Quoting: jens

Quoting: slaapliedjeMy problems with Wayland are similar. That and there are unnecessary pushes to force people to use it when it clearly isn't ready. Debian a while back had changed the default session for gdm to start Gnome Shell with Wayland.

Are you sure Debian did this, I would not expect such move from them?
Fedora did the same a few releases back. The decision to switching default to Wayland is a tough one. At some point you need to release software and bring in into the field, otherwise it wont mature at all. For a distribution like Fedora, being bleeding edge everywhere, this seems a valid move. More stable distributions like Debian should indeed hold back for a while.

Makes sense, but there's a problem. Red Hat are repeating their mistake with Gnome Shell. They released Gnome 3 when it was a torture device hardly suitable for occasional use, much less a full blown default.

With Wayland, what I'm hoping for, is that someone will convince them that if they restrict behaviour too much people will start hacking around it. They justify it, by saying "This will allow keyloggers to work" or "This is a vulnerability, so that people could use stuff remotely".

The thing is: on a mac or Windows, if I have a keylogger - it's probably a virus. On Linux, the only keylogger that CAN be on my system, is the one I wrote, or installed explicitly. I want to be able to use a phone as a presenter, or a mouse. I want to be able to use my machine however I want, and if Wayland becomes the Standard and tells me "No you can't", I would literally have more freedom on Windows.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: appetrosyan

Quoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak. And the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub [External Link]

The rpm family don't contribute to the development, but they do put effort into snap compatibility. Debian family is far more extensive, so they have equal footing on "neutral territory" (e.g. Arch or Gentoo).

I wonder why Canonical always wants to have something special that is not used in nowhere else (See: Unity, Mir ...)

It's natural.

If you have a piece of software, you like the idea, but want to make a few tweaks - go for it. You could ask in the same way, why do different distributions have different package managers. Arch wouldn't be arch if it ran on rpm or deb, which is why it has pacman. Gentoo has need for clever update scheduling, so it has emerge.

Snaps serve to replace two features of the rpm family - flatpak (for desktop app distribution) and Atomic updates (for rigid system management). SSo it makes sense to fork and create something.

Not to mention Snap and Flatpak are only two of about ten "universal" package formats.

But I get why you ask. The two distro families have different strategies:

Red Hat makes sure everyone in the Linux world uses their software, even if it isn't that great (e.g. Gnome).

Canonical, makes sure as few distros as possible can support their work, even if there's no need to couple their code so tightly.

As a result, Unity, runs almost exclusively on Ubuntu, and Gnome Shell runs on everything else, so we get the feeling that the latter is better. In reality, Unity is a great DE, it just happens to be tied to Ubuntu. Which is why Canonical were alone in developing it, went all in, and eventually killed the project off.

If Canonical were a little more giving, and Red Hat were more reserved, we'd have a much more balanced ecosystem.

You have that a bit wrong. The reason that other distributions don't adopt things Canonical creates is because they have their own form of licensing they attach to their projects that people don't agree with. Someone managed to get Unity to work on Arch for example. But Canonical seems to want to take Linux their own way instead of contributing to the "greater good". Like instead of giving resources to Wayland, they wasted time creating Mir..

True, I completely forgot about the licensing. Ubuntu have of course joined forces, and maybe that's a good thing.

I would say that maybe Wayland is a huge mistake that we're going to regret, but time will tell. I don't like where it's going. I've spent an entire day, trying to figure out, how to get the active window's title under Wayland. Turns out, There isn't any. It's deprecated, as a security measure.

Of course cybersecuirty is important. It's just that a system's overall security is given by its weakest point, and keylogging on (of all things) Linux, is the least of my concerns. It's like prescribing exercise to a burn victim. And they didn't seem to be interested in exposing an API to do what is perfectly possible on X.org.

What I hope is that Canonical would be the voice of reason.

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Quoting: ZlopezAs far as I know the snap is only supported by Ubuntu, other distributions wants to use Flatpak. And the Flatpak package for Steam is already worked on GitHub [External Link]

The rpm family don't contribute to the development, but they do put effort into snap compatibility. Debian family is far more extensive, so they have equal footing on "neutral territory" (e.g. Arch or Gentoo).

I wonder why Canonical always wants to have something special that is not used in nowhere else (See: Unity, Mir ...)

It's natural.

If you have a piece of software, you like the idea, but want to make a few tweaks - go for it. You could ask in the same way, why do different distributions have different package managers. Arch wouldn't be arch if it ran on rpm or deb, which is why it has pacman. Gentoo has need for clever update scheduling, so it has emerge.

Snaps serve to replace two features of the rpm family - flatpak (for desktop app distribution) and Atomic updates (for rigid system management). SSo it makes sense to fork and create something.

Not to mention Snap and Flatpak are only two of about ten "universal" package formats.

But I get why you ask. The two distro families have different strategies:

Red Hat makes sure everyone in the Linux world uses their software, even if it isn't that great (e.g. Gnome).

Canonical, makes sure as few distros as possible can support their work, even if there's no need to couple their code so tightly.

As a result, Unity, runs almost exclusively on Ubuntu, and Gnome Shell runs on everything else, so we get the feeling that the latter is better. In reality, Unity is a great DE, it just happens to be tied to Ubuntu. Which is why Canonical were alone in developing it, went all in, and eventually killed the project off.

If Canonical were a little more giving, and Red Hat were more reserved, we'd have a much more balanced ecosystem.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: roothorick

Quoting: appetrosyanAnd in all fairness, Carmack was right.

Linux is unsuitable for business. Maybe as a development environment, but not as a target. But if I were to push for games on Linux, I'd focus on such projects as Wine

I've been saying this for a while now.

A lot of what Carmack says about Linux comes from a fundamental (and very common) misunderstanding of what Linux is and what its free and open source nature actually implies. Experts kept saying the same about Linux in the server space for years, and look what happened. Open source software and closed source software simply do not play by the same rules, and their success can't be measured by the same standards. The biggest obstacle Linux has ever faced is nothing technical. It's corporate and cultural inertia.

Can you reasonably expect Profit centric corporations to not make the same mistake.

Quoting: tuubiWine is a wonderful piece of software, but not a real solution to this particular problem. It provides a means for developers to relatively quickly and painlessly publish ports of their Windows games, or for gamers on other platforms to play them. But that's all it is and will ever be IMHO. Intermediate porting layers and wrappers won't solve the bigger challenges. Gamers won't switch to a different platform just because it's available.

Yes. Let's consider what I'd have to do in order to pitch Linux to a Windows user.

"Hey, switch over to Linux. We have better Ui than Microsoft, you'll never have to worry about Viruses and you practically own the device."

"What about gaming?"

Now consider two scenarios: one with our current state of affairs and one I proposed.
A) "Well, you have some good games, like Deus Ex Mankind divided, but not Human Revolution (the good one), you have almost no complete franchise ports. Everything runs (at best) 5% slower than on Windoows, we only support the most counter-FSF GPU designer (nVidia), all thanks to using a (bad) Winwows wrapper (SDL). We do have Wine, that runs stuff better, but it's not officially supported. And yes, if the game runs on one of the three officially supported native game engines, you should expect Graphical glitches and maybe 2% fewer FPS. No exclusives. In fact, games that do come out, do so weeks after release."

B) "You can run almost any game that you could on Windows. You sometimes have to do some work in order to get decent FPS (about 25% slower on average), but almost everything on DX9 runs as good as on Windows. It uses the exact same files, so should have pretty much the same capabilities. Also Valve have Half Life 3 exclusive to Linux and their console. A couple other exclusive games too".

Wouldn't you agree that the latter case

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: VinceNardelliStill, Valve has done a pretty crappy job with steam machine and the whole idea of linux more optimised than windows.

This is really the problem. Valve was really excited about Linux gaming, got us excited about Linux gaming, got a few developers excited about Linux gaming, and then it's like they just sort of lost interest. I was really hoping they were more dedicated to this whole Linux thing than they have been.

They've never made anything but superficial changes. They've never eeven understood what makes the platform unique, otherwise they'd play to its strengths.

If they did know what the GNU/Linux ecosystem was good at, they'd

1) Create a native Linux client (good job)
2) Embed Wine, to run compatible games. (that way, developers of thee games would not have to venture capital, they'd get a different platform essentially for free).
3) If a game ran poorly, since it was Wine under the hood, game developers would be more likely to share source code with Wine, which will fix the problem for more than just one game. Users will be less forgiving because, for a change they actually expect for it to run badly.Even better, we're tinkeres. Making a game run well by tweaking the settings, is what we - GNU/Linux users can do better than Microsoft or Apple.
4) A company that definitely has Linux-compatible games, would be free to
4a. embrace the sales, and feel good about it
4b. F**k off. Bethesda in particular fits this category
5) WHEN, we had enough Linux marketshare, pitch the idea of Linux Native games, and SteamBox.
6) Position SteamBox as a console, not a PC gimmick:
6a. SteamBox exclusives, e.g. HL3. The fans are happy, they have a foot in an untapped market. Much better than being universally hated.
6b. Restricted hardware. It has to be cheap, and it has to give off the impression that at least someone will do optimisations for it.
6c. Guarantee of a hassle free experience. Which means active development.
7) Slowly move games over to Steam native engines, and encourage publishing SteamOS versions first.

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Quoting: prosoorBecause there are less and less games for Linux.
Valve is not pushing SteomOS like it used to; maybe they abandoned SteamOS idea?
What it means is, game publishers have no incentive to make Linux ports anymore.
I suspect bribery.

I don't think Valve know what they want.

When they fist pitched the SteamOS idea, it wasn't quite clear why it was a competitive console. I mean, if it has a variety of PC hardware, it'll perform as well as a PC, but cost as much as a PC would, without any guarantee of a hassle free experience. It's not a superior console, but an Inferior Gaming rig.

Making matters worse, Wine is completely independent. The team has had more experience with running games, there's more of them, and the developers don't need to do Jack. Valve could have been in a far better place right now, if instead of porting source to Linux, they've said:
"Well, let's create a native client that runs wine for most programs and if a game is reported to run well, gives it a badge 'SteamOS compatible'."

That way, you have all the "Officially supported" games we have now from day one. Many new releases will be available right on, and with some tweaking, run as well as on Windows. And also since you know, that it's using a wrapper (currently almost everything uses SDL anyway), you won't be bombarding the poor devs with crap comments, you tweak the Wine settings to get the best you can. This is what we're good at - tinkering, and they completely ignore that.

And in all fairness, Carmack was right.

Linux is unsuitable for business. Maybe as a development environment, but not as a target. But if I were to push for games on Linux, I'd focus on such projects as Wine

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Two big mistakes.

1. Emulating a platform can in some cases be considered a DRM measure: e.g. Apple have made a proprietary OS, on a proprietary architecture. However emulation isn't DRM circumvention. If you know how to emulate it, you probably can reimplement it on a hardware level, you can patent a particular implementation, but thankfully not the API.

2. I find it deeply offensive, that DRM is not only allowed by law, but enforced.

Piracy is itself a solution to a problem: mismatch between rigid pricing, and people's resources. Sometimes piracy (i.e. free redistribution of paid content sans DRM), is a means of satisfying the FSF needs and rights of humans. (Albeit, I'd say, it's always better to use GNU vi or GNU emacs over a pirated version of sublime text).

A solution? Follow the GNU Guidelines, and set flexible pricing. I find the pay-what-you-want model, paired with transparent development is an effective means of making money. You will get a lot more, because people that would have formerly pirated the thing, will now pay a little something (which is a lot, considering the number of leeches from the pirate bay).

DRM, ain't a solution, it is a problem, in that it's another incentive to pirate stuff. E.g. Assassin's Creed 2's ingenious plan to make the pirated copy seem superior, even to people who've bought the game.

I would say, that a major victory for FSF would be the repeal of DMCA. Not because I want to pirate photoshop, or games, but because I want to be able to defend my 3 rights. The DMCA, is the complete antithesis of Free as in free speech software, in legal form.

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So should we expect less crappy ports?

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Quoting: TcheyI was myself part of some "bombing", simply by changing my positive to negative, or the opposite too.

I think it's fair, as it's the only way to show the devs their behavior is clearly not appreciated.

Nope. If you review it down, people might think that the game sucks. I think what we should have, is sort of a sins page, where users clearly state what their grief is about.

Instead of using reviews, to "bomb" a game, why not have the ability to boo the individual features. E.g. I loved Deus Ex mankind divided so I gave it a positive review, but I also booed its microtransactions "feature". That way people will definitely know what's up, and the developers won't receive undue flak.

I bet if we had it in the day of Witcher 2, we'd probably have the Witcher 3 already.

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I don't quite understand what's the pitch for SteamOS. On the risk of sounding like an angry rant, (apologies, no offence intended), here's what I know.

1. The development has ground to a halt. Valve are very supportive of Linux, but their OS is a little too complicated for seasoned Nixers, I don't see how it's going to be appealing to any of the Newbies.

2. The Steam machines don't make sense as a console. It's essentially PC hardware. It costs more than a typical console, you have more variety of Hardware so no "Just works" or "Highly Optimised". Also, at best we have official support for Nvidia (because their drivers are allegedly better), so they'll put Nvidia chips into the machines, and the Green company is going to screw them over. Why? Well, ask Linus Torvalds.

3. There's no pressure to develop for that platform. The asset flips have defamed Steam considerably, it's no longer that prestigious marketplace. Everyone seems to want to move away from Steam: EA, Ubisoft, have, and make more money.

4. SteamOS isn't marketed well. You have no Exclusives, at best, you can expect a shitty port with lots of bugs months after release. Few Franchises that have all titles ported to Linux, e.g. Shadow of War, Deus Ex, The Witcher all have only one awkward port. If I somehow avoided them on Windows, tried it on Linux, and wanted to play more, I HAVE to come back to Windows.

5. Valve don't take actions. For example, we have a company, that outright refuses to support Steam OS and rakes in crazy amounts of Cash - Bethesda. And that doesn't only refer to newer releases: Quake IV, Doom 3 (with the BFG edition) don't only support Linux, but are partially OpenSource to boot. This is an offence on Steam OS, it makes no sense not to upload a well-written native port that ALREADY exists.

Microsoft would have made them an offer, e.g. reduce the percentage of royalties, on the condition that the game supports SteamOS and supports it well. Sony would have kicked them off the store unless they supported Steam OS. I would have given games priority only if they had Steam OS support, so if you wanted to be featured, you had to support it.

6. You literally aren't introduced to it, unless you already had interest. The companies like Google and Microsoft nag people to use their browser because those little nags work. If Steam don't, people will simply not know that it's an option: to have an OS dedicated for Gaming (that has few games supporting it, numerous technical issues, and the Gaming performance sucks).

7. No Wine Support. It's literally what other "Ports" are doing, often offering better performance on top of better hardware support. Its license is permissive, so the only reason why nobody includes wine into the Linux version of Steam has to be either technical, or laziness.

All in all, with all due respect, I'm not sure that Valve are all that interested in the SteamOS project. It's a lost cause by now, even if they changed their minds, it's already too late to make a difference.

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