I have barely scratched the surface of Isonzo, but I think some people are being really quite unfair to the developers. Verdun and Tannenberg play out quite differently from one another and Isonzo seems to change up the formula again, so it's not like they are just releasing the same game with new maps. The main gameplay objectives have changed between all three games and the maps work very differently.

Also, it's not like the developers just release a game then then immediately move onto the next. Verdun came out of early access in 2015, Tannenberg released out of early access in 2019. Both games received some updates along the way, although Verdun obviously got more content updates. This would be an entirely ordinary release cadence for shooter franchise.

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Quoting: anewsonhow does this work? their website says it uses docker, but how does docker 'change' the kernel? WITCHCRAFT!

The simple answer is that it doesn't. All that containerized software runs on top of the existing kernel.

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Quoting: eldarionIt does matter because it's a machine manufactured by them. It's not a standard PC that obey to industry standards. You are locked by the platform. Yes, it is basically a micro PC, but like I said previously, you can't do most of the things, hardware wise, that you can do with your standard PC. And like i said, if Valve discontinues the product, you are frocked because now you have system that has a slim chance of being properly upgraded. This does not happen if you buy a PC from system76, for instance.

"I don't think people are suggesting that the Deck is a desktop workstation"

I think Liam mentioned it. Hence my reply.

It's the exact same story if you buy a non-upgradeable laptop with soldered RAM and eMMC storage. So once again, it being a Valve device has no bearing on this argument. You could make an argument that people should consider upgradeability and repairability when buying their devices, but that's a different argument to the one you made. And as far as mobile devices go, they typically are not particularly upgradeable apart from maybe RAM and storage, yet they are still considered useful enough that many people opt for them instead of full ATX towers where you can ship of Theseus your way through a decade or more of upgrades.

Also, no, Liam did not suggest that the deck is a desktop workstation. He said it's a pretty good PC and more powerful than some PCs devs have used to make games, which is accurate because it has about the same specs as a generic laptop. It comes with many of the drawbacks of laptops and some additional drawbacks of its own, but the form-factor also has some potential benefits for certain use cases.

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Quoting: eldarionI would not recommend anyone to use steam deck as a desktop PC unless you are aware of it's limitations. It's a Valve product, a Valve machine. You are limited to what Valve says you can do with it. Want to expand the memory? Only if they allow it. Disk space? The same. Video card? Good luck. What to change the OS distro? Yeah... About that....

The product can also be discontinued, and that is another headache.

No, i would not recommend it at all.
Having more and more people to use Linux as a desktop is the wet dream of us all, but we need to be careful on what we recommend people to use.

I don't see how it being a Valve product makes it really that much more different than a number of products from other manufacturers, System76 included. If you try to swap out parts or the OS, I don't think you are going to run into limitations put there by Valve. You'll likely void your warranty, but that's basically what happens when you crack open any laptop too. The Deck is basically just a PC in a funny form-factor after all.

I don't think people are suggesting that the Deck is a desktop workstation and it definitely won't be as upgradable as one, but it is clearly about as capable as a generic laptop and probably quite usable for all sorts of light productivity tasks you'd want to throw at it if you couple it with a display, keyboard and mouse.

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In addition to these all-in-one game engine solutions it would also be possible to do some more general software development on a Deck without even needing to unlock it into developer mode. Flathub has code editors and a number SDK extensions you can install, so you could work on Rust or JS projects for example. For example basically my entire development environment would be transferable quite easily to the Deck, since I already run Emacs in Flatpak and use for example the Rust through a Flatpak SDK extension.

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The "states' rights" argument is basically just nonsense. It doesn't help anybody's democracy when the states that "benefit" from Roe v. Wade being overruled are ones that are horrendously voter suppressed and gerrymandered. We've also seen what this "states' rights" thing has been used to campaign for in the past and it definitely wasn't for something that would lead to greater equality and democracy for all.

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Yes, please.

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Quoting: RichardYao

Quoting: damarrinI'd be happier with snaps if at least they started faster. 10 secs for FF from an NVMe drive, 40 seconds from a spinning drive in a recent Ubunt is a joke.

The downside of duplicating shared libraries is that it does not take advantage of the system page cache (or ARC for ZFS), so load times are higher. :/

From what I heard, the main problem with load times is that a cold Snap package first needs to be decompressed (fully, I guess?) before it is launched. But I guess duplicated libraries would also affect page cache.

However, that doesn't need to be the case. If the runtime uses similar shared libraries with other packages, it would be possible to deduplicate that stuff either on the package technology level (like Flatpak runtimes) or on the filesystem level with online or offline dedupe and reflinks. I don't know enough about Snap to make strong claims about how effectively or ineffectively it uses these methods. Considering Flatpaks seemingly don't have the same cold start delays, I am guessing at least not very effectively.

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Quoting: sudoerthe desktop (PC) is getting irrelevant day by day, to be more precise, it's getting transformed from the powerhouse running "the real thing" locally, and of which you had full control with GNU/Linux into a more and more closed, dumb terminal, which will communicate with the servers and the mainframe via a browser

This was happening before Snaps and their usage or lack thereof does not affect cloudification one bit. Most of mainstream cloud activity is happening around OCI and Kubernetes, someone installing a Flatpak on their system has absolutely zero bearing on that.

Quoting: sudoerit's happening already with Software as a Service and Platform as a Service

It's good to see you found Wikipedia. SaaS and PaaS are indeed a thing. We've also got IaaS and FaaS, just so that we can fill out the vocabulary.

Quoting: sudoerif you endorse snap (and competitor's version flatpak) that was originally released for cloud applications[2] but was later ported to work for Internet of Things devices and desktop applications you are just accelerating the transition without knowing it, that's the whole point.

Not even a hypothetical causal link is established. Usage of Snaps is fairly marginal in cloud and usage of Flatpaks in there is essentially non-existent. Not to mention using desktop applications from Snap or Flatpak does basically nothing to contribute to these techs being used on the cloud, because you don't run desktop applications on the cloud. You run services with web frontends. And you can do that probably easier with OCI images and Kubernetes deployments than by installing a bunch of Snaps on some server boxes.

If you are worried about the cloudification of software, you are actively doing a disservice to your cause by advocating for actions that will have zero effect on cloudification. If you want to stop cloudification, you need to either make software resistant to cloudification (heavy use of AGPL or non-OSI stuff like SSPL) or you need to provide an incentive/disincentive structure that makes creation of desktop software more appealing than cloud-oriented software. On the disincentive side you can create legal constructs like stronger data protection legislation to attack the profit margins of cloud companies. Or on the incentive side you can make creation and distribution of desktop software so easy, simple and profitable that it becomes the de facto mean to ship stuff. That makes things like Flatpak necessary, by the way, because making your software available across the various distributions is a mess otherwise. And if you want to popularize the third party desktop application as the standard, then having those sandboxing features also becomes quite important, especially when it comes to proprietary software. Unless you want to make it so that all software will be FOSS, in which case I applaud your cause and wish you well on your legislative efforts.

Quoting: sudoerYou are already on the bandwagon as I see by your own reasons, it's OK.

Fun memes. Except I am probably the most outspoken member of the GOL editorial team against cloud gaming and for the creation of a thriving, native Linux software ecosystem. But going by your raving and ranting, you probably consider anyone who doesn't agree with you "brainwashed", so really I arguing my points for the audience, rather than you.

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Quoting: sudoerThe dilemma flatpak or snaps is illusional and misleading. Do you prefer playing games at your PC or streaming games from servers like Google Stadia? This is the question you have to ask yourself before it is too late.

Things are very simple. If you use flatpaks and snaps you are killing the Desktop in the long run, which means you are killing the Personal Computer as we knew it for 40 years, and the dominant corporate Linux companies (Red Hat, Ubuntu) who only care for IoT, cloud computing, their $$$, have brainwashed you perfectly.

A perfect example for the latter is reading OP going to a distro that updates itself biannualy! in order to... use flatpaks! there (snaps the other corporate equivalent)

Package managers following UNIX/GNU/Linux tradition were written with and respected the KISS principle, containers are adding unnecessary complexity with tons of issues and all this is being done by corporate companies, who are using fanbois of trademarks as a battering ram.

If you keep being lazy using the Windows/Apple paradigms, if your argument is "that's how Google with Android does it", if you keep playing their game with containers which were initially intended for servers (& immutable devices) but they found ways into "convincing" you -by youtube influencers and general ignorance, especially using Linux newcomers who are presented with Snap versions of Firefox and Chromium by default-, soon your PC will be just another console, I can see already those youtube influencers and probably OP in a year talking about how great Fedora Silverblue and the equivalents are, Shells (your Personal Computer in the Cloud) is already here.

You've got a pretty nice slippery slope there. The only thing your assertions are missing is causal linkage from one to the next, but I'm sure that it's not necessary when you can substitute it with hyperbole. :P

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