's just a distro that includes very little software and really doesn't want to let you use the command line, install more software or otherwise do anything not included in the minimalist GUI. But there's pretty much nothing about it that isn't Linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments