I think that we all should just calm down a bit here. This is not Ubisoft making any form of statement, this is just some poor sod working as a support rep at Ubisoft trying to answer a request in a friendly way. This rep have zero insight into what Ubisoft are planning to do or not to do, so all he/she can do that doesn't sound negative is to say "well why don't you all write down that you want it and then I could send that list upwards".

Ubisoft have 19000+ employees, there are probably max 40 of them that have any knowledge of their direction and support reps are way way down on the ladder.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: F.UltraWell here's to hoping. Wish I was a billionaire so that I could invest tons of money into creating the perfect Linux computer that was as slick as a Chromebook and have it been sold in normal stores. We need a new Canonical anno 2004 to pour resources into moving Linux closer to the customers.

It would need to be someone bigger than Canonical was. They did pour resources into a slick Linux device, worked out software packaging and distribution, took cues from Android about how to avoid the cruft of X11, developed an interface paradigm for convergence with the desktop... and then ran out of money, had to fire a bunch of people, and had to give up. So like Canonical, but with sufficient resources to be able to survive, say, 5 years more burn.

This, turns out that $575M only takes you so far (and I don't think he poured all his money into Canonical either). Meanwhile lots of billionaires like Musk and Bezos reap benefits from Linux, they could invest $1bn each and their wallets would not even loose any weight.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.UltraLinux desktop adoption is simply a long long process, if lucky we will some day reach macOS numbers but we will never reach Microsoft levels. That war was lost before Linux even existed when MS made sure with their shady business tactics that they got a large enough monopoly that PC equals Windows in everybody's mind.

You'd think that. But in some ways Microsoft has been too successful. When my wife got a Chromebook, and I was helping her figure out how to use it, it became apparent that she did not in fact really know what Windows was. She also didn't understand the distinction between a web browser and an operating system, or indeed between software and the OS in general. So the idea that the difference between her new dinky cheap laptop and her computer at work had a lot to do with the difference between a thing called Windows and a thing called ChromeOS, just didn't immediately have a meaning to her at all.
There are a lot of people out there like my wife. If some big computer manufacturer starts selling their computers with Linux on, an awful lot of people won't really get that there's a difference.

Well here's to hoping. Wish I was a billionaire so that I could invest tons of money into creating the perfect Linux computer that was as slick as a Chromebook and have it been sold in normal stores. We need a new Canonical anno 2004 to pour resources into moving Linux closer to the customers.

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Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.UltraWhich is why I hate when people like LTT make claims like "if GitHub is only for developers then that means that Linux is only for developers" when the whole frakking reason we don't have hardware support for his GoXLR in Linux is due to the shady practises of Microsoft. Its a hill that we have to climb up, but the thing is that the hill is artificially created and keep on getting steeper and steeper as we climb it.

To add insult into injury, Github is owned by Microsoft. Github sure does have some usability problems, it doesn't matter if you're developer or not. Linus is just taking the mentality that he doesn't want to be developer bit too seriously.

Github just happens to be the place where the projects start. Some projects don't even bother with packaging and let distributions handle that.

I guess the difference is that with Windows, projects that don't have any kind of infrastructure yet, get way less attention. It used to be bit complicated to set up free development environment for Windows. With Linux all you need sometimes is just GCC and text editor, possibly Make on top of that.

As for GoXLR, somebody with Windows can be valuable. I think one of the first things to do with when creating new USB driver is to snoop the traffic between the Windows and the device. I have no idea how easy it is to just record the traffic and replay it on Linux without creating a driver first.

Optimally there would be official driver, but I would assume getting it accepted into kernel might take few rounds of reviews as it might take a while get used to the conventions.

Capturing the USB traffic is easy enough without a driver but you must also correctly interpret it and there is nothing that prevents a vendor from communicating with a device over an encrypted channel (not that I think that GoXLR does but it's a possibility). And for GoXLR in particular they handle everything in the application, the device doesn't even have memory to store the configuration between resets so you have to also rewrite their entire application. The exe alone is 16MB and then there is a 4MB driver as well (just tested it in a W10 instance in Virtual Box).

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: F.UltraNot really sure what ARM vs x86 have to do with the issue either since all Android apps are written in Java/Dalvik and not ARM anyway.

Imo, this is too technical for newcomers. What they want to know it's if it's going to run on their computer, plug & play style. Not what tech it uses. If the answer is yes, there is an hardware interrelation. If not, the chain is broken and they will stick to Windows. As simple as that.

Sure thing, if the Steam Deck is successfull and it doesn't translate into Linux desktop gain, nothing will. It's going to be a good indication, imo, that aside from tech savy users, Linux is best suited for dedicated hardware with single use mindset.

Well I'm not sure that the Deck will drive Linux adoption, it will help us Linux gamers for sure since there will be a lot of publishers wanting to be part of the launch event making sure that their games work in Proton or natively, something that in some way of course could drive adoption but I don't see a launch of a new console as something that will make a big dent in the Linux desktop adoption.

Linux desktop adoption is simply a long long process, if lucky we will some day reach macOS numbers but we will never reach Microsoft levels. That war was lost before Linux even existed when MS made sure with their shady business tactics that they got a large enough monopoly that PC equals Windows in everybody's mind.

Which is why I hate when people like LTT make claims like "if GitHub is only for developers then that means that Linux is only for developers" when the whole frakking reason we don't have hardware support for his GoXLR in Linux is due to the shady practises of Microsoft. Its a hill that we have to climb up, but the thing is that the hill is artificially created and keep on getting steeper and steeper as we climb it.

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Quoting: MohandevirBut what I would like to know is how many people, in Steam user pool, are like me:

One computer for work, supplied by the company that hired them and a personnal gaming rig that is used only for that: gaming. Everything else is done on smartphones nowadays... My daughter has a Win10 laptop and it's barely used anymore. Little gaming, here and there and all else, from video editing to photos/photo editing is done on cell phone too... Similar for my son, except he's more of a gamer. Are we weird phenomenons?

I hear the eternal "photoshop gig" to explain why Linux is not catching up on the desktop, but is it still that much true? I have the feeling that we are in an era where the versatility of desktops is mainly exploited at work... Am I wrong to think so?

Ah yes, every single Windows user out there seems to be working in advanced design and imaging considering how often Photoshop is brought up as as stop gap :). Meanwhile not a single person at my office have ever opened any image application ever...

I think that you probably represent how most people use machines today, young people tend to use their phones the way we older people use laptops basically. Myself I cannot stand to use a phone for most things and use a computer for everything but I know that I'm the exception.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: MohandevirExcept you can't run Stadia or Stadia games locally, on any hardware. The hardware platform is not relevant, in this particular case. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

no you are not clear at all.
you tried to justify that android didnt helped the linux desktop because android is (mostly) arm devices...
but then you quoted stadia as if it was in the same category as android, and its not...

No. Don't try speaking on my behalf, you are totally wrong... Please read again my sentence in my first post. That's not how it's constructed. There is absolutely no mention of ARM in the whole Stadia sentence. You made a shortcut or misunderstood. Sorry.

Edit: The same category you are referring to is not "ARM"... It's "no interrelation with the desktop". That was my intent from the start.

Well you did write "You are comparing ARM hardware with x86... There is absolutely no hardware interrelations between them. Same for Stadia, there are no interrelations with the desktop", it's quite easy to be confused with the "Same for Stadia" that just followed the whole ARM vs x86.

Not really sure what ARM vs x86 have to do with the issue either since all Android apps are written in Java/Dalvik and not ARM anyway.

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Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.UltraThe fork done by the FreeBSD team (libressl) was done because the FreeBSD devs wanted more control over such a central piece of software that had gotten stale. Due note that the funding that happened due to this went to OpenSSL and not to LibreSSL and while LibreSSL was the better library for a short while, the OpenSSL project got rejuvenated in the process and LibreSSL is now basically only used by FreeBSD and the distros and projects that went with LibreSSL are close to all back to using OpenSSL again.

It was actually done by OpenBSD folks, though porting it to FreeBSD might have been faster than to Linux. After all FreeBSD and OpenBSD share same 386BSD ancestry. Linux is it's own thing and thus is not by default compatible with things developed on other operating systems. Same thing applies on other direction too.

LibreSSL threw away lot of legacy things in order to improve security. So the goal wasn't just add features on top of OpenSSL. Which might explain why supporting LibreSSL hasn't been always that easy. Which might explain why supporting LibreSSL as OpenSSL replacement might have not been worthwhile once OpenSSL started to be good enough again.

Not that forking hasn't stopped to LibreSSL. Both Tink(Google) and S2N(Amazon) seem to roughly follow same ideals. I noticed that both share same license with OpenSSL, Apache 2.0. So they are able to share code if necessary. LibreSSL seems to be stuck with the older OpenSSL license.

Yeah sorry about that, my memory somehow confused OpenBSD with FreeBSD there. Yes they threw away a lot of legacy stuff to make the code easier to work with, uncertain if any of the stuff they threw out improved security in any way but of course a more easy code base to work with can lead to improved security.

The huge stupid thing that they did though is that they froze the API to that of OpenSSL v1.0.1g but set the OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER define to v2.0.0 and that both broke a lot of software and people had to do some really cludgy workarounds like

 
# if (defined LIBRESSL_VERSION_NUMBER && OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER == 0x20000000L)
#  undef OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER
#  define OPENSSL_VERSION_NUMBER 0x1000107fL
# endif

And then pray and hope that LibreSSL didn't change API ever. So I'm for one glad that the days of LibreSSL is mostly over due to the maintenance headache it caused.

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Quoting: elmapulProbably, but i still cant understand why the web has an great backward compatibility (for good or for bad, regardless of consequences) and we break things so often in linux.

On the other hand this is also the reasons why browsers are bloated messes with extremely hard to maintain code full of security problems.

That said I do agree with you and have argued for years that e.g library writers should take much more care about maintaining ABI and API stability, a new incompatible interface should only be introduced if it really really is necessary and when done it should also be added GLIBC style where keep the old functions in a versioned way so that you don't break ABI compatibility with old applications.

But the main answer is that software is still a young technology that is fast moving forward.

Quoting: elmapulit helps nothing that i tried to develop myself and canonical ditched the apis they were creating (it was PWA before PWA was a thing and with more integration, i can understand why they ditched it, but it still was frustrating.

honestly as both an end user and developer, things breaking on updates pissed me of a lot, it improved a lot since i stop using non LTS ( for years no one told me that i should stay on LTS) and started keeping note on the apps that i install to better troubleshoot any problem (eg: if i install A,B,C it cause problem but if i stop at B it dont)
i would quote a few times things broke but i cant remember now, brian lunduke would give better examples than i can (im awake since yesterday)

Being an insomniac I do feel your pain. Yes it's not easy to know unless some one informs you that the echo system is separated into stable LTS distros that maintain API/ABI and behaviour for 5-10 years and the unstable ones where things constantly change.

Quoting: elmapulits just frustrating to think that, we had some native games in the past, that no longer works, and we have to install the windows version of then.
if we didnt had windows? we were screwed.

Actually those old games should be fully possible to resurrect, the reason some of them don't work on a newer system is that things like SDL have changed too much but one can gather the old versions of all the dependencies for those old games and LD_PRELOAD them in or put it all into a container. There might be some exotic old libraries that straight out refuses to work on a new system but even then it's fully possible to fork them and massage them enough to work, requires that some one steps up to do the work, but it's doable.

Quoting: elmapulnow... i didnt wanted to say "companies definitely did this on purpose" because i know it sounds ridiculous
but if there is an cost of keeping backward compatibility, and an economic incentive in breaking, what is the most logical thing to do?

There is a huge cost in maintaining backwards compatibility indefinitely since you have to orphan every single library and application for that to work. Just upgrading to the newest versions of libs and apps when you are about to release a new version of your distro is basically free in that regard so the economic incentive is not in the breaking, but in the "less amount of work that you put on your own shoulders".

Quoting: elmapullet quote some examples....

openSSL was not secure, big companies sundely realized that one critical piece of their infra structure (and used by many smaller companies too) was not properly funded...
then an fork was created, because of course it was, why fund the original project if you can fund an fork of it instead?

The fork done by the FreeBSD team (libressl) was done because the FreeBSD devs wanted more control over such a central piece of software that had gotten stale. Due note that the funding that happened due to this went to OpenSSL and not to LibreSSL and while LibreSSL was the better library for a short while, the OpenSSL project got rejuvenated in the process and LibreSSL is now basically only used by FreeBSD and the distros and projects that went with LibreSSL are close to all back to using OpenSSL again.

Quoting: elmapulPoP!OS is creating their own desktop enviroment, they said gnome developers code like monkey or something akin to that...
so, why not fund gnome foundation and ask then to hire better developers?
well, because they can just create their own solution instead, paying developers at cost of production instead of cost of production+profit for the managers, and if anyone use their solution, they might be the ones geting paid for customization/improvments instead of paying someone else.
sigh.
i think Pop is going to do the same mistakes that canonical did, meanwhile there are so many things they could make beyond an Desktop Enviroment...
if they want to be an distro for content creators, why not create something like substance painter before substance painter was a thing?

There is of course no real problem with the code of Gnome and the talk about monkeys are just hyperbole from frustrated people. The main reason that Pop!_OS want's to create their own DE is both the "how hard can it be" fallacy that so many devs fall into until they realise that the answer almost always are "quite hard" and the fact that Pop wants to have more control over how the DE looks, operates and works. The clash between Gnome and Pop is that Gnome have refused to implement several changes that Pop have asked for, now I'm in no position to say if either side (or both) are in the right/wrong but since the clash is over the direction, no amount of funding from Pop to Gnome would change anything here so that is not an option (had Gnome been propietary and the money from Pop would have been good then funding as a form of bribery would perhaps work, bit it often doesn't in Open Source projects due to devs work on them for the love of the project and not as a means to get rich [often but not always of course]).

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Quoting: ElamanOpiskelijaNow I want to give the counter-point: what if this has more impact on Linux users than anything else, at the end of the day?

After all, nobody's got the consumer Steam Deck in their hands yet. And there is a good chance that there's so much demand that Valve cannot fabricate enough consoles anyway. Hell, it's been difficult to meet demand even for niche stuff like the Aya Neo.

Well it should, if it works on the Deck it will work on your Linux. That is the difference with Stadia where the port could be (and was) locked away internally.

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