Oooh. This looks interesting!

Might be able to remove "PlayOnLinux" and replace it with this, which ironically these days I only use for one application, EAC which I require for putting my CDs on my computer (due to logs, cue file and such.. I just like a clean copy)

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Quoting: ArehandoroLast night I dreamed that I was the first customer to receive the console, but somehow felt small, light and with a tiny screen. I mustn't read GOL before going to sleep xD

You had the deck dream? Do you know what this means? :grin::grin::grin::grin:

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No problem!

Got the money saved and set aside for the deck already.. so as soon as I'm able to, that deck be mine.

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Nice to see them still supporting the older games, you won't see other studios do this.

With that said, I wonder how many people still play this now that Half Life 3 is already out?

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To be honest, there is no such thing as a "perfect" distro that does everything "right".

Why?

Because what is right for one person, is the exact opposite of what someone else wants from their distro.

But that's the beauty of Linux see, we can use the distro that fits our needs best, we are not tied to using a specific one, so if it doesn't fit us then we can move on.

With that said, I always say that Arch has great documentation and I would highly recommend anyone who wishes to learn more about Linux and how it really works to use it for a while.

It's a great distro imo, however as for "stable" - I wouldn't say so. System breaking changes may occur with the only notification being the blog on the Arch website - for avid Arch fans this is no big deal, but for a new Linux user they wouldn't understand why this happens.

While in my opinion stable releases are better than rolling for a new user (stable package versions, less instant changes etc etc) there are rolling distros that even a new user could find usable, for example OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

Tumbleweed can be installed via GUI, uses btrfs by default with snapshots fully enabled - so if updates break it, rolling back to a working system can be done in less than 5 minutes even for a newbie. Heck, even if you bust the configuration yourself you can rollback in less than 5 minutes.

Now that is what I call new user friendly. If we break out of the rolling releases, there's always OpenSUSE Leap that also has snapshots, failing that new users may find Mint comfortable.

Generally for new users, I aim to give them a comfortable experience that won't leave them needing to run a command line or getting confused, so my go-to is usually Mint for a complete newbie.

Arch would probably have most new users running away screaming about how Linux is still all terminal based and old fashioned that doesn't work. Rightfully so, Arch is not aimed at complete novices, it's aimed at people that want more fine grained control over their system, people who like to tinker and those who want to learn more about the technical side of Linux.

Now, me personally I always use whatever fits - I stopped the whole "distro fanboy" thing a number of years ago - although Fedora will always hold a special place in my heart :heart:.

I use a combination of RHEL, Debian, Fedora, Arch and OpenSUSE systems - using each system where they fit best for the task at hand.

Anyway, it's also why I'm not a big fan of Flatpak, if I'm using RHEL for example - I don't want a nightly build of apache that I need to update everyday, I want a version I can install and leave running that's stable and secure, hence RHEL and proper SELinux policies - For example, I only just rebooted one RHEL server that had over 4 months uptime, it was secure though thanks to kernel kpatch's which address security vulns (live patching kernel without full reboot - great since a reboot would take around ~5 minutes due to slow bios checks) and system services just being rebooted with systemctl, thus all up to date and working. This is an example of a strength of RHEL.

But as I wrote before, each distro has their strengths and advantages - that's why we get to pick which ones work for us best.

We should never get to the point of depending on Flatpak, because it's usage case will not fit everybody and their individual setups. Linux's ability to adapt and fit different users needs is one of it's biggest strengths, by taking that away by requiring users to always use a Flatpak version is very dangerous and will make a lot of people angry.

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How's the itch.io integration coming along?

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Free game?

Sold! :grin:

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Quoting: AussieEeveeTo be honest, if it ever gets to the point where I HAVE to use Flatpaks, I'd probably go back to Windows.

Choice is good, but there is just far too many things I hate about flatpaks. I just don't think it's a viable alternative to debs.

I can't go back to windows.. no way no how.

It'll be BSD for me next if I have to, I don't mind it I've had past experience with it so I'm fairly familiar with it.

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I've been in the market for a box like this for a couple of weeks actually.

But it doesn't need this much power (imo) as it will just effectively become a kodi box for my TV, since my TV is still dumb (2006 Sony Bravia) and I don't have a working aerial/satalite connection to my home.

So a little box like this would be perfect but.. quite steep in price imo. I wish they had a lower spec linux one that was cheaper and more suitable for my needs 😅

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Quoting: CyborgZeta

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: CyborgZeta

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOn a rolling-release distribution like Arch? No way. All of the packages are up-to-date, and if they're not, they are up-to-date in the AUR. Flatpak is way too much complexity for me.

I'm on an Arch-based system and use several Flatpaks. Firefox and Thunderbird for better Plasma integration and the sandbox, with everything else for being more convenient and not bloating my system with dependencies.

Also, I never touch the AUR, and Flatpak helps with that.

Using Flatpak and saying that it results in fewer dependencies is somewhat of a strange argument to me. Sure, you need to download more make dependencies for some AUR packages, but you can immediately uninstall them after compilation. With Flatpak, the more applications you use, the more duplicate runtimes/shared libraries (just different versions) you end up with. That's bloat in terms of RAM (having to run multiple of the same runtime) as well as hard drive space.

I don't know how effective Flatpak is at sandboxing applications, and because I use almost entirely free software or applications I trust, or applications that aren't distributed via Flatpak anyway (Microsoft Office), I wouldn't get much benefit out of it anyhow. For Firefox, I use uBlock Origin and block Javascript, remote fonts, the usual blocklists, disable WebGL and hardware acceleration, and that gives me more assurance than any sandbox would.

I look at it this way. The less dependencies on my root filesystem, the less chance of breakage I have when updating the OS or programs. I have encountered dependency hell issues on Ubuntu + Debian before; so that's one reason I like using Steam as a Flatpak, because I'm not introducing a bunch of 32-bit binaries to my filesystem.

A good case in point is the LTT video involving Pop OS and Steam. No, I'm not criticizing APT, since the fault was likely a packaging issue on System76's end. However, my point would be that installing Steam would've been a non-issue had he used the Flatpak.

This is the primary reason I avoid the AUR. It has nothing to do with trust. I did my research before switching to an Arch-based system, and most of the people I talked to told me that the majority of stability issues they'd run into with Arch involved programs installed from the AUR. I don't use the AUR because I don't want anything from outside the official repositories on my computer. Flatpak at least has the courtesy to not touch my filesystem and update independently of the core OS. Perhaps your experience running Arch is different, but I've been doing things this way for over a month now since installing EndeavourOS and have had zero issues with the OS itself.

As for Firefox, well I only have few extensions installed myself, uBlock included. I just like the sandbox because the way I see it, if my browser is somehow compromised then at least it's separate from the root filesystem. Also, I've noticed that using the Flatpak gives me a less identifiable fingerprint when checking https://www.deviceinfo.me/ [External Link]

In my experience dependency hell is a very rare situation to get into. It was common in the early days of package managers and is still common on development-grade distros (think fedora rawhide).

However most stable distros like Debian, Fedora, RHEL, SUSE (and co) won't land you into a dependency hell unless you add third party repos that offer the same or conflicting packages to what the core repos already contain.

Once third party repos start replacing core packages, that's where the conflicts really start to happen.

It may also occur in smaller less experienced distros like "Pop_OS!" (I only heard about that one for the first time about a month ago)

If you stick to stable releases of well known and well established distros using only official repos you'll likely never end up in dependency hell.

Of course, you'll at some point need or want a package that's not available in your distro by default. We've all been there.

If you need to add a third party repo make sure you set your package managers repo priorities correctly, your distros default repos should always have highest priority over anything third party.

This ensures that core libraries don't end up stuck on some third party repository version that since got dropped.

Oh and don't add random repos from the internet.. use well known ones only.

Ofc, from a new end user perspective that's complicated and can cause confusion. Flatpak could really shine here. That is for packages you simply couldn't have otherwise by default.

In fact I'd say that's a great compromise for new users. But I still feel packages that are available by default should be installed from a properly maintained repository to ensure the best consistency and compatibility.

In regards to sandboxing there are ways to get a similar result, for example see SELinux, a properly fine tuned SELinux policy can do wonders for your system security.

Quoting: JSVRamirez

Quoting: BlackBloodRumI know this goes against everything the linux community is pushing for at the minute, but it's my opinion and my choice.

I'm not sure if it is what, "the Linux community," is pushing, rather the vocal minority of 'value added' OS developers.
People with a financial interest speaking for us and, in many instances, not giving us a choice.

My hope is that there will always be some distros who stick to the package managing way, probably Debian and Arch, but we all know Ubuntu will get rid of .deb for anything outside of the core system as soon as they can!

I think some will definitely remain, for example those with an interest in the enterprise market will want to have their own fully controlled repos (Think RHEL) and in an enterprise environment I highly doubt admins would be happy about needing to hunting on flatpub for their packages instead of a simple "dnf install package" and they'll need to be able to confirm package integrity and orign.

So there is hope to being able to stay with proper linux distros :-D.

(I think debian would want to remain the same also)

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