Quoting: GuestIf the driver breaks with a kernel update then one would assume that it's obvious that it is the kernel which breaks its own interface and not vice versa. The kernel doesn't provide any stable interface. Read about the latest breakage: https://lwn.net/Articles/827596/ [External Link]

There's no point in trying to promote a stable driver binary interface for the Linux kernel because that's never going to happen. It would break too many things the developers care about in order to "fix" something they don't care about at all.

Linux is a cross-platform kernel. A stable driver binary interface is very platform specific. Open source drivers in Linux will do things like allowing a wireless card to run on both an ARM device and an AMD64 device with the same driver. Freezing a binary interface for one platform prevents that. You'd have to maintain separate binary interfaces along with their drivers for different architectures.

A stable driver binary interface would be an anchor weighing down kernel development. Linus Torvalds has made it very clear that it's not going to happen while he's in charge, but everyone deeply involved with Linux kernel development would tend to feel the same way.

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It should be possible to hook up a USB 3 SSD to the Raspberry Pi 4 and use it for the actual system, with only the basic boot loader on the SD card. I used to have a Raspberry Pi (1) with the system on a USB stick because it was more responsive that way, and it made the difference between a usable XBMC (at the time) box and one that wouldn't work quite right.

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Quoting: ShroobsterAlso I never said that people who play open source games shouldn't be allowed to play games.
I said people who only play open source games because they are open source and boycotting proprietary games shouldn't be allowed to play games.

I'm trying to figure out how that makes any difference. What makes your opinion more legitimate than theirs? Why should you even care what someone else's motivation to play a game is? Wouldn't it be just as legitimate for someone who only plays open source games to say, 'People who are willing to play proprietary games shouldn't be allowed to play games' (in other words, not legitimate at all)?

I play mostly proprietary games, though I have been known to play open source games as well. If someone wants to play only open source games, or only proprietary ones, I couldn't care less. It's their decision.

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I think that some 3D games have aged better than others. For example, I think that Half Life 2 and Portal 2 still look pretty good, even when played on modest hardware.

Of course, I also enjoy playing Descent and Descent 2 (DOS games from the '90s) with the open source engine available for them on Linux, which only marginally improves the graphics from the old games since the same graphics files are used. There are also plenty of 2D games which I love, even some new ones. Part of me thinks you're missing out if you won't play a classic game because of the way it looks.

Similarly, I think you're missing out on some of the best movies ever made if you won't watch an old movie because it's black and white or the lenses or film used don't have the resolution to make the movie look any better at 1080p than it does at 720p or even 480p (though some old black and white films do have good resolution).

Of course, there are limits to this sort of thing. Sometimes things are only of historical interest since they led to the development of what we used later on. Five minute reels of dancing girls cannot compare to a full length feature film. Atari 2600 games are rarely anywhere near as engaging as even something as outdated as a good NES game.

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Quoting: EikeWhat I'd really want is "please do not recode at all, just dump all those frames I told you I don't want".
But I guess that's just not what video editors are all about.

This is a lot about how video codecs and containers are constructed technically rather than being against the goals of video editing software. With most video containers, it is not possible to just split a file without re-encoding it.

There is a tool called MKVToolNix (and there is a GUI for it) that allows you to split videos in mkv containers while only remuxing the video rather than re-encoding it, though you are still restricted to splitting only on certain frames.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: Guesttoothwheel symbol

Is that a common alternative for "gear" or "cog"? Not sure I've seen it used before.

Don't know if it's common. Just what came to the mind of a non-native speaker....
:huh:

It was clear enough, anyway. Just for reference, "gear" is the common word. Technically, "cog" is just one tooth in a gear, especially when made of a different material than the wheel itself.

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Quoting: GuestI love XFCE too. Do they plan on fixing the tearing issue ?

It seems that they made the built in compositing hardware accelerated with version 4.14, and I haven't seen a tearing issue when running with compositing since then. Before that (or alternatively) you could use an external compositor, like Compton (or a window manager with compositing, i.e., Compiz), to eliminate tearing issues.

(Edit: I intended to mention that I have heard that with certain Nvidia cards tearing can still be an issue even when using compositing.)

I've used Xfce at least some of the time since back in the 3.x series. It strikes a nice balance between features and resource usage for me. I have also used Fluxbox, IceWM, and LXDE each a fair amount in the last twenty years. Right now, most of my Linux boxes are defaulted to Xfce. Even the servers that I administer at work which have a GUI installed (some don't) have Xfce on them.

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Quoting: Hori

Quoting: GuestI just hope old gpu prices goes down, but it never happens.

NEW GPU prices went down!
But this time I expect the old GPU prices to go way down... otherwise people will just buy the new ones lol (which are MUCH better anyway)

No, performance went up (or will go up at least). The prices haven't really moved.

Quoting: HoriAnd what's the alternative?
AMD is the only competitor and it's way too expensive. The performance you get for what you pay is nowhere near what Nvidia offers.
And if their claims for this generation are true (and I expect them to be), then AMD just got buried even further.

Sure AMD has open source drivers but... they're just too expensive. And their cards lack too many features that Nvidia offers.

This is a bunch of nonsense. You appear to be comparing prices for the next generation of Nvidia cards which haven't actually hit the market yet to prices of AMD cards for sometime before the new cards were announced and totally ignore the fact that there is a new generation of AMD cards being introduced within the next three months as well. Prices won't stabilize until after all of the next generation lands. Only then will you be able to judge pricing for the next generation.

Reasonably, we can expect no less than what we've been seeing up to this point. The new AMD cards will be at least as good as the mid-tier cards ($400-$500 range) from Nvidia and at a generally better price to performance ratio.

It's possible we could see higher end performance from AMD as well, but I neither expect that nor care much about it since I am much more likely to spend $400 for a card than $700, and cards costing $1000 are not even a consideration for me (unless some rich relative of mine that I'm not even aware of leaves me millions of dollars in their will).

Quoting: HoriSure AMD has open source drivers but... they're just too expensive. And their cards lack too many features that Nvidia offers.

As I already mentioned AMD cards tend to be less expensive than Nvidia, so if AMD cards are too expensive, Nvidia are more so.

For Windows, there are good arguments in Nvidia's favor. If I were running Windows as my primary operating system, there's a good chance I would have an Nvidia card. Nvidia cards tend to have better drivers and they have introduced ray-tracing and other features sooner.

However, for Linux, AMD has points in its favor. The drivers are open source and getting to the point where they seem better than the Windows drivers, while Nvidia's drivers are effectively worse in Linux than Windows (mostly only worse for non-gaming applications, though, but those are still important to me). Also, again, AMD has the price/performance advantage. Gaming graphics features are pretty much on par in Linux, and the new generation of AMD cards (along with the new Nvidia cards) are expected to start pushing ray-tracing toward being a more common game feature in Linux.

Even in Linux, if you want to go to high end graphics for gaming, especially above $1000, then Nvidia is your card. Otherwise, AMD deserves serious consideration. Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what the best way to go is until after the next generation of cards from both companies hit the market.

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After using AMD cards for the last 8 plus years. I'm not anxious to go back to Nvidia. I do more than game, and AMD seem to handle desktop usage more smoothly in Linux than Nvidia, and certainly a lot more effortlessly. Of course, you need to have a way to keep Mesa up to date for games, but it's not too hard on several distributions.

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I'm slowing down on Supraland, since I'm somewhere around 40% finished, I was eager to check out some other things, and I don't want it to feel like a chore. I have a little bit of feeling with Supraland that I'm always trying to get the next item rather than progressing a story. That's not the end of the world, but if I try to power through it, it will feel more like work than fun.

So I started a game of Children of Morta, and so far it seems really good, though I've barely gotten started with it. I have other things I'd like to tackle from my back catalogue also, and I'm still dabbling with A Short Hike. I have to clear one of them before I start in on something else.

Of course, I also have to get more regular with my ocarina practice if I don't want to get really rusty again, so there's that too.

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