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Latest Comments by Marlock
Clearing up what games will and won't run on the Steam Deck
11 Sep 2021 at 12:49 am UTC Likes: 2

"More windows games run on linux now than on windows itself"

That headline will be awesome to read when it comes :)

It will still not be 100% and it will tell us more about old games than new ones, but it will stillbe awesome and will have its sway factor too.

Zink Vulkan driver Suballocator lands in Mesa, certain games get 'over 1000%' more FPS
19 Aug 2021 at 12:58 am UTC

Valve invests upfront in compatibility layers so it can ensure its huge catalog of games doesn't suffer later, eg. when OpenGL gets axed from new GPU drivers... they are the proverbial man with a plan.

It also already helps in another scenario (though I'm not sure Valve has plans to leverage this or if it's just an unintentional positive side-effect)... OpenGL is deprecated in OSX, but Zinc allows for OpenGL >> Zink >> Vulkan >> MoltenVK >> Metal... which has already been tested in more than one occasion IIRC and actually works!

Imagine if you could customize the Steam Deck colours - try it out with this tool
9 Aug 2021 at 6:48 pm UTC

Quoting: dpanterPresenting the GOL Deck, a.k.a. GOLdie

OMG, this actually looks great!!!
Please take my money :grin:

Imagine if you could customize the Steam Deck colours - try it out with this tool
8 Aug 2021 at 7:32 pm UTC

Quoting: Julius
Quoting: MarlockGiven how Valve handled theSteam Controller (releasing 3d printing blueprints for replaceable plastic parts to the general public), maybe all of this can become true.

Of course, the process of changing the husk on a controller is likely a million times easier than doing it with a complete handheld pc... but hey, people do fix and replace smartphone parts, so let's see what they'll say on iFixIt... as long as it's not all glued up, modders should be happy :happy:
Yeah, but maybe it will be possible to 3D print some parts yourself :)
Exactly... but 3D printing a part is the easy step (not that it's actually easy, with so many prunter models, materials, filling settings and etc)... the real trial is actually replacing the original part for the new, without breaking the new expensive toy... shivers!

Imagine if you could customize the Steam Deck colours - try it out with this tool
8 Aug 2021 at 5:32 pm UTC Likes: 4

Given how Valve handled theSteam Controller (releasing 3d printing blueprints for replaceable plastic parts to the general public), maybe all of this can become true.

Of course, the process of changing the husk on a controller is likely a million times easier than doing it with a complete handheld pc... but hey, people do fix and replace smartphone parts, so let's see what they'll say on iFixIt... as long as it's not all glued up, modders should be happy :happy:

Valve corrects the RAM specs for the Steam Deck, games should run nicely from SD Card
8 Aug 2021 at 4:18 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: ShmerlBy the way, speaking of the UI. Is there some FOSS console oriented GUI now? Let's say I want to play GOG games, itch games or whatever other games on it without using Steam. What are the options? Using KDE Plasma as is, while holding it like a console probably isn't a good idea.

I'm not a big fan of closed source UIs in general.
Kodi may work as a fullscreen UI to launch stuff other than Steam, and i've seen it list .desktop items once (IIRC it was kodi in normal desktop linux distro, so should be easy to get going on SteamOS 3)

If Valve partnered with Kodi devs to get their stuff in Kodi or Kodi stuff into Steam it would be a dream, but an unlikely one... so the next best thing is A lauches B and B launches A...

Recent Kodi versions are investing heavily on gamepad support and gaming plugins, catalogs, etc (courtesy of libretro and interacting with retroarch devs)

RetroArch probably works itself too, and maybe GOG and Itch can be adapted and added to it as game modules, but AFAIK thatcs not done yet and the storefront aspects aren't part of libretro framework, so they'd be limited to downloading/upgrading/launching already owned games

IIRC GameHub leverages libretro too, and so do Lutris and Gnome Games, for emulator modules at least.

It's also possible to use Steam trickery to handle desktop-oriented GUIs in a reasonable fashion... if wecre lucky opensource projects like those will be quick to adopt adaptive layouts themselves (using libhandy contributed to GTK by Purism for their Librem 5 linux smartphone effort... it's akin to KDE Plasma Mobile, lagging a bit behind yet, but quickly achieving great results.

The SteamOS-like Linux distribution GamerOS becomes ChimeraOS with a new release
4 Jul 2021 at 1:34 am UTC Likes: 1

There is a really cool group of cartilagenous fish (related to stingrays and sharks) that are also called chimaeras:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimaera [External Link]

I don't really get why the old name was so disliked, but it's ok, names apart it's great that this distro is alive and well.

It occupies a very special niche and does so much better than SteamOS.

Bitmapflow helps artists generate inbetweens for animated sprites
30 May 2021 at 9:19 pm UTC

Though I'd assume it would be even handier if this was integrated into an open source pixel animation tool.
It's made in Godot so if you're developing games in that FOSS Game Development Suite/Engine it's perfectly convenient... and even if you aren't there is at least one pixel-art editing software (Pixelorama) that's also made with Godot so it is likely to be able to use the output conveniently:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/need-to-make-some-pixel-art-pixelorama-is-a-cross-platform-foss-tool-worth-looking-at.15610

Big screen gaming distribution GamerOS continues picking up the SteamOS slack
5 May 2021 at 9:28 pm UTC

Is GamerOS great for someone that has a large GOG/itch.io library?
Itch.io has an opensource store/intaller/launcher/updater app so if you get it installed and added as 3rd-party app to Steam on GamerOS it's probably all gonna work fine afterwards

For GOG there are a couple 3rd-party apps for the same purpose, despite their sad insistency ignoring linux users (eg: MiniGalaxy)

Big screen gaming distribution GamerOS continues picking up the SteamOS slack
5 May 2021 at 9:23 pm UTC Likes: 2

installed minecraft from flathub (though apparently I need to uninstall and reinstall it after every update)
this is probably solvable by running:
 
flatpak update

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