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Latest Comments by slaapliedje
The Valve Steam Deck, lots of excitement and plenty to think about for Linux gaming
16 July 2021 at 2:49 pm UTC

Quoting: sciroccoI really hope it will be a succes its good for linux gaming, most people wont bother installing windows instead. Its bold using arch linux, hope updates wont break it, at the same time I cant wait for them to releaese steam os 3 so I can install it on my computer.
Well, I think it's upon us as a community to make sure we can convert $distro into a SteamOS :)

At the very least, I'm curious why they went KDE this time instead of Gnome. I'm guessing flavor of the week for whichever dev got to make the decision. Also curious if it's using Wayland vs X.org.

Valve has formally announced the Steam Deck, a portable handheld console with SteamOS
16 July 2021 at 2:15 am UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: g000hI'm waiting for Microsoft to offer Valve a free Windows licence for each Steam Deck, or even better - Pay Valve to put Windows onto the device. I'm just jesting, but if this thing skyrockets, I wouldn't put it past Microsoft.

Hmm... or Google, for that matter.

I think the real question is how many new games will we get as Linux native when developers want to make games for this new 'console' and can finally convince publishers there is enough interest?

Valve has formally announced the Steam Deck, a portable handheld console with SteamOS
16 July 2021 at 2:05 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: KohlyKohl
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Supay
Quoting: Solitary
Quoting: KohlyKohl
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: KohlyKohlI'm also concerned about the switch to Arch. I would have preferred a more stable distribution such as Ubuntu.
It's not like you're going to be installing a stack of AUR stuff. Someone's carefully set up bare-bones Arch is probably very stable.

Arch is inherently less stable by design. Adding in the AUR just makes it more unstable. Arch has its place I just don't think a consumer device is one of them.

Just because it's based on Arch doesn't mean it needs to have Arch issues. The updates are still tested and controlled by Valve. It is SteamOS, not Arch.

Absolutely agree. I run Arch on my desktop and some various home servers. My desktop is the messiest with AUR stuff wedged and lots of random bits I tinker with, and even that hasn't had any issues in a long time. The issues I have had were ones I caused. My servers are kept lean and focused, and I have never had an issue with them. Even when I slack off and realise I haven't updated packages in months, it all just works as it's as minimal as possible.

On the contrary, I recently switched to Ubuntu to give it a go again, expecting it to be something that would just work and have a decent default experience. Sure, it installed easily and had a flashy GUI, and I didn't have to manually do everything as I do when installing Arch, however I have had more issues with Ubuntu in a few weeks than I had on Arch in the last two years. Stuff that just worked in Arch due to up to date packages and a huge central repo has involved forum scouring for fixes, random private repos added, and a host of other issues. Give me Arch anyday.

My experience: the exact opposite of yours. Nothing works easily on Arch, the AUR has heaps of outdated keys and I had to troubleshoot basic things like gamepads not working which work out of the box on Debian/Ubuntu distros.

You know what you know, I suppose, and there are significant differences between the big core distros that experience in one of them doesn't necessarily translate to a good experience in the others.

For a device like this though? Who cares if it's Arch? I'm not going to be looking up the arch wiki if something doesn't work on this thing. I'll be using Valve support, or sending the unit back.

It matters because Valve is pushing the idea that you can install any apps you like and in my experience this is much easier for new users on Ubuntu and not on Arch.
Not really... you have Flatpaks, snaps, and the 'software store' thing, that pretty much is just a frontend to PackageKit and makes most software installations on Linux these days Distribution agnostic. The only real difference these days are 'what is packaged and set up to be installed easy via UI?'

Arch would have a lot more customization options that would allow Valve to 'do whatever they want' with the OS, whereas Ubuntu is... well less so :P

Valve has formally announced the Steam Deck, a portable handheld console with SteamOS
16 July 2021 at 2:03 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: dubigrasuMaybe is a bit silly, but I would love to see a "controller mode only" for this device. Basically using it for your other PC/devices, the same way as any other controller. Not talking here about streaming or anything, but just having it turned off (or some low power/standby mode) and attached to your (more powerfull) PC, instead of the SC for example.
Why, well, because its array of inputs makes it even more awesome and versatile than the Steam Controller itself. Sure, I would very much prefer a SC 2.0, if they ever make one again.
Take that idea a bit further and use it as an add-on screen for games where it makes sense (like the Android app for Fallout 4, where you can put the PIP boy on a phone or tablet.)

Valve has formally announced the Steam Deck, a portable handheld console with SteamOS
15 July 2021 at 11:01 pm UTC

It has been pointed out that the person driving the car in the image with the kid in the back seat at https://www.steamdeck.com/en/hardware is driving it wrong. That isn't how you drive a Tesla!

Steam on a Chromebook could be closer than we think, with an AMD dGPU model coming
15 July 2021 at 10:20 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: MalChromebooks are already great as they are. They're cheap and they can do everything a generalist user need for a tenth of the price of an Apple counterpart.

But if they also start to support steam libraries then there might be a case for buying the premium versions. They would still be cheaper than premium Apple counterparts and able to run more games.

If might help "pure" Linux popularity as well if Chromebooks start to educate people that you don't need to be ripped off by Apple to have a portable pc that actually works. Though, at the same time, ever since Chromebooks I find it harder to justify installing an Ubuntu on a relative's pc given their use case. As opposed to the times when you just had to replace windows with Linux to fix every issue a year old notebook could have, with Chrome OS things just works. In my opinion there are little reasons to "upgrade" to Linux from Chrome OS if your a generic user, gaming being probably the only one until borealis takes it away.
My wife has a Chromebook. And indeed, for her use case it is generally just fine. But a cheap real-Linux box would probably be better. (In theory you can probably stick Linux on my wife's Chromebook, but it looks like it's rather tricky--not like wiping a normal Windows laptop and sticking Linux on it, at all)
The reason has to do with Google's insistence on controlling the experience . . . and the files. This is occasionally irritating in normal use; Chromebooks will let you put a file on the machine itself or into a USB stick or whatever, but they don't want you to and they don't make it easy. Google wants you to be using Google Docs and keeping all your stuff on their cloud. They want you to barely realize your files are anywhere, they certainly don't want you to be controlling them.
This becomes a much bigger problem if something goes wrong . . . which seems to be happening increasingly as the machine gets older and Google want you to buy a new one. A while ago my wife basically lost all her files. The machine had been saying that there would be no more upgrades to the Chrome version on her machine (so she should get a new one), but then something went wrong, and in recovering there was, ironically, some kind of forced upgrade or something, and when the dust settled it had lost her files. They probably exist somewhere on some Google server, but Google said it wasn't able to restore her access or something, so for practical purposes, gone.
There are also occasional annoyances when my wife wants to do something her way rather than Google's way, or wants to do something that's not obviously part of the limited set of things Google has laid out for you to do. This doesn't come up often, but even someone who normally just browses the web, does email and creates a few documents will sometimes want to do something else. On Linux, that means either it's already installed and you check the menus, or you fire up the Software Centre or whatever and install something that does that. On a Chromebook, that means you shrug and do without what you were hoping to do.

So yeah, I think there's still a case for putting a "generic user" on Linux rather than ChromeOS.

That said, this news is still a Good Thing.
Ouch! This is the main reason why I will never trust saving my files to a cloud, and treat it more like a backup than where I would store things. Even then, I prefer to backup to my NAS. Also why I woyld never buy a chromebook, and prefer to just buy cheap thinkpads and throw Linux on them.

Steam on a Chromebook could be closer than we think, with an AMD dGPU model coming
15 July 2021 at 4:41 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: WorMzy'gaming laptop' is already an oxymoron, we're going to need a new descriptor for 'gaming chromebook'.
Ha ha! yeah whenever I hear Gaming Laptop, I think "so an overly large chunk of laptop, that you can't ever upgrade, and will be obsolete in a year or two, assuming it doesn't overheat and die sometime before that."

Netflix is getting into video games, so we'll have another cloud gaming service
15 July 2021 at 3:20 pm UTC

Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: CyrilI can't watch the video, because blocked in my country... but it seems it's the trailer.
What the issue about it? It's the film itself?

The trailer seems ok to me. Especially annoying was Netflix' US poster, compared to the French one...

https://nypost.com/2020/08/20/netflix-deeply-sorry-for-cuties-poster-after-backlash-for-sexualizing-kids/

Yeah sorry I didn't read all posts when posted my comment. Yeah a lot of people, in France at least (I'm French), have speak about the US poster and mostly disagree with it, but the problem here is that because of this a lot of people simply refused to watch the film but still they spit on it...
As I watched the film, it's a good film and obviously don't deserve the shitstorm IMHO.

But yeah, my final word about it, let's stay of the topic.
I haven't looked at the poster or the movie; but like how can there be a shitstorm about that, yet like all that Japanese animations out there...

Netflix is getting into video games, so we'll have another cloud gaming service
15 July 2021 at 3:18 pm UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEPPrepare for your favourite video game series getting cancelled before the conclusion of the story. Or any conclusion whatsoever.
Can't wait!

I'm only subbing to any of these to watch specific series (or movies) that are already concluded. Anything else just seems to be a waste of time.
I'd play Money Heist as a video game :P but yeah, totally agree about it being canceled before the conclusion :P