OP Games supports OP software.

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It's easy to be disappointed by the first episode of this series and view it as a disaster.

But I don't feel that way about it.

In software, when a bug is encountered, what do the developers ask for when you report the bug?

"Send us a log file."

What Linus created, was a log file of a bug. Not a regular software bug, but a "UX bug".

And look, a positive change has already resulted which will benefit future new users of Pop!_OS. Other distros would be smart to also notice this issue and address it as well, so they don't fall victim to the same issue.

One thing System76 has now done to prevent such almighty breakage in future, is to patch APT (the package manager), in Pop to prevent users being able to see the "Yes, do as I say!" prompt by default. Unless, they add a special file to actually enable it. On top of that, another System76 developer Jacob Kauffmann mentioned on GitHub their plans to "make further improvements" to the Pop!_Shop GUI so that "users don't have to fall back to the terminal in the first place". Sounds like lessons learned, and hopefully smooth sailing for users in future.

As for 'blame'. In general, when it comes to UX, my rule is:

"If the user doesn't believe they did anything wrong, then the UX is to blame."

In general, it should simply not be that easy for a new user to brick an install like that. The fact Linus was able to stumble in just 15 minutes into a sequence of events that ended with basically uninstalling his DE, is in my opinion, a UX design failing.

It's easy to say, "But the warning was right there on screen".. Yeah sure, it was, hidden amongst a bunch of other technical jargon. Who in their right mind would assume installing Steam has the potential to uninstall a DE?

This was a UX issue, and it's being addressed. That's a positive change, I'm glad Linus brought this to the Pop!_OS team's attention so they can address it. Hopefully more positive changes will result from the rest of the series.

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All we have to do is chip away at the developers. Convince them one by one to tick the box/send the email, "opt-in" to Proton compatibility. We won't get all of them immediately, but as long as we get some that's progress.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIncidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months! :woot::wink:

And here's me, who would be over the moon happy with reaching 5%. Because 5% would mean there are about 6m Linux gamers out there. Which would be more than sufficient marketshare to ensure the PC gaming industry (hardware makers, game developers, middleware developers, etc) give us at least some degree of meaningful support.

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Hopefully we see a similar increase in November.

If we do, then I am confident we will have likely an uninterrupted run of increases until at least July next year. Because December onward we will see Steam Decks being shipped and adding to the number of Linux PCs out there.

If we see an increase next month, that will be 7 months in a row, and likely followed by another 6 months. A year of nothing but marketshare increases. Optimistically, we may see Linux go as high as 2% next year.

Considering not too long ago, Linux was as low as 0.75%, that's a very good sign.

These increases affect the decision making of many large entities in choosing what platforms to support. If the marketshare goes high enough, we will start to see not only game publishers and developers taking Linux more seriously. We'll even start to see other game distributors at least making an effort to make their services easier to use on Linux.

If we hit 2%, I wouldn't rule out getting official native support from companies like Logitech, Razor, Epic (EGS), CDPR (GOG), etc.
If we hit 5%, it's only matter of time before ALL the major game distributors and game hardware makers have native software support available for Linux.

We're getting there. Slowly but surely. Just have to keep chipping away at it.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: whizse

Quoting: GuestOut of curiosity, is there a commit or patch somewhere to go along with this?

All I could spot was this:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/commit/6fdc1b54bc62ea54e573370a49e7d3b2d606ab3f [External Link]

Nothing as far as I can see on the proton-wine side. But I assume most of the work needed was done on the Steam client.

Makes sense I suppose. Still a little annoying: anything to fix it is not going to be open sourced, and running Steam through wine directly (this is what I still do on rare occasions) means it probably still won't work. DRM is just plain evil.

Can confirm what Liam said.
This actually wasn't an issue for running Steam via Wine, and these games were playable via Lutris I read more than once, and could be made playable by installing the games via Steam running in Wine and copying over the files, or just pirating the game.. in fact they worked in almost every context except via Proton directly from Steam. Which is ironic since the DRM in question is CEG which Valve made themselves.

The whole situation was kinda funny really, but it's been finally fixed up.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThinking about Blender just made me realize something: When a category of software is dominated by closed, commercial software, sometimes an open source offering will catch up, gain mind share, and replace the main closed offerings as the standard.
But it never happens the other way, that I've ever seen. Once a category's lead offering is open source, that's it, closed has lost. Sometimes something new will displace it, but if so that new thing will also be open source, sometimes a fork of the old thing. Closed source commercial software never displaces open source category leaders.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I was talking to someone about this a month ago and I gave them an metaphor.

"Open source vs closed source software..

.. is like a fight to the death between an invincible snail, and a fierce lion.

As fierce as the lion may be, it can't actually win. Because the snail can't lose.
The snail will always eventually win, even if it takes a while."

That's why I remain convinced that one day Linux will overtake Windows on PCs. It's a matter of time.
.. might be a matter of a hell of a lot of time, but still, just a matter of time.

Open source never dies. It can't. Unlike a business, it doesn't have the same concerns of profitability to worry about. Closed source absolutely can lose and does. Blender had all the time in the world to slowly refine itself, grow as a community, improve, etc. It didn't have to remain a viable business like Autodesk the entire time. It could just quietly and slowly chip away at the beasts. If Blender Foundation collapsed, it could be reborn under a new name with new people. People can leave, donations can dry up, but the software is open source and "yours forever".

Now it's like a screaming freight train in the night, absolutely unstoppable. What hope does Autodesk have in the long term against a competitor that costs nothing and which users and corporations are willingly giving money to? And which has shown, will eventually catch up on all areas of weakness.

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Blender is unstoppable. 2021 has been such a great year for Blender.

2022 is going to be even better. Blender 3.0 is shaping up to be a great update, with a huge focus on performance improvements for just about every aspect of Blender. Shortly after it comes out, early 2022, the next update is meant to include a rework for Eevee as well, and some great new enhancements are planned like screenspace global illumination and eventually, likely, possibly, real time raytracing.

Blender is OP!

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Quoting: GuestWhy make a video for this tutorial at all?

In my opinion?

Their logic, was probably: "Look, SOMEONE is going to make this video eventually. So it should be probably us, so we can fill it with all the proper warnings and information necessary so folks don't go doing something very stupid and regretting it because they weren't properly forewarned."

Which is smart, the real question is, why don't more manufacturers realise this?

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Quoting: NumericThis is what makes Valve's product different. Could you imagine a corporation like Apple or Nintendo ever making a video like this?

I agree with the video that you only mess with your hardware if you have the skills, but its nice to see a hardware vendor that doesn't go out of their way to make repairs a nightmare.

Absolutely, couldn't have said it any better.

Only Valve would do this because they're a bunch of nerds. Which is why I, a fellow nerd, love them.

Never change Valve!

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