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Latest Comments by iiari
Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard
18 January 2022 at 7:58 pm UTC Likes: 1

So, I've reached a real moment of Zen in realizing that a $68.7 billion dollar gaming acquisition by MS.... Doesn't impact my personal gaming one iota! Sweet.... Ahhhhh.....

Anyway, I think this is an absolutely stonking brilliant move by MS, if they manage it well. Totally taking advantage of Activision's weakness right now to swoop in and give X-Box a huge IP boost for the indefinite future. If we're ever going to get a Netflix of gaming, MS will likely be it... I mean, the IP here has to be worth waaaay more than MS is paying. Some of these properties themselves are individually in the billions or tens of billions if sold on their own. So, so much they can do with this IP over so many different media outlets.

The modern MS is proving VERY savvy.

PS: MS can say whatever they want today about Kotick, but there's zero way he has any future here (especially given some insensitive XBox gender history) other than a very neutered one if MS gives him a very limited sandbox.

KDE finally gets root operations in Dolphin, big 2022 plans for Wayland
7 January 2022 at 7:37 am UTC

Quoting: clatterfordslimNever been a fan of Dolphin, like Nautilus it's too locked down. So whenever trying a new OS, I install Nemo.
KDE Manjaro and Nemo fan here as well, but I haven't installed Nemo in a few years because I seem to remember installing Nemo feeling like it was also installing half of Mint to get it to work. Is that still the case?

System76 tease their new 'Kudu' laptop with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX
7 January 2022 at 7:33 am UTC

Waiting for S76 to move to 16:10 or, better yet, 3:2 laptop screens....

Trouble in Solus Linux land as their Experience Lead quits
6 January 2022 at 6:31 pm UTC

Quoting: Johann_PopperNot surprised in the least. It was only a matter of time. Very toxic environment. Rude, amateur community management. Impossible to contribute to, give feedback, work with. Not a shred of professionalism or positivity for years.... Solus could've gone places... Just sad and unnecessary how it all ended up.
Very well said, and from a user standpoint, easily the biggest and most disappointing aspect of the entire enterprise.

Trouble in Solus Linux land as their Experience Lead quits
4 January 2022 at 2:54 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: fenglengshunOh thank god Budgie is now independent. I don't really care about Solus - it's neat, but they pale in comparison to the importance of Budgie to me.
I quite agree. In 2022, I really don't see the point of Solus the distro at this time, and I've long felt that Solus has actually held Budgie, the better idea of the two, back and prevented it from making progress.

I actually started quite early with Solus Budgie but rapidly became frustrated. The personal opinions of team members would overrule functionality desired by the community (want Expose in Budgie? Too bad! Ikey says it will never happen). Bug reports would go unaddressed (I think I still have some 5 year old ones in there). Citrix works in Ubuntu but not our Solus? Too bad! It's proprietary, we don't care... Gaming was broken, I had lots of native and wine-compatible titles that worked, at the time, in Ubuntu but not Solus. Apps lagged updating in the repositories. And through it all was the arrogance and haughtiness of the devs that just got to me over time, it was a death of a thousand cuts.

I went fleeing to Ubuntu Budgie which I really adored, and those UB devs did great work innovating little applets to make up for all of Budgie's little deficiencies only to get insulted and dismissed by Solus upstream. As much as I loved UB, I was getting frustrated at Budgie's lack of development over time while KDE and Gnome were making big, obvious strides and both were getting just as performant and snappy as Budgie. That, plus Arch/Gnome's rolling GPU driver upgrades making Proton work were what pushed me over to Manjaro KDE for the desktop and Manjaro Gnome-Wayland for the laptop over the last few years and I couldn't be happier.

I'm thrilled to hear that Budgie will be free of Solus and that, at long last, the great folks at Ubuntu Budgie, Endeavour Budgie, and hopefully maybe even Manjaro Budgie (and hopefully all the other Budgies!) will finally be first class citizens in advancing what had at one time been a promising and innovative DE. While I don't see a compelling reason to use it right now, I wish the Budgie folks only the very best as they develop an environment that hopefully will attract me back some day...

Seems no hope for Insurgency: Sandstorm on Steam Deck / Linux
19 December 2021 at 5:12 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: riusmaIf anyone is looking for a (bit) more "tactical" multiplayer (coop or PvP, and in the future PvPvE) FPS (it's true first person, the game uses the same models in first person view that it would uses in third) than Insurgency (2014 or Sandstorm) and don't mind playing an Early Access game with Proton (the dev will investigate native Linux, but it's a very small team so I would not hold my breath for that), you should have a look at GROUND BRANCH!
Thanks for the tip on this. Looks really interesting!

The new Microprose seems to have some terrific titles coming for the hard core, old-school gamer. I've been watching their Operation Harsh Doorstop (another tactical squad shooter) and Carrier Command closely as well.

Also, by accident or design, many of their titles seem very Proton friendly so far....

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Single-Player mod is out now
23 November 2021 at 4:31 pm UTC

I have heard great things about this old title but never played it in the day. Is it worth trying in the modern age for those without any nostalgia?

Two years on, Stadia seems to have no direction left
23 November 2021 at 4:29 pm UTC Likes: 3

Lots of good discussion here. I still believe at some point cloud gaming or some hybrid of it will be the way a substantial portion of gamers will game, whether it's mobile, console, or PC, and even likely even the majority of gamers eventually. My daughters love Stadia and don't know or care whether its in the cloud or on their PC. I'm a big user of Microsoft Flight Simulator and much of that title's graphics goodness is streamed.

I think it's become clear, though, that'll it'll take someone to have more of a Netflix style "all you can eat" model than a Valve style "buy your game" model for it to work, with only likely Valve themselves with their own hypothetical future streaming service that will likely to be able to get away with that, if only because of everyone's existing library.

Two years on, Stadia seems to have no direction left
23 November 2021 at 4:16 pm UTC

Quoting: SuperTuxPains me to say this, but I agree. Google went wrong something a few years ago and never fully recovered imho...
Absolutely. A lot of people attribute it to the hiring of their first true CFO in 2015 who immediately set about to making sure Google runs like any other dollars and cents business, which is indeed likely better for their bottom line, but the magic definitely ended at that point. They've pretty much shut down or spun off all of their moonshot ventures and ambitious projects, Stadia soon to join them....

At this point, I think anyone would be absolutely crazy to commit money to any retail Google service short of an Android phone. Who can trust Google to back or iterate upon anything they do anymore?

Swarming RTS Age of Darkness: Final Stand is in Early Access and works great on Linux
18 October 2021 at 8:59 pm UTC Likes: 1

So this is Game of Throne's last season's Battle for Winterfell as an RTS... Love it. Great idea. No 4X's, just survive the night. I'll almost certainly pick this up...