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Latest Comments by kneekoo
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta available for the next long-term supported release
13 Aug 2025 at 1:01 am UTC Likes: 3

I'm not sure exactly what the value of seeing a long list of installed software is, compared to using the main menu to see short lists per category. Maybe if someone installs a huge amount of software just to try them, it might be easier to have a list where you can multi-select the ones you want to uninstall (Synaptic is useful for this). With Mint, at least in MATE and Cinnamon, you can right-click a menu entry and uninstall it from there. That's really convenient, which is why I never needed a list of installed apps.

I first tried Mint in 2007. And after dual-booting and putting more time in it than in Windows, I made it my daily driver in 2009. I prefer Mint simply because it makes me work less than I had to by using other operating systems. As a sysadmin I have my own list of good practices, so clearly that helps, but I distro-hopped a lot since 2001 and I love an OS that gets out of my way and lets me do my things. There's compromise with everything. Mint being an LTS OS can be a nuisance when you absolutely need a newer version of something. But since they added Flatpak support in the Software Manager and Update Manager, to easily install and update software from other places than APT, that annoyance went away almost completely.

No OS is for everyone, and that includes Mint. But my needs have been fully covered at home and at work (multiple places) - where I was able to install my own OS. That's why I consider it a very good OS for people to start with when they consider moving away from Windows.

The Minecraft-like free and open source game VoxeLibre v0.90 brings dynamic settings and new fire spreading
13 Aug 2025 at 12:32 am UTC

Very good game with a very poor name 😄
Suggestions? Something that sounds great and is not used by any other project or company? :grin:

The Minecraft-like free and open source game VoxeLibre v0.90 brings dynamic settings and new fire spreading
11 Aug 2025 at 8:46 pm UTC Likes: 1

Thanks for covering this. :) What I find the most exciting for the early game is having enchanted deepslate pickaxes. They break the same blocks as stone pickaxes, so they're only meant for the basics (coal, iron, copper).

The deepslate tools have a 50% chance to be enchanted at craft time - on the crafting table - with a level-1 enchantment. And to make sure they're not overpowered, they can only be upgraded to level-2 enchantments on the anvil. The available enchantments are those that would also be possible on an enchantment table, so in the case of a pickaxe that's Efficiency, Unbreaking, Silk Touch and Fortune.

So now we can get a deepslate pickaxe with Unbreaking II, Efficiency II and Fortune II without an enchantment table. Sweet! :D It will probably take you about 2 stacks of deepslate to get all of these on a single pickaxes, but it really pays off.

By the way, the combat and spawning rebalancing are especially great for newbies and makes fighting hostiles less tedious. So it all adds up to a much friendlier start for less experienced players.

DOGWALK is a free casual game from the Blender Studio out now
14 Jul 2025 at 6:25 pm UTC Likes: 1

While I never bothered to do an exhaustive survey, my impression is that there are quite a few games with feline protagonists, and big ones at that, but not that many from a canine perspective.
Sven Bømwøllen features a dog in an important role, just not the protagonist. :grin:

Video Games Europe release a statement on Stop Killing Games
7 Jul 2025 at 12:26 pm UTC Likes: 6

What's pathetic about Video Games Europe's statement is that they seemingly cannot fathom that people could run private servers with their own family and friends, instead of servers wide open to the whole world. They also seem to not even have the slightest clue about how any company can say "We're done, here's the server binary. If you want to run it, you take full responsibility, so use it wisely and have fun."

People don't expect game makers to be forever responsible for the infrastructure, they just want to be able to play the game even if that means they have to go through the hurdles of making their own servers and managing them on their own. But this probably sounds too simple for their complicated minds to get it.

Fedora proposal to drop 32-bit support has been withdrawn
7 Jul 2025 at 3:40 am UTC Likes: 6

A lot of people think about games regarding this topic, and for good reason (especially on this website), but most software in existence has been written for 32-bit and this goes way beyond games, and most of it is no longer maintained. How much of it is still in use, is anyone's guess, but especially in the case of closed source software there's not much that can be done about it. Even in the case of FOSS, porting 32-bit software to 64-bit is not just about recompiling.

Some people wonder about who's going to maintain the 32-bit support. It's been supported so far, so it's obviously doable. It is more work than not having to maintain it, but it's still very relevant and important. Proposing the removal of 32-bit support should be replaced with pursuing the right way forward to make sure 32-bit can work with less maintenance effort - a win-win.

Happy Birthday, GamingOnLinux - 16 years today
5 Jul 2025 at 5:49 pm UTC Likes: 1

Happy Birthday! :heart:

Fedora proposal to drop 32-bit support has been withdrawn
2 Jul 2025 at 5:33 am UTC Likes: 6

Good, hopefully they'll support 32-bit for as long as possible. I don't understand how the people behind the proposal were completely unaware of how the same proposal was received and handled when it came from Canonical. And then blaming people reporting the news is lame. The 32-bit support goes beyond games, it affects a huge amount of other software, and this has to be treated sensibly, that's all.

Open source PS2 emulator PCSX2 v2.4 brings SDL 3, Wayland support, lots of compatibility fixes
2 Jul 2025 at 5:18 am UTC Likes: 4

That was the state of things back then, so no surprise things have changed. People who enjoy the Wayland/X11 drama tend to overlook how each project has its own priorities, and many of those are unrelated to, and bigger than, the display server. Especially in the case of an emulator that's supposed to support thousands of games, it's easy to understand why they would prioritize emulation quality.

3. [...] this isn't some "anti wayland" crusade. It causes issues, most of which are caused by QtWayland, some are caused by the protocol itself. I want nothing more than to see Wayland succeed, but at the moment, it is unusable for a majority of users.
It's really great seeing this emulator getting so much refinement and better compatibility with newer technologies, while preserving support for the older ones too. Their change log looks fantastic. :)

Open source Minecraft-like game VoxeLibre 0.89 brings another big load of improvements
10 Mar 2025 at 1:21 pm UTC Likes: 3

Is there any multiplayer yet?
Yes, it had multiplayer since its inception, thanks to Luanti (formerly Minetest) having this feature. There's also the VoxeLibre Skyblock mod (https://content.luanti.org/packages/ancientmariner/vl_skyblock/) for people who want to build the world, where the recently added hammer is very helpful. :)

Fun twist: yesterday I updated my old tutorial "Compiling Luanti on the Raspberry Pi OS" and of course I had to actually compile it to see if it works. To make it hard, I used my old(er) Raspberry Pi 3B+ with 1GB RAM and ran a server on it.

Years ago, there was no way you could do multiplayer with someone else with only 1GB RAM (a few minutes would be fine, then it would just freeze), but now the RAM usage stayed below 700MB with 2 players for an hour - me on PC, and another player on a phone (multi-platform is possible). The engine (Luanti) is now much better, and VoxeLibre also got plenty of improvements under the hood to keep resource usage low. That was the biggest surprise for me in quite a while. My tutorial recommends at least 4GB RAM, but I would have to actually check that with more people, because this test took me by surprise, big time.

I'll try a server on a Raspberry Pi 5B, since that's faster, but even the old 3B+ was reasonable. Where the old Pi struggles, it's generating the chunks of the world while flying around fast. Running a server like this from a microSD card is obviously not the best idea, but it was surprisingly playable, with some minor lag when moving around and playing normally.