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Latest Comments by slaapliedje
KDE Plasma 5.25 is out now, here's some of what's new
16 June 2022 at 6:45 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: const
Quoting: itsNottingWhat about the updates in discover in Steam Deck? KDE updates (and others) are popping up.

Can I just simply update the individual parts of the OS? Or will they be handled by the SteamOS updates through gaming mode?

Depends on your filesystems rw state. If everything but home is readonly, you can't update anything but flatpaks from discover. I'd wait for the official update from valve, though I really want to try it :)

Everyone should keep in mind that flatpak does have updates for libraries... but they don't touch the OS level libraries, they're just for that particular user. It's to try to solve the issue that most mac software and Windows software has, where you end up with many copies of the same libraries as they're bundled with all the things. Look at any of the flatpaks for Gnome applications, they pull in 'gnome.platform' or whatever it's called. I end up having to go through and clean up old versions of those, as flatpak doesn't seem to do a fantastic job of it on it's own...
So you're saying it's to try (and fail) to solve the problem . . .
Yup, pretty much! I mean you CAN install flatpaks via root user and share those libraries that way... but it's not the general intention of doing so.

Total War: WARHAMMER III released for Linux with a port from Feral
16 June 2022 at 6:40 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: DamonLinuxPL
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: MohandevirDid they revamp the Feral launcher for better Steam Deck integration?

On Deck Feral titles are usually defaulted to Windows builds.

As most Deck users are normally Windows users and save file incompat, multiplayer incompat is not so desirable.
That sounds sloppy. Seems to me that Feral's ports (especially for AMD users) have performed better than Windows+Proton?

Nope. Just tested it and performance in semi-native version is much worse than in Proton on RX580 8GB. Also missing multiplayer with Windows and Mac version = broken port.
I just recommend to stay with Proton anyway. This is just bad port.
To be fair, though, I don't think most of this is ultimately Feral's fault.
That the port is so late - who knows when they got access to the game? The code sure changed a bit in recent months, given how broken it was on release...
And if CA doesn't "order" the multiplayer to be made compatible with Windows, which might be extra work = extra cost for CA.

In my experience, Feral ports have performed better than Proton, albeit not significantly (maybe 10-20%).

Still, while it's somewhat painful to say, Warhammer has generally been one of the cases where the Proton version is preferable due to mod compatibility, multiplayer compatibility and speed of updates. And WH3 is no exception.
It just seems sad and pointless to me; put in effort for a native port... only to have it work in lesser ways than the original. Granted this is why I hope with the Deck, more companies will just release cross-platform from the beginning. If they do it right, then it won't matter what OS you run, things should just work the same across the board.

Total War: WARHAMMER III released for Linux with a port from Feral
16 June 2022 at 5:12 pm UTC

Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: MohandevirDid they revamp the Feral launcher for better Steam Deck integration?

On Deck Feral titles are usually defaulted to Windows builds.

As most Deck users are normally Windows users and save file incompat, multiplayer incompat is not so desirable.
That sounds sloppy. Seems to me that Feral's ports (especially for AMD users) have performed better than Windows+Proton?

Save game compatibility shouldn't be an issue at all, though it always seemed like sloppy coding to not have compatible multiplayer. Though most of that is version drift, but I've seen otherwise in other games. "Those filthy neckbeards don't get to play with the rest of the world!"

For the record; I don't think I've seen anything on the Deck that uses native over proton yet, though I have not looked at all the games I've installed.

BeamNG.drive gets experimental Native Linux support
16 June 2022 at 10:34 am UTC Likes: 3

Should be a simple process here;

if native ask;
if native version is working...
is the game released cross platform or ported by a third party?
if third party, has third party been keeping it in sync with first party?
if no; go proton
if yes; go native
if cross-platform released by first party; go native

Just assuming everything should be Proton first also means that with each release of Proton, do they need to make new tests / re-verify to see if a newer version gives better performance? Do they leave this up to the developers, or do they have people just testing things constantly? Seems like a losing battle...

KDE Plasma 5.25 is out now, here's some of what's new
16 June 2022 at 10:28 am UTC

Quoting: const
Quoting: itsNottingWhat about the updates in discover in Steam Deck? KDE updates (and others) are popping up.

Can I just simply update the individual parts of the OS? Or will they be handled by the SteamOS updates through gaming mode?

Depends on your filesystems rw state. If everything but home is readonly, you can't update anything but flatpaks from discover. I'd wait for the official update from valve, though I really want to try it :)

Everyone should keep in mind that flatpak does have updates for libraries... but they don't touch the OS level libraries, they're just for that particular user. It's to try to solve the issue that most mac software and Windows software has, where you end up with many copies of the same libraries as they're bundled with all the things. Look at any of the flatpaks for Gnome applications, they pull in 'gnome.platform' or whatever it's called. I end up having to go through and clean up old versions of those, as flatpak doesn't seem to do a fantastic job of it on it's own...

BeamNG.drive gets experimental Native Linux support
16 June 2022 at 10:14 am UTC

Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: TermyI must admit this does have some merit, especially for older games. I've had several instances where the native version wouldn't work (at all or properly, mainly controller-issues) but running it with proton worked like a charm.

This is indeed my experience too. A significant performance or stability improvement - or even the game not fully working in the "native" version.
For example I've had several audio issues running the native version who were gone when switching to Proton.

So statistically, for a device that should "just work", the safer route is to run it all under Proton - also for future stability. There's plenty examples of games with a native version where the Linux version lagged severely behind on patches.
In the two cases where I ran into it (Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Fantasy Grounds Unity), BG:DA has the problem with not keeping cloud syncs multi-platform (so Deck defaulting to the Windows version made it so my save games were not automatically available on my Linux Desktop), and Fantasy Grounds Unity literally crashed the Deck when trying to install via DeckUI, and caused some weird bug in desktop mode where the the on screen keyboard kept flipping on / off and it still would not let me install it. Somehow FGU is marked as 'playable' in this state. It only started working at all after I forced it to use the Steam Linux Runtime.

One with think, since they're doing 'verified, playable, non-working, untested', that the would actually make each game also be able to say 'proton=yes' or 'proton=no' since I do know they tie each to different versions of Proton. Or at least I would think they'd kind of have to, as otherwise games would randomly break if they were 'current version'. They should hopefully never pin against Proton Experimental...

KDE Plasma 5.25 is out now, here's some of what's new
15 June 2022 at 6:27 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: ShmerlColor syncing reminds SailfishOS ambience idea. Cool concept and it's nice to see.

Waiting for Debian testing to finally get Qt 5.15.4 to be able to switch to the KDE Wayland session and avoid that nasty monitor sleep bug.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/qtbase-opensource-src

Man, I wish I could have enjoyed owning a SailfishOS device... I really miss being able to use my N9 or even N900.... now that 3G is essentially dead.

Sailfish OS works fine for me on my Sony Xperia 10, with official support from Jolla. But unless you're in "the countries of the European Union, UK, Norway [or] Switzerland", you're out of luck.
Yeah, I'm in the USA where they don't even think Sony makes phones, it's pretty much Samsung or Apple... Though I'll be honest, I bought a Sony Xperia (z2 I think?) a few years ago and... it's actually the best 'pure Android' that I've used, as most of the time non-Samsung Androids are kind of terrible... at least in my experience. Still think the N900 and N9 were years ahead in their design...

BeamNG.drive gets experimental Native Linux support
15 June 2022 at 5:27 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou know, I feel like ever since the Steam Deck got going, contrary to some of the more pessimistic predictions, and even my own broad expectation, there have actually been more native Linux ports. People were thinking that with Proton working pretty dashed well, and Proton being to a fair extent the face of the Steam deck, developers wouldn't be bothering to do native versions but instead would rely on Proton. I thought so too, I just figured it would be worth it and eventually reverse if the Deck led to greatly increased Linux market share.

But even at this early stage, just looking at the native games mentioned here at GoL lately, it feels like that isn't how it's working. Instead it's like the Steam Deck has increased the visibility of Linux again so more developers are thinking about it and feeling like it's a viable platform. Sure, there's quite a lot of tweaking Windows versions to work better with Proton and/or the Deck, which itself may be an improvement since in the past a lot of those games wouldn't have had Linux versions, they just wouldn't have been tweaked. But I've been surprised how many articles I'm seeing about Linux versions of stuff, sometimes unexpected Linux versions of stuff. Maybe it's a false impression, I haven't exactly done a survey. But the native Linux front feels surprisingly positive to me lately.
There is a problem I'm seeing though. Games that have native ports being installed using Proton by default on Deck.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Deck verified) was using Proton instead of native. And Fantasy Grounds Unity (which is now 'playable') also was using the Windows version, which completely crashed my deck when in the DeckUI mode, so I downgraded to the stable OS, and went into desktop mode... where the installer hung the system, and I had to kill it, force it to use the Steam Linux Runtime. Then hook up a keyboard so I could type in my login password... But hey, at least it should be working correctly now, unlike Fantasy Grounds Classic, which for some reason is 'Verified' but still requires keyboard input, was hanging half the dialog off the screen, and was otherwise unusable...

I suppose instead of ranting here, I should post it somewhere more useful :P

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II arrives on Steam 'this Summer' with Linux support
15 June 2022 at 5:21 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: slaapliedjeOn the Deck for the first game, I ended up fixing the slowness by forcing 60fps :) works flawlessly after that! (with the Linux binary, for some reason the Proton one worked just fine anyhow.)

What do you mean? The game (Linux version) was locked at 30 FPS?
I think by default it was running at 30, yes. I went into the performance thing, turned off the limiter and set the vsync to 60, then it ran at a solid 60fps and was fast and smooth. It is definitely a game that is dependent upon refresh rate.

KDE Plasma 5.25 is out now, here's some of what's new
15 June 2022 at 4:36 pm UTC

Quoting: ShmerlColor syncing reminds SailfishOS ambience idea. Cool concept and it's nice to see.

Waiting for Debian testing to finally get Qt 5.15.4 to be able to switch to the KDE Wayland session and avoid that nasty monitor sleep bug.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/qtbase-opensource-src

Man, I wish I could have enjoyed owning a SailfishOS device... I really miss being able to use my N9 or even N900.... now that 3G is essentially dead.