Quoting: skinnyrafSo desktop Linux usage growth pretty much stopped around the release of the Steam Deck? We're still around 1.0-1.1%. All the growth can be attributed to new Steam Deck users.

in % you're possibly right...

...but keep in mind that the total number of steam users is also growing fast, so seeing the same 1% as before already means a lot of new linux steam gamers in an actual headcount (which Valve has sealed lips about but we can do some math and educatedly guess at it)

...and keep in mind those steamdeck users might end up using Steam Deck's desktop mode for more than gaming and/or they might replace windows for linux on another machine but use steam more on the deck so get the survey only on the deck, etc

ps: i feel for apple gamers... their feudal lord seems to hate pc gaming with a vengeance
eg: deprecating opengl, not supporting vulkan, banning apps from the apple store if they don't adhere to ever-changing criteria, etc... as much as the new development criteria may make sense, games aren't normal utility apps... only some games receive ongoing attention from their devs for years after being released

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Quoting: ZeloxDamage is already done, and it’s a bit too late.
There can still be harmful apps in the snap store, but I feel that this is there last chance. If any harmful app appears again in the store even with manual reviews, it’s over.

sixth timeyear is a charm?

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tl;dr: if you don't notice anything out of the ordinary, it's already working for you

disclaimer: i'm not a linux audio stack expert, i'm just pulling from memory what i read in older phoronix news and some pipewire.org/ articles (oppa chat-gpt style :grin:)

pipewire is a game-changer for linux audio stack for several reasons

a big one is that it is a single software that replaces several older software with drop-in replacements (ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK)

the replacements are written from the ground up in cleaner code, with all that was learned from decades of experience in the older projects... so generally less bugs

they are drop-in replacements, which means software that called Pulse Audio functions will call pipewire's PulseAudio replacement bit the same way and Pipewire will gladly handle it in a compatible manner, so generally no problems getting ancient software to run over the new code

but at its core the way pipewire works is quite different, so it allows things that were previously impossible, like low latency audio via PulseAudio... iirc this was a major reason to choose JACK instead of PulseAudio for some usecases

plus PulseAudio and Jack worked atop ALSA and each had their own opinions on how to decide what to do when things change

eg: you hit the play button on your mp3 playlist in a local app, then someone calls you via google meet on the web browser, then you plug in the usb headphones... which audio source should be rerouted to which audio outputs? should any filters be applied? what sampling rate should be used if the sources are different but you want to mix them to the same output? etc, etc, etc

pipewire not only rewrote all this logic in a unified way replacing hacks over hacks... so less audio selection quirks (which are KILLING me on win11 + Teams right now!)...
...but also it did so in a way that makes it easy for each linux distro or even you as a single user to write your own customized logic to replace or add these to the default ones

who hasn't had issues with audio selection, frequency or latency over bluetooth, right?! that gets better taken care of too!

anyway that's the theory... given how fast linux distros picked up on it (a lot of them before it hit stable version 1.0) and how many people went out of their way to install it manually before it became the default in the more cautious distros, i'd say it's delivered on its promises way more than it caused new issues (always a risk when rewriting from scratch)

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can any of the xbox players around here exolain the appeal of the left analogue being so far up, arguably less comfortable to use than the d-pad?

as a playstation player i always use the left analogue stick to move the player character around and i don't really see how the xbox layout can be better for anyone

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development-adoption cycles for SDL can't be very fast... it must offer a truly stable API once each version is released and the older versions must keep working after a new one is released (directly or via a drop-in replacement shim from the old version to the new, as was done for SDL 1.2 over SDL 2)

this is because games are mostly proprietary static apps released once and never touched again afterwards (not by their devs, nor anyone else), unlike common foss linux apps that are constantly adapted to newer libs and their modified APIs

if they release new versions of SDL every year they'll quickly build up a huge inertial mass of legacy APIs/libs to support forever and that will eat away from new efforts

they could delay SDL3... but that only helps if Wayland devs clearly signal they'll solve their end of the issue soon with high priority... which seems a bit unlikely, though Valve does have plenty of people working for them on both things, iirc

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this looks great!!!

as a biologist, i've been flirting for a while with the idea of making a curator channel just for nature, biology and conservation-related games... this plus the 1.6 update to Stardew Valley may be the last push i needed ❤️

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those "good uses" were called "Expansions" and the wider catch-all name "DLC" was coined to put "bad uses" under the same umbrella and slap extra DRM-control on them

the oldest expansion i'm aware of... probably "Hellfire", for "Diablo 1"

It's an expecially interesting case because Diablo was done by Blizzard and Hellfire was done by Sierra Games, so it was pretty bold!

More so if you realize it wasn't an independent adventure but added in-game extra content (a new story arch, a new cave, new high-level spells, etc) to the original game

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what's the most profitable way to hunt whales?

is it to hunt just under the amount of newly bred whales each year so their population (and your business) doesn't get gradually over-hunted into oblivion?

nope... it's to hunt all of them at once, get the money and invest in something completely different

it's the fallacy of self-regulating markets, based on the wrong assumption that money must stay on the same business, while capital investment rules make it all too easy to scorch the earth and move on to a new business

this and the fact that even when a market does self-regulate it does so *after* bad things have already happened in a big way to most people involved (clients, workers and often even some of the investors)

i think this neatly summarizes what's happening with open capital gaming studios/publishers nowadays

hm... how's that triple "i" story unfolding? time to check on them again

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FWIW: if the official game engines refuse to work, then OpenRA (alternative game engine for early C&C series games) seems like it might be a really nice way to play them too

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looks like at least cheats A and C could be solved by server-side verification instead of deploying more aggressive local anticheat

if you move faster than possible, then you moved faster than possible, pretty damn straightforward (though deploying such calculations in a game that wasn't designed for it may be a PITA)

life points and damage can be entirely handled server-side or just doublechecked, no biggie either...

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