Why more PC gaming handhelds should ditch Windows for SteamOS
The norm is to download several 30, 60 or even 120GB updates afterwards. You then end up with an inconvenient DRM disc that has to be inserted for your game to run. When instead you could buy it online, download it just like you would've ended up doing and then never have to worry about damaging a Blu-ray disc.
Don't get me wrong, I love physical copies of games... But in the era of never ending updates, live service games, indie games, and games broken at launch, I definitely understand why most of us don't prefer them anymore.
Sheesh~ This kind of makes me dream of seeing a future Steam Deck (Or other Valve console) powerful enough to handle most VR games if they're going to keep on giving the Linux ecosystem a push for whatever features are important to them.
Wait, does that mean we can start looking at HDR displays for regular Linux desktops in a near future?
I don't remember anyone mentioning Snap being closed source, but it receives many complaints for interfering with the functioning of common programs, on top of slowing down the execution of programs installed through it and is now being forced on users. I haven't touched any *buntu distro in years, but it always seemed half-baked from the comments I keep on reading about it.
Also yes, Flatpak is what I believe you could call a universal package manager. Package it once and it should run on any Linux distro since it takes most things out of the equation, save for the kernel and drivers. And yes, it mostly is used to distribute desktop applications. It's ideal for safely running random applications or older programs that wouldn't run through a modern runtime.
It's not some miracle packaging system and while Flatpak-installed programs tend to start just as fast as native ones, I consider it inferior for most cases. Its two big advantages are that Flatpaks have a runtime they specify and depend on. It gets downloaded and installed automatically if missing when you install a Flatpak. So you're much less likely to run into issues where a program won't run on your system because of an incompatibility with a missing, or newer version of some library. Each Flatpak also gets installed in its own fake environment and is essentially a sandbox when you run the program. You can use a program named Flatseal to give each Flatpak access to specific directories or functionalities, or restrict it further. But the one big negative is that this runtime uses a lot of disk space. ~800MB per runtime.
It tends to work really well and I've been told that years ago a guy would use this packaging system to bundle pirated windows games with a preconfigured version of wine, which made them run out of the box, with zero tinkering. On top of essentially being sandboxed and unable to access your real home folder, internet, camera or microphone. Just to illustrate its versatility. It also kind of already won the war when Steam Decks started using Flatpak as their main packaging system.
Nope, no thank you... I'm not touching anything other than native, AUR or Flatpak packages. AppImage has only been an inelegant and overall inferior alternative in my experience. The Windows experience, with Linux portability issues. "Find an installer online from some website, have it do whatever the hell it wants, polluting my home folder with random crap and hope it's not a virus" with essentially zero advantages over Flatpak or even Snap.
Thanks a lot! Yeah, it's on Android and everything I could hope for. The sleek UI, the drag-based shortcuts and properly separated user accounts.
Is anything similar Apollo? I'm on Android, but if there was one app that made me miss the few months I spent with a borrowed iPhone... It's Apollo.
Yeah… For years I already suggested anything good but Ubuntu to those interested in trying Linux, but now I'm going to directly tell them not to touch it. Sure, you've got lots of online discussions from the past 20-ish years of people teaching each other how to install PPAs for up-to-date versions of programs or drivers and that's sweet. But how about a distro where that stuff is just available out of the box and one that doesn't force you to use snaps as if they didn't cause issues left and right?
It was almost scarily smooth for me. I laid down on the operating table, they started prepping me up and I was out before I realized it. When I woke up minutes after the end of my short surgery I had clear memories of the moments before. There was no period of time where I felt confused or realized I was passing out or waking up. I went from being conscious, to unconscious, to wide awake pretty darn fast. The only numbness I had came from the painkillers. Or at least it's how it felt to me. Modern anesthetics are amazing.
It went hard right almost immediately when Reddit banned a couple subreddits like/r/fatPeopleHate and other similarly cheerful places. At least on Lemmy we can just let those kinda servers be in their own little septic tanks.
I did that for a while and it does kinda work if you bring your mic threshold way down, but there is a modded client called "discord-screen-audio" which tricks Discord into almost working properly. The one limitation being that you can only stream your main monitor and not another one, or a specific app. But the audio does work!
I decided I preferred dealing with issues caused by the limited resources of a well-meaning community (And often largely corporate contributions, I know) rather than issues caused by some giant company's malice and greed. Goes without saying I don't use Chrome either or any Chromium-based web browser. It's not just Linux. There's no surprise "Now you gotta pay a subscription to get the next updates!" catch when I get up in the morning and I never have to figure out how to disable anti-features.
Basically every non-game program on my home computer I don't strictly need for work is open-source, often worked on by volunteers or crowd-funded and that just kinda feels good, y'know? I decided to completely switch to Linux around 12-14 years ago and I sometimes laugh when I hear of the deliberate nonsense Windows users have to deal with at every major update. Or when installing basic software.
To install any program I want, it's just a matter of opening a terminal, or GUI package manager like Pamac and typing its name or often a related keyword. It gets installed along with anything it requires. No need to cautiously find the proper website (Anyone remember when SourceForge messed with Gimp's installer to put ads in it?), download an installer and launch that. All my programs get updated for me through that very same GUI, along with my desktop environment, drivers and the kernel. Don't gotta think about it or wait for some popup in each and every program to tell me "Click here to update! 😌". And my computer doesn't randomly reboot or slow down on me.
And Edit:
Last thing, but the Windows basic desktop utilities, like the file browser, text editor and such are all so much worse than the most common Linux alternatives that it's kind of sad. I don't know how people function without tabs and split-view when moving files. And I haven't even touched on how ridiculously customizable Linux desktops are. Nothing compares out there.
Probably never. They're my third option after native packages and built-from-source packages/installs either manually or using the AUR. They're convenient and the only option I tolerate of those newer package styles (Flatpak/Snap/AppImage), but seemingly having to download a new 800+MB runtime for small 32MB applications is ridiculously wasteful and I wouldn't touch them if I didn't have at least a TB of storage.
But if some gaming peripheral maker wants to advertise Steam Deck support they will essentially have to support Linux at least!
Pretty much my only nitpick is that we have no "Commenting as:" and "Posting as:" warnings. It blurs the line between accounts a bit too much in a platform that already adds lots of complexity by splitting the communities and accounts between various servers. Beyond that, its search function is everything I could ask for and it looks great! I'm sure it'll only keep on getting better over time.
Flatpak's the only one I've had good experiences with. Tangentially related, but I especially dislike AppImages. I'm not a fan of how bulky installing various flatpaks ends up being and use native packages or the AUR usually, but beyond that they're really convenient for non-critical applications that otherwise would mesh poorly with my distro or aren't available there. Friend of mine tells me it's also a nice system to package Windows applications/games with a preconfigured Wine version.
Hasn't Steam just beat its record of simultaneously online users? And while I'm sure Steam Decks contributed to this, we're taking of numbers an order of magnitude bigger. Hell, PC gaming is doing so well that we're seeing until then console exclusive games come out on Steam.