Quoting: shigutso

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat's a good idea, but my hope is that such functionality should be made official and implemented within Wine itself.
After all, Wine's biggest problem is that is simply doesn't "just work". There's always some fiddling around required.

Not quite... all software from this page Just Works (tm):
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse+Applications&iappVersion-ratingOp0=5&sappVersion-ratingData0=Platinum&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true [External Link]

Well, no. My understanding is, Platinum means it works perfectly if you set the fiddly stuff correctly, not that you can ignore the fiddly stuff. In this discussion at least, I think people are using Just Works to mean you just click something and it installs properly and happens, rather than having to figure out how to configure it first.
There is probably some Platinum stuff that Just Works in that second sense as well, but plenty that doesn't. So things like this, and PlayonLinux and so on, have always been welcome initiatives and I really hope at some point one becomes really solid--achieves critical mass so most stuff is there, and is easily maintainable so it doesn't rot.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheSHEEEPSpeaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

Yeah . . . although a lot of people use 5 or 10 star systems a little oddly. Like first, if the average rating isn't as high as the person's individual rating, they will tend to rate it 5/10 even if they think it's actually somewhat lower than that in an attempt to pull up the average; or contrariwise if they don't like it they'll rate it 1 to pull down the average. Second, there is sometimes an odd compression . . . I guess you notice it more on 10-star systems, where I've seen a tendency that 10 means excellent, 8 means mediocre, and 5 means horrible piece of shit I wouldn't pollute my precious saliva by spitting on.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Stupendous ManBig publishers buying small studios is never a good thing for the customer. Do we really want a few large publishers only and not small independent studios with creative freedom?

Yet this is the way indies usually grow into AAA studios. I'm not a fan of big companies in general, but this isn't as simple as you might think. It's entirely up to the publisher if they give developers free rein or play it safe. Usually things go to shit when the bureaucracy grows big enough that the ones making decisions have no interest in the end product beyond how much money it brings in.

Wandering off topic, I think this is why Valve seems to be somewhat odd for a big company--the top guns and ownership are mostly nerds who are still interested in nerd issues and maybe even still get their hands dirty sometimes.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TcheyI'm not sure i like that. Paradox may be quite Linux friendly, but they are becoming big, and big stuff tend to act like they own the world. I prefer to deal with several little studios, and that's why i mostly play indi games rather than large "AAA" ones.

I'm ambivalent about that. I don't disagree with your point as such--I'd prefer a world dominated by lots of little studios rather than a few big ones. And I'm not personally that invested in AAA games coming to Linux, but the people who say we need AAA games in order to be considered a serious gaming platform (and thus grow in market share) have a point. And the way things are with the current AAA game publishers, I'd say we're more likely to get games through Linux-friendly studios becoming AAA than by existing AAA companies becoming Linux-friendly.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: 14At the end of the day, I barely rely on the Steam store page to find new games that I might be interested in. The avenues that make me curios of new games: GoL, Twitch, GOG, Co-Optimus.

I basically use GamingOnLinux. When a game is talked about here that seems like my kind of thing, I put it on my Steam wishlist. Never end up with Windows-only games that way!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: rkfgThis is really good. That's what real freedom of speech means. Not creating echo chambers full of people searching for a reason to be offended but a truly open place with something for everyone. Hell, I WANT to have things I hate there because that would exactly mean that something I love and somebody else hates is also welcome.

That does not necessarily follow, but in this case I'd agree chances are decent.

As a general rule, it seems quite common for authorities (government or corporate) to allow one kind of offensive content in the name of free speech while forbidding pretty comparable kinds of content without acknowledging any contradiction. For instance, near the height of the "Charlie Hebdo" thing, when everyone was waxing incredibly sanctimonious about Charlie Hebdo's free speech (which, just to be clear, is fine by me as far as it goes), some Muslim kid took a Charlie Hebdo page, substituted a few words so it seemed to be saying bad things about a different religion instead of about Islam, and put it up on the internet. The French "Free Speech R Us" authorities put him in jail. So you gotta watch people who claim to support allowing offensive stuff in the name of freedom--often turns out that some freedom is more equal than other freedom.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: chuzzle44I wonder if the original notices were the work of a rouge employee.

You mean like a commie subversive?! ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!

Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.

And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.

Open(ish)) platforms are a fluke of history. If the tech giants could go back and do it all over again, their platforms would be full-on lock down and lock in from day one.

I think you are mistaken. Open platforms became widespread despite tech giants determinedly creating locked-down ones from day one. Only a few such tech giants ever had sufficient monopoly muscle or clever enough ideas to allow their locked-down platforms to compete with open ones. For instance, the tech field is littered with dead Unixes once owned by proprietary tech giants who fought fiercely and stubbornly against the rise of open.
Personally, I think Apple is a bit of a fluke, and now that Steve Jobs is gone, now that it is managed by normal managers, it will eventually lose momentum; without monopoly power a walled garden run by ordinary managers will in the end be unable to compete with more open platforms run by ordinary managers.

You are clearly more optimistic than I. The biggest fluke I can point to being the IBM open PC architecture. We* are all using it today in some form because IBM made a regrettable (to them) design decision. A design decision which has taken its place as a warning to all tech companies thereafter: "Hold a tight grip on your platform or risk losing it". [/url][/i]

Well, except that if it hadn't been open we might well not all be using it. Many competitors used the IBM architecture because they could, but if they couldn't they would presumably have done something else. At the least the field would have stayed more fragmented for longer, but maybe Commodore would have won, or Apple, or HP, or someone else we never heard of because in the real world they just made clones. Not sure a failed platform would have been better for IBM than a successful platform they lost control over.

Don't get me wrong, I won't claim that completely open platforms are always destined to conquer. But I will say that there are strong pressures towards fairly open platforms, strong enough to be decisive unless a particular case has really strong counter pressures, like monopoly power backed up with significant network effects. So if you take Android, it's maybe not open enough for my tastes . . . but it is open enough for many companies to make use of it without consulting its originator--and if it were not, it would not be dominant.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!

Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.

And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.

Open(ish)) platforms are a fluke of history. If the tech giants could go back and do it all over again, their platforms would be full-on lock down and lock in from day one.

I think you are mistaken. Open platforms became widespread despite tech giants determinedly creating locked-down ones from day one. Only a few such tech giants ever had sufficient monopoly muscle or clever enough ideas to allow their locked-down platforms to compete with open ones. For instance, the tech field is littered with dead Unixes once owned by proprietary tech giants who fought fiercely and stubbornly against the rise of open.
Personally, I think Apple is a bit of a fluke, and now that Steve Jobs is gone, now that it is managed by normal managers, it will eventually lose momentum; without monopoly power a walled garden run by ordinary managers will in the end be unable to compete with more open platforms run by ordinary managers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: LeonardKThis can also mean that less games come to Linux, unfortunately. On mac OS they'd need Metal (Vulkan via Molten *might* be an option), on Windows they usually rely on DirectX12 often enough, unfortunately. Then only Linux is the reason for OGL and Vulkan, so basically the market share of OGL/Vulkan just dropped by quite some percentage. Sad.

Also I wonder about WebGL.

Development has been moving away from OpenGL since the new generation of APIs was announced, so I don't think this news will impact GNU/Linux desktop gaming much. Don't forget about the mobile sector, which has been OpenGL ES dominated in the past, but is really shifting to Vulkan and Metal anyway. So there are big reasons to be using Vulkan anyway - the real question is if it's enough to convince developers to go all-in on a cross-platform API, or if they'll maintain a DX12 version first & foremost. That will really depend on the developer and how much they want a mobile version of their game.

Don't forget "how much they want a Windows pre-10 version of their game". There's still a lot of those out there and DX12 I believe doesn't run on them, while Vulkan does.

View this comment - View article - View full comments