Quoting: Supay

Quoting: Solitary

Quoting: KohlyKohl

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: KohlyKohlI'm also concerned about the switch to Arch. I would have preferred a more stable distribution such as Ubuntu.

It's not like you're going to be installing a stack of AUR stuff. Someone's carefully set up bare-bones Arch is probably very stable.

Arch is inherently less stable by design. Adding in the AUR just makes it more unstable. Arch has its place I just don't think a consumer device is one of them.

Just because it's based on Arch doesn't mean it needs to have Arch issues. The updates are still tested and controlled by Valve. It is SteamOS, not Arch.

Absolutely agree. I run Arch on my desktop and some various home servers. My desktop is the messiest with AUR stuff wedged and lots of random bits I tinker with, and even that hasn't had any issues in a long time. The issues I have had were ones I caused. My servers are kept lean and focused, and I have never had an issue with them. Even when I slack off and realise I haven't updated packages in months, it all just works as it's as minimal as possible.

On the contrary, I recently switched to Ubuntu to give it a go again, expecting it to be something that would just work and have a decent default experience. Sure, it installed easily and had a flashy GUI, and I didn't have to manually do everything as I do when installing Arch, however I have had more issues with Ubuntu in a few weeks than I had on Arch in the last two years. Stuff that just worked in Arch due to up to date packages and a huge central repo has involved forum scouring for fixes, random private repos added, and a host of other issues. Give me Arch anyday.

My experience: the exact opposite of yours. Nothing works easily on Arch, the AUR has heaps of outdated keys and I had to troubleshoot basic things like gamepads not working which work out of the box on Debian/Ubuntu distros.

You know what you know, I suppose, and there are significant differences between the big core distros that experience in one of them doesn't necessarily translate to a good experience in the others.

For a device like this though? Who cares if it's Arch? I'm not going to be looking up the arch wiki if something doesn't work on this thing. I'll be using Valve support, or sending the unit back.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Great to see actual hardware, instead of a loose spec.

Great to see it running Linux on custom AMD hardware.

Great to see twin sticks and twin touchpads.

Great to see a pledge from Valve on the subject of anticheat. Very excited by this!

Maybe I missed it, but I'm surprised that third party app support like Netflix, Prime and Spotify hasn't been mentioned?

But overall, I'm super-excited. Reckon I'll stick myself in the pre-order queue. For £4, I can always change my mind when my delivery date comes through and they ask for payment. Although... I doubt I will change my mind. This whole thing just looks pretty damn epic.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Big Red Racing... is... is that you??

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: sigzPerfect time to take a look at the old news from 2010 :D https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2010/08/steam-not-coming-to-linux-valve

Well... that didn't age well!! Thankfully! :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I love these round-ups. I'm sitting here thinking - where the hell did June go? Then you post this, and it's such an eye opener. Makes you realise that June was quite packed after all, thankyouverymuch!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: CatKiller

Life is Strange: True Colors will be launching for Stadia on September 10.

I wonder if that means they'll release a native version? Some (but not all) of the Life Is Strange games were ported by Feral. This one only currently lists Windows support. Already having a Stadia version's got to encourage a native version at some point, right?

Well, that was certainly the dream. In fact, it sounds like Stadia, as a target, has very different requirements from the desktop builds. So different, in fact, that the fact that Stadia is Linux is largely irrelevant. At this point, all I'm really hoping for is that Stadia adoption drives Vulkan and largely kills off DirectX games, outside of the Xbox ecosystem that is.

Probably another dream.

Hell, while I'm dreaming, perhaps uPlay and Origin can suddenly die off, and Epic can start supporting Linux directly? That would be nice. Yeah. That would be really nice.

What's that GOG? You're releasing Galaxy on Linux too? Welcome to the party, pal? C'mon in. The water's lovely.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KROMNow, if they finally would create a new control center for Linux to configure all that fancy stuff, that'd be awesome.

Why? What would be in such a control centre? One of the things I love about AMD's design on Linux is explicitly NOT having any configuration to do. I just tick, or untick vsync in each game and it works (whereas on Nvidia, it was a coin-toss if it did anything at all).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: scaineI enjoyed my time on Mint. The kernel is a bit disappointing, but both Mint and Pop OS have kernel managers built-in anyway, so you can easily upgrade with a couple of clicks from the settings app.

what is the benefit of running a more upto date kernal vs a cutting edge one such as on arch if your not running an AMD/Intel GPU ? i know that there is sometimes new hardware that would be supported better but for the average person is there really that much of a difference ?

Mainly just hardware support. I got into running up to date mainline kernels when I got my Ryzen 3900X cpu, which didn't work well with the older kernel shipped with Mint at the time.

These days, I run xanmod kernels because I want Fsync support in Proton (and Futex2 when it lands). I do own a PS5 controller... a dualsense, I think they're called... and I'm not sure what kernel version added that, but I like to be reasonably cutting edge for this, while the rest of the OS is really stable. It feels like a nice compromise.

But definitely not necessary, no.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I enjoyed my time on Mint. The kernel is a bit disappointing, but both Mint and Pop OS have kernel managers built-in anyway, so you can easily upgrade with a couple of clicks from the settings app.

I'll stick with Pop for the moment though. Having made the jump to gnome for xrdesktop, I don't really want to go back to Cinnamon, despite how slick it is. Maybe one day.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Between this, and yesterday's Death Trash stream, it's all about the vomit, apparently!! :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments