Plasma's flexibility is what initially attracted me to the desktop. What helped me stay was Plasma's mindshare. Amongst the FOSS desktop environments, many offer the ability to tweak it to your needs; however few offered the strong customization options and is large enough to have a healthy flow of new incoming developers and end-users. In my humble opinion, that position of DE mindshare in the FOSS world is currently reserved by the GNOME and KDE projects. In order for me to feel comfortable in using and recommend a FOSS DE, I need to trust that it will be supported in the long-run and that I can mold it to fit my use cases (from business conference room PCs to MacOS-layout clones for cousins). Plasma is the only DE that ticks both boxes for me.

Nathan Graham has done well for the KDE Project and highlights in his blog a crucial idea for maturing all FOSS desktop environments. We need both a "KDE"-like project and a "GNOME"-like project. What he means is that one project strives to cast a wide net which encompasses as many use cases as possible (like Android and Windows are today). The other project focuses hard on a very refined and narrow vision to create a premium product, one that could only exist if the variables are tightly controlled (iOS and MacOS being the example here). As of Q4 2021, these are KDE and GNOME respectively and this is a good thing. They might not always hold their crowns, but for now it helps to give rapidly developing FOSS world a bit more form. Just my $0.02 USD.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This is what makes Valve's product different. Could you imagine a corporation like Apple or Nintendo ever making a video like this?

I agree with the video that you only mess with your hardware if you have the skills, but its nice to see a hardware vendor that doesn't go out of their way to make repairs a nightmare.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Always good to see stories like this. They serve as a reminder of how developing technologies like Pipewire, Wayland, Flatpaks, etc... are valuable to Linux for establishing modern frameworks that application support can be built on top of. Last year's technologies of PulseAudio, X11, non-sandboxed package files, were good things to help get Linux to where it is today. They will continue to remain in use, shoring up the new frameworks till ultimately they reach maturity. However new frameworks do need to made as our understanding (and expectations) of technology evolves over time. Hopefully, these nice features continue to roll into the "mainstream" Linux so that old and new Linux users alike can enjoy the benefits.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Side Note: MineClone 2, the popular Minetest game known for its efforts to replicate the Minecraft 1.12 experience, has undergone some major changes itself. The last few releases have added in major features such as the experience system and enchantments. The current version (0.70.0) was the last release under the talented project maintainer/developer Wuzzy. The torch has been passed to two active contributors, Fleckenstein and kay27, who are well underway in tiding up the 0.71.0 release. Based on the git page, it seems to have a lot of nice improvements https://git.minetest.land/MineClone2/MineClone2/issues/997#issuecomment-13272

Thanks Wuzzy for all your years of hard work!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

For those wondering about the PinePhone, here's my 2¢. When the Brave-Heart Edition (1st iteration PinePhone) was announced, I couldn't have been more excited. I refunded my year-late Librem 5 (credit to Purism, the refund was hassleless) and put the funds towards buying what was OS-less phone at the time. Fast forward to November 2020, I just received my Convergence Manjaro PinePhone and placed an order for a replacement mainboard for my Braveheart Edition (hardware bugs on the original board). In that time span, I have played with most major FOSS distributions and mobile shells.

The PinePhone brought back to me that same level of excitement I experienced when running Ubuntu for the first time over a decade ago. The beautiful ability to have "choice" throughout the whole software stack, to be able to dig deep into the core of my computing device, and to be apart of a community who is actively sharing solutions to solve technology challenges. That's the energy surrounding the PinePhone. Everyday the Manjaro sub-forums for Phosh, Lomiri, and Plasma-Mobile variants are a buzz with people posting software successes and failures on their PinePhones. I have seen the same on the Mobian, Postmarket, and UBPorts communication channels. People are pulling together, voluntarily, to make this $150-$200 hardware function. That's exciting! Will it ever be super fast, take eye-popping gorgeous photos, or even last longer than 10 hours on a single charge? Most likely no. However, there is a better than average chance it will it change the way you look at smartphones.

For the first time in my life, I have a smartphone where I can personally replace every part (wish me luck on that mainboard!). I can flash and restore operating systems with such convenience and ease, it is like waking up from a dream. Lastly, there is a subtle and peaceful sense of trust when I see my phone boot to the same OS that powers my daily work and play. If this post resonates with you, it's safe to say you won't be disappointed in purchasing a PinePhone. If your considering this as replacement to your daily driver, I would cautious you away. We're at least a year out from stability, and FOSS app support will take longer. Even once stability is within reach, the performance will only go so high with the Allwinner SOC. However, I will personally see this as a blessing. My smartphone has "taken" too large a role in my life, perhaps this is an opportunity to reclaim some of myself by embracing a simpler way. Time will tell.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: AciD@Numeric, just to be sure, run a memtest to check that your RAM is 100% ok.
What you are describing reminds me of weird heisenbugs due to faulty RAM.

@AciD, pb Thanks for your thoughts in troubleshooting my issue. I went ahead and purged my system of all traces of steam (files, libs, steam-runtime), rebooted my Arch box, reinstalled steam and downloaded just Hitman. Many hours later, I found the download successful and now the game launches! I have no clue where the final issue was, but it works nows. Unforunately, I have a day or two of GiBs to re-download :( Oh well, now back to agent 47 and Colorado!

-Numeric

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: pbI'm not entirely sure, but I think Hitman updates every time there's a new Elusive Target. The current one ends on Monday, so there might be an update then, or when the next one arrives - that might fix the corruption. Disabling Ep.1 Paris might help with dlc1.rpkg, but it probably won't to anything for chunk0.rpkg as it sounds like a major part of the game (but is it? I remember a huge download that added Japanese voiceover, that might as well be this file ;-). Still may be worth trying to disable all DLC and see if that makes the game at least launches.

Thanks for the suggestion about disabling the all DLC. I tried that last night, but to no avail. I think tonight I am going to erase my entire steam library and remove every trace of Steam from the system. Start back at square 1. Wish me luck! :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

QuoteOuch. I played 264 hours of Hitman (on SteamOS) and never hit that bug. It crashed once or twice (literally!) but no other problems. Last time I played was yesterday. What distro do you have? It's weird that wiping and downloading again doesn't fix it, it usually works for other games. Have you tried to "verify game files"? Lastly, it might be worth reporting it to Valve, as it might be a corruption on one of their update servers (yes, I noted you switched regions, but who is to say that it really worked?).

Hi pb, I am on Antergos (Arch) using Mesa. I tried the "verify games files" route. It detects a 7.1 GB file that's corrupt (chunk0.rpkg most of the time), downloads a new file, which it says is also corrupt. All of my other steam titles update just fine, but not Hitman. Kind of at a loss with this one.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Earlier this month, I took advantage of the humble-bundle sale on Hitman. 10 hours in, I hit an impassable bug with Steam/Hitman. I can't launch the game now because it infinitely states "(corrupt update files) steamapps\downloading\236870\Runtime\chunk0.rpkg" or "(corrupt update files) steamapps\downloading\236870\Runtime\dlc1.rpkg"

I have switched download regions, wiped the entire steamapps folder, deleted the app manifest, re-downloaded the whole 44 GB several times and even added a new steam library on a separate drive. Still the same error. Anyone else run into this? Not to much about it online, except for a few odd posts from other Linux users. Most have the same story. Works for many hours, then update loop. :(

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I agree with the general sentiment of the comments implying a need for more open world games. Here's a few more titles for consideration:

• Skyrim


• BattleZone 2: Combat Commander (New relaunch coming to GOG in 2018)


• Mount and Blade Bannerlord (assuming a 2018 launch, but never too early to start negotiations!)

View this comment - View article - View full comments