Quoting: sudoerPhone UI got a horizontal workspaces update? Wow let's celebrate like Mac hipsters :P Do you still have to go your mouse pointer to the top left to activate the dock that is put at the bottom now (even bigger distance) in order to be able to click your damn program icon so that you can eventually get it opened like you instantly wanted but you couldn't? :D

You mean how in other DEs you still have to move your pointer to the bottom left to activate the start/application menu? Also, that's only if your PC somehow lacks a keyboard; otherwise it's as easy as Super + A to launch the App Grid (i.e. Dash on steroids) or Super + <first few letters of an app name> + Enter to insta-launch an app directly, just like @drlamb said.

Disclaimer: although I do agree that the Dash should be visible by default, or even better configurable as visible or not by default, and although I use Dash-to-Dock, and although I dislike the Gnome devs' mentality in general when it comes to (ignoring) user feedback (queue removed Desktop icons, non-existent file-picker thumbnails, non-configurable vertical workspaces, and the list goes on and on and on and effing on), it still greatly annoys me when people exaggerate about things that are not nearly as bad as they're made out to be.

P.S. - This isn't addressed to you @sudoer; but I just love how the most vocal anti-Gnome Linux users are most usually self-proclaimed neckbeards who supposedly use Emacs and vim and like to do all their stuff by keyboard. It seems very strange to me that all those keyboard warriors prefer to spend their days unproductively huffing and puffing over GUI stuff and mouse distances instead of making use of Gnome's arguably top-notch keyboard navigation support.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusI'm no fan of Microsoft buying anything, but I'll grudgingly admit they've managed not to run GitHub into the ground yet, so…50-50 Discord will still be worth using in a few years? :neutral:

It's not about running it to the ground or not, it's about the problem of having your greatest enemy being in charge of your secret operations headquarters. Yeah, I'm saying it in a somewhat tongue in cheek manner, but the truth is, the ONLY thing that's changed in regards to Microsoft vs Linux is that Linux has managed to grow up tremendously and has completely taken over the server/backend space, and so Microsoft, who is the sore loser of the server/backend race, has been forced to treat Linux as a real business competitor instead of just a small time fish that can be safely slandered as "cancer" and then promptly ignored. And the way it treats its real competitors is, like a guy already posted above, Capitalism 101; ie EEE all over again, part of which is aggressively buying out pieces of your competition and thus slowly chipping away at the things that make them strong.

TL;DR having my business competitor control my center of operations is a big NO in my books.

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Oh great, between this and GOG's Spring Sale, I predict I'll end up with a(n even more) huge backlog and a depressingly empty wallet... But that aside, I haven't personally tested this so I don't know how well it performs in practice (specifically, how lean it is when it comes to network speed requirements - if it's gonna start lagging with 3+ concurrent players on an average household's xDSL connection then its usefulness will be rather limited) but on paper, hoo boy, it sounds simply *incredible*.

Kudos to Valve yet again! As an avid gamer who also loves Linux and doesn't use Windows unless it's a life-threatening emergency (aka practically never), in all seriousness I can't even imagine how my life would be without Steam's contributions to Wine (via Proton) and Linux gaming in general (from their contributions to the Linux kernel, to lobbying Nvidia and game developers, to their funding of many Wine developers, to their porting of the Steam client and the Steam Link client to Linux... the list just goes on and on). I mean, at this point I'm not even bothered* by Steam being a DRM'd platform rather than a free one. And TBH that's something to blame on the game developers/publishers and the general socioeconomic paradigm we live in, not on Valve.

(*...much)

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Quoting: PJshame nvidia still hasn't made their gpus work with Wayland :/ . This annoys me every time. I wonder when this drivers related clutch will come to an end.

Well lad, I have some great news for you, the article you're replying to has pretty much answered your question to a tee: Nvidia GPUs already work in Wayland, it's just that until now they wouldn't provide hardware acceleration for Xwayland, which in a world where most apps still run on X and thus need Xwayland to run on Wayland, meant there was practically no hardware acceleration on Wayland with Nvidia, at all. But as of the next driver release (470) this will apparently be automagically fixed, which means we Nvidia users can finally try our luck with Wayland.

Quoting: GuestI read: NVIDIA still does not support properly the linux ecosystem.

I read: Nvidia will at long last start properly (?) supporting Wayland as of its next driver release. Half-full, half-empty, you understand.

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Well, regarding the Nvidia vs AMD drivers discussion, I have to say that, not taking into account anything else (Nvidia's stubbornness and its refusal so far to play nice with Nouveau and open source in general, its various GPL violations and/or attempts at morally grey workarounds, its business practices in general, etc), unfortunately, in a world where not only games themselves increasingly require more and more bleeding edge GPU drivers in order to run good on their launch day, but also a world where we're gaming not on Windows but on Linux via second-hand tools like Proton and DXVK and that takes its toll on performance as well (and also requires its own separate game of bug hunting), the open source model of having the GPU driver releases not controlled by the company producing the GPU but rather by the development cycle of the Linux kernel, which means that any updates in GPU functionality and performance must have a waiting time of at best 2 months before they become available to end users, is IMHO not really a model that is functional or desirable, at least not at this point in time where things in the Linux gaming world are in a constant state of flux.

*Sharp intake of air* Gee, this must be the longest full stop-less piece of text I've ever written in my oh so many years of internet adventures.

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I read "CLA" in the title and came in just to leave a quick witty comment a là "bye bye Lutris, it's been fun, it's not me it's you, yada yada".

Well, I did come in, I read the article, I actually read the "CLA", I read strycore's comment, and I also couldn't help but be reminded of the mess the Lutris issue tracker was in when I last had to visit it to report a bug, about a year or so ago.

Go forth with my blessings, old dev. I approve.

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Quoting: scaineI'd love Valve to have a bit more transparently over their plans for Linux. I couldn't even tell you how many of their staff are dedicated to Linux. From a quick google, I could only find a handful (4 or 5) announcements of staff joining for Linux-specific roles.

I'm not sure that even they know where they want to go with Linux. It's certain that the Proton effort is officially endorsed and not just a side-project of a handful of their employees, and it's obvious to me that they still pursue their plans for a future where they use Linux as a basis for a gaming service of their own (yesterday they used to call it Steam Machines, tomorrow they could call it Steam Cloud), but at this moment in time the situation is still one where they're chasing an ever moving target.

First it was DX11, we got that with DXVK; then it was DX9, we also got that with DXVK; now it's DX12, we've almost got that with VKD3D but it's still WIP because DX12 is still a platform very actively developed for; we also need WMF (almost there), anti-cheat support (the most broken thing currently), and lots of other minor stuff that we do not take into account but they still matter (e.g. just the other day they announced an initiative for re-architecting Wine around input and window management, presumably in order to reduce latency and bring game performance closer to native Windows). And don't forget about the changes that are needed to be implemented within the Linux kernel itself (as an aside, just this simple fact that Valve are taking this as far as to collaborate with the kernel team in order to accommodate Wine's needs, makes me believe that they're serious about their work).

As soon as we have parity in all those areas, and assuming there won't already be a "DX13" already in the making that we'll again have to spend time making compatible (very very improbable if you ask me), then the really good times may at last begin (better tooling, commercial products created on top of this stack, etc). And IMHO, these good times are much nearer than some people may think. In fact, day 1 support for a triple AAA next-gen DX12 game like Cyberpunk 2077, even in this somewhat unstable state (due to VKD3D being still WIP and also due to Nvidia being their usual selves), is phenomenal really.

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Quoting: LinuxwarperWe discuss the harm Proton can or has done to native releases. What if developers rely on Stadia for Linux gamers to play their games. What if when we ask CDPR to make Vulkan renderer available for Proton, they then tell us that it's not worth it for them to do that because the game is already playable on Stadia.

What if they (don't) tell us that them making a Linux-native Vulkan renderer for Stadia is part of an under-the-table deal with Google to not make it available for general use so it won't benefit their competition.

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, and I'm practically pulling this out of my a$$ here, but it wouldn't really surprise me if it became known some day that Google has employed such practices in order to promote Stadia.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: NociferAnd you do realize that most often, due to various reasons that are not of relevance here, Windows games running on Wine are much more hassle-free than Linux native games, due not to some kind of special incompetence on the part of the people making them but due to the lackluster graphics/audio/input/etc Linux stack?

I was with you up to this point. How exactly is a layer that translates for Windows games so they call to the Linux "graphics/audio/input/etc stack" supposed to be somehow sidestepping supposed liabilities of that stack?

That was simply a very poor choice of words on my part. With "lackluster" I mainly meant that the Linux stack is convoluted and not very standardized, with lots of pieces and lots of ways to do the same stuff (and it used to be even worse before engines like Unity provided an easy way to export a project for Linux), so game developers more often than not port their Windows games poorly and thus they suffer from performance issues. Add to that the Linux equivalent of "dll hell" and you have an explosive mixture.

With Wine all this is avoided because the games are created and optimized exactly like their Windows versions (because they are the Windows version) and it's Wine that takes care of talking to Linux on their behalf, including taking care of the needed dependencies. "All" we really need to have an experience similar to that of Windows players is good translation tools like DXVK and VKD3D. So, especially after DXVK entered the scene, this has often lead to players preferring the native Windows version for a better experience.

The "due not to some kind of special incompetence on their part" was me mainly thinking about post-release support, in the form of updates and bug fixes (which are usually non-existent because the Linux ports are more often than not released and then abandoned or at best updated only sporadically) and mod support (which is also too often non-existent because mod makers make their mods with the Windows binaries in mind). Both of these are not due to programming incompetence but due to Linux being an after-after-afterthought for most of those game studios that even know what Linux is.

Unfortunately, I took all this and mixed it up atrociously, probably because I was in a hurry to get back in the game :P

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: NociferGee, when did the Linux community become so full of itself?

Do you realize that I'm not the "Linux community"?
Gee, I didn't want to upset you and the other vulkan/proton/wine/dxvk/steam/amd/mesa/git crusaders, sorry!
I was just venting that I can't play a game I was looking forward to, and maybe pondering how the "Linux (gaming) community" (if indeed there is such a thing) is nowadays virtually invisible to developers and publishers, hidden behind the sweet sweet proton veil. Have fun with your game guys!

Do you realize that I too was venting about "the Linux community" because you are hardly the first Linux user (not even the first person on this article thread) acting like this? It's not personal.

Anyway, venting is one thing, but if you were looking forward to a game that has been known since forever that it's for Windows only, but at the same time refuse to play it via Wine and instead whine about it not being available on Linux, then it's kind of your own fault.

Also, the Linux gaming community has always been invisible to all but a few rare individuals, and in fact it only exists today because of two key times in its history: when a company called Valve decided to actively help develop Wine and promote Linux as a gaming platform, and when a guy who loved Nier:Automata decided to stop whining about it not being available on Linux and to instead do something about it; and he created DXVK. The rest is history (and the future).

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