Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: eldakingIt is far too early to release a Deck 2

Why? Desktop generation of CPUs and GPUs refresh around once per 2 years. Same happens with mobile phones. Why can't gaming handhelds refresh that way too?

Quoting: eldakinghe benefits of a standardized hardware target are negated by too frequent changes

That somehow doesn't bother desktop gaming.

Waste can be an issue, but you aren't forced to buy new hardware every time there is a generation update.

Why? Because the release frequency of those things is too high, and their support ends too soon, and that is something that should be actively avoided and not targeted. We should be glad when things last longer instead of asking for obsolescence.

And yeah I am not forced to buy new hardware, in fact I am not capable if I wanted. But are companies going to support all their back catalog? Are they going to sell replacement parts and patch bugs for all the previous generations? My phones certainly stop receiving updates much sooner than I'd want to replace them (if I could afford the high-end phones, they would get updates for a bit longer - still not enough - but it is expensive to be poor). About gaming in particular, are companies going to keep making games targeting earlier generations, or are minimum specs going to increase?

I am not worried about being "forced" to buy a new device. I am worried about my desktop not running games because everyone decided that instead of making games with more reasonable requirements they should up the specs of devices every two years. And I am worried about catastrophic floods and historic droughts in my country because people care more about a small boost to FPS than about climate catastrophe. I won't buy new devices every two years, but I share an atmosphere with the people that do.

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Eh, I think the Nintendo Switch comparison highlights one big problem I have with the idea of a Deck 2: the Switch came out in 2017, and Switch 2 is being announced (not even coming out) in 2024. The Deck came out in 2022. It is far too early to release a Deck 2.

The benefits of a standardized hardware target are negated by too frequent changes. Being able to test for one configuration is important for devs, it is often cited as a benefit of consoles over PC, and the Deck was dealing with that nicely while also being a PC.

Sure every year we get new hardware (which is a problem: e-waste is getting out of hand, short-lived devices use more energy being manufactured than through their entire lifetime, we rely more and more on minerals that are environmentally and socially costly to extract, etc etc). The increases in performance are often marginal or come at a cost, such as lower battery life or bigger devices (phones have been steadily creeping in size, to the dismay of many people, to keep up with an artificial improvement in specs, and GPUs are ridiculously large). Costs of game development have also been increasing unreasonably. Following these frequent updates is a bad thing.

And honestly, it pisses me off immensely when people make new generations of a product that hasn't even made it into the whole world yet. Finish releasing it in all the other countries before thinking of replacing it.

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QuoteHalf of anti-cheat is making sure the environment hasn't been tampered with, and this is extremely hard on Linux by design. Any backdoors we leave open for it are ones developers will immediately leverage for cheats

Well if they are planning to "leave backdoors open", it becomes hard to justify running their shit.

This is a particular poor choice of word for a security-adjacent subject.

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Quoting: a0kamiExclusively multiplayer games, MMO's, battle royales, moba's..
Wouldn't they'd immediately loose their appeal ? But sure, we should still always be able to host a private server and have some fun among friends.
But in the end, that's where preservation would end up the costliest, MMO publisher won't spend the slightest cent for the devs to either release a commercial customer solution or even open sourcing the whole thing.
As players we perceive games as art, they are merely cash machines to most publishers.
Indies will go the preservation route but indies are mostly able to fund offline single-players.

The FAQ to the project covers that. There have been MMO games that have been kept online, maybe you can't keep the same number of players or will lose some features but smaller server is still better than no server, etc etc.

QuoteFinally, I initially drafted huge pseudo philosophical paragraphs, but I'll just ask directly, what are your opinions about loss ?
It's somehow both the most tragic and beautiful thing. You might react virulently to that statement, I get it, loss is tough, that's why.
But have we collectively decided yet to archive and digitize every single bit of our existences from now on ?
As an example, I can barely play my most favourite game ever, maybe 'cause I'm depressed, but more specifically I think it's because I used to play it in a very specific setting that's long gone and forever lost.

I think this is something that people involved with actual preservation initiatives, archivists, curators, libraries and so on have dealt with for a long time. Because it is not possible to preserve everything, so everything that is preserved is what someone chose to put effort into preserving. The reasons for that can vary wildly, but the more meaningful something is and for more people, the more likely it becomes that someone will preserve it. And while computers and the internet make it seemingly very easy for a lot of people to make and distribute copies, over longer time scales digital media is just less durable, requires more maintenance, tech changes more often... and we might actually lose more than we did in terms of books and tapes and films (and that is even without DRM and planned obsolescence).

The problem in this case is who controls our shared cultural experiences. Because something can be extremely meaningful to a lot of people that would like to keep it, but it is entirely controlled by a company that won't do it - or might even hinder their independent efforts. The power imbalance means that the interests of a few matter while that of thousands does not. And people get understandably upset about their own powerlessness, about the control others have over their memory, over their culture, over their lives. And in particular regarding companies, the value of something as a commodity - as a product that can be sold - is rarely equal to its cultural significance.

It is the same as when a platform like yahoo answers decide to erase their entire archives. It is not that nothing should be lost... but that people can't choose what to keep, it is entirely up to the platform "owner". Even though the contents are the shared experiences and memories of many people, those people are not part of the decision process, and their desires are ignored.

But in this case worse, as the destruction can affect all extant copies even in personal archives! And the time scales involved are so short that it is not just memories.

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Yeah this is a Very Good initiative. It goes for a particular point, with reasonable scope and feasible solutions. It has concrete plans with clear steps and goals. It has multiple alternatives and considers multiple nations' perspectives. The increased visibility and public debate of the issue are generally good as well. It is impressive.

It needs to gather enough interest and participants for anything to happen, so yeah let's share it a lot. And it needs to face the PR efforts of companies (that will no doubt try to spin it as being an unreasonable request and diminish the problem) and possibly actual lobbying... it will need to be answered while not letting the companies set the terms of the discussion.

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RIP my wallet. Victoria 3 and Humankind (with all the expensive DLC) are a pretty compelling bundle, but it even has other games from my wishlist (Coromon and Terraformers).

It is nice of them to bundle the strategy games on the same month. Both for those skipping, and for those looking for them.

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Quoting: Linux_RocksToo bad no KDE Plasma 6 in Kubuntu though. 🐌🐢

This is an LTS version, they definitely should not ship software versions that new and unstable. You don't want your LTS version to be breaking frequently, it is the more conservative version and they don't want to make major changes to fix issues...

If you want newer KDE on Kubuntu LTS, you can get the backports ppa, I used to do it - but it is a tad more risky and I'd rather the default for total beginners is the old but rock solid version. It's not like current versions of KDE 5 are bad and you want to upgrade ASAP.

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This looks a lot more reasonable than the non-Deck handhelds. A lot cheaper, has proper touchpads, and it might be Manjaro but at least it is not Windows.

But compared to the Deck, I don't know if it holds up. It seems to compare favorably to the mid-price Deck, but I don't see the point of many of the updates compared the cheap one - like the display resolution for this size... and in terms of support, it is hard to compete with Valve.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThis is probably an unpopular opinion, but I want proprietary software on Linux. If the Snap Store is the only way I can download Adobe After Effects, I'm completely willing to do that. The Snap Store and Flathub makes it easier for Adobe to target Linux should they ever change their mind about whether to support it in the next 15 years.

iOS doesn't have this problem on nearly the same scale despite how much more popular their app store is than the Snap Store. Yes, malicious apps have found their way onto the App Store over the past 15+ years, but only a small number of them and not regularly. Almost every app on iOS is proprietary. Yes, they have a lot more manpower to review the apps, but it shows it's possible to safely vet proprietary software.

Preventing this malware from getting on the Snap Store doesn't require analyzing the code. It requires a reviewer to realize this company is impersonating popular finance-related software they did not develop. What's that saying? "When you're wearing rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."

Nah I agree and I think most people would - most games are proprietary, and we aren't just giving up those, plus a lot of other apps including some we might need for work (so not even a choice).

I'm just saying that the model preferred by proprietary apps - a store that sells pre-packaged, ready-to-run software - has this drawback, moving trust from "the people that make your OS" into "a million devs that it is hard to hold accountable". It isn't even about having access to source code to audit it, just about the hands-off approach, about the implicit expectations of developers in each case, etc.

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I have a bunch of loose thoughts about this.

1) They really should be manually reviewing at least new dev accounts. Checking not only every new app but every update to new app (easy enough to put something harmless and then push the malicious part as an update) is a lot of work, but if any rando can create an account and start publishing apps? That is bad
2) So much work put into containerization/sandboxing, and you just let anyone distribute apps that ask for people's logins. I mean, it is good that apps can't go steal your browser cookies or replace your bootloader, don't get me wrong. But looks like there was some easier, low-tech work (having people check apps for obvious red flags) that needed to be done anyway, and it was not.
3) They should ban absolutely all cryptocurrency apps regardless. First they are exceptionally high-risk, but also fuck ponzicoins.
4) The snap store is a (partial) move from a repository that Canonical actually maintains themselves (maybe badly, but they put the software there and could make all choices) to a store where they are just a middleman, and that lets devs keep control. It is obvious that for them it is less work and more profitable, and that it is attractive for proprietary apps... but this showcases exactly the kind of problem of this approach: you are getting blackbox software from a bunch of randos, not free software from a trusted distro.

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