Quoting: Leahi84More anti-preservation from an industry that actively hates the idea. Laws need to be changed to stop this crap.

They're trying. But alas it is going nowhere:
https://gamehistory.org/dmca-2024-statement/ [External Link]

On the other hand, this is no surprise. I mean, people actively support things like Denuvo, Kernel-level anti-cheats and the removal of games from your library/or preventing you from playing it since you "Don't own it.".

As long as people are accepting of such tactics the industry knows they can keep doing it and that means no video game preservation in the future.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Honestly if you want to stream games just do it yourself with Sunshine or Steam Remote Play.

Why pay someone else for something you can do yourself? :huh:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: Mountain ManWith all this doom and gloom talk about the end of Manjaro, I have to ask, what's the best alternative?

(Of course every Linux distro seems to be surrounded by pronouncements of its impending demise, but it rarely comes to pass.)

Gentoo.

I know that feels like a meme, but it's really not. This thing is rock solid stable like a mountain, and man switching to it was the best choice I ever made. I don't even get all those little "odd bugs" you normally get on other distros.

You compile all the packages yourself which means you can patch out forced telemetry yourself or disable it at compile time (I do this for KDE). Binary packages are available now, but you lose some customizability.

Anything done in a way you don't like can basically be changed, no questions asked.

I ran Gentoo many years ago and found it to be rather labor intensive and too easy to break even with a routine update. I imagine things have changed in the past 15 years, but I also have no compelling reason to abandon Manjaro at the moment since it has always just worked for me. I suppose that's boring to people who like to constantly tweak and tinker, but these days, I really don't mind boring!

In fairness, it is rock solid stable now. At least, more stable than Arch :grin: (In my own experience).

You don't *have* to compile anymore though. (Though I customize too much to be able to avoid it.)

There are things like btrfs snapshots which you could use for quick rollbacks though if updates break it. :happy:

Personally, I've come to love the feel of being able to change absolutely anything, it's something no other distribution can provide. :neutral:

It takes a bit more time to setup and slightly more time to maintain, but it's not terrible. It's maybe an hour or two a week of my time to update it and make changes I like. :smile:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Linux_Rocks

To protect your privacy, external media requires approval to load.

Source: www.forgifs.com

View cookie preferences.
Accept & Show Accept All & Don't show this again   Direct Link

I love that gif, that's brilliant! :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Where is the pre-order button? :huh:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Gamall

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo they say, yes. That doesn't necessarily mean it would stand up in court, so they often prefer not to push it too hard.

They don't push it too hard because it would be terrible publicity.

That too, certainly.

Quoting: GamallMaybe you have more hope for the courts than I do. But my point was that if even the most basic right to access anything at all you paid for is in question, and sadly it is, then "an update broke the game on my Linux and this is bad because, legally, I paid for it" is unlikely to have any impact, and certainly not from the legal angle, because it's a strictly weaker argument.

There's no simple answer to this--it depends very much on the country. And in some countries where strict "property" arguments would fail, there would still be applicable consumer protection laws . . . even if something isn't your "property", someone selling you something and then taking it away could still be violating some law.

The question is, how different is that from fraud? :tongue:

"Pay X money for this product" (you pay)
"We're taking the product away from you, but keeping your money. Thanks for the money, sucker!"

:grin:

I jest, I jest!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Gamall

Quoting: BlackBloodRumYou have been legally prevented from using a product you have paid for with updates which intentionally block your usage, this is no fault of your own and thus you should demand a refund until you get one.

The problem is that the product that you purchased is a licence to download and execute a piece of software, at the forbearance of the seller.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/ [External Link]

"Content and Services are licensed, not sold" and your "license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services".

You don't own the piece of software itself. There is nothing, legally, preventing them from utterly revoking your access at any time and for any or no reason, let alone making any changes to it they wish, regardless of their effects on you.

:-|

I didn't say anything about ownership. I'm aware of that. You are however still being prevented from using something you paid for and you'd be a fool to not fight for a refund in that case. Steam will probably side with you in this case if explained calmly and firmly.

Why let the companies walk over you like dirt?

Although honestly recent anti-consumer tactics like this are why I'm slowly moving away from Steam and games which abuse the consumer in general (such as revoking access). They can't keep money you didn't give them. :happy:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Mountain ManWith all this doom and gloom talk about the end of Manjaro, I have to ask, what's the best alternative?

(Of course every Linux distro seems to be surrounded by pronouncements of its impending demise, but it rarely comes to pass.)

Gentoo.

I know that feels like a meme, but it's really not. This thing is rock solid stable like a mountain, and man switching to it was the best choice I ever made. I don't even get all those little "odd bugs" you normally get on other distros.

You compile all the packages yourself which means you can patch out forced telemetry yourself or disable it at compile time (I do this for KDE). Binary packages are available now, but you lose some customizability.

Anything done in a way you don't like can basically be changed, no questions asked.

Quoting: spymastermatt

Quoting: CZiNTrPTIn my country real organ donorship is opt-out and that's right approach as well

Yeap. Here in the UK organ donation was swapped to opt-in for the same good reason Manjaro should use opt-in for their telemetry. Lots of people who aren't bothered either way, will never opt-in, but those who care will always opt-out

Say what now? I'm from the UK and was last told it was opt-out. I wasn't informed it changed to opt-in. When did this change, and how do I opt out? (My organs are buggered from drinking too much to be useful. Heck, my organs probably couldn't keep a human alive for more than a day.)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Nice! At the end of the day if the hardware still works and the user is happy with it then they should be able to keep using it :grin:

(Nothing worse than forced hardware upgrades, imo.)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Oh that notification is going to get killed by a patch on my system, or I'll have them all the time and it'll bug me. :neutral:

Like most people, I intentionally use the OOM killer to limit how much ram specific applications can use using systemd scopes. (Thus, avoiding an actual OOM in the first place)

I have a couple of applications that have memory leaks, so if left unchecked they'll just keep using RAM until the system is out. (So for example, LibreWolf has a RAM usage limit of 6GB, Swap limit of 2GB - gets killed if it exceeds this.) :neutral:

View this comment - View article - View full comments