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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • Literally never had the need to disable defender or change anything about my Windows install.

    This doesn’t mean anything if you’re not saying what hardware are you running. I saw what was happening in task manager no matter how much time I gave it. I don’t have time to debug a product I paid for, especially if the free alternative „just works”.

    Driver support is far better on Windows than Linux.

    For things that Linux supports (which is most of it and the older the better) it’s a much better experience since everything just works out of the box. You might have trouble with bleeding edge hardware but in year or two stuff gets done and keeps working. You might encounter issues on some cheapo laptops with broken ACPI implementations but those are just trouble in general.



  • I just contributed to this. My gf bought her old work laptop for cheap (an employee perk) for simple survivors-like games. It should have been perfectly capable machine (i5-8350u, 16GB of RAM, fast NVMe drive) and it’s compatible with Windows 11 so I went with that. I’m a Mac guy these days and but use Windows at work so I’m only familiar with LTSC versions. I wasn’t ready for how much of a shitshow it is.

    Couple of hours later I had debloated it and disabled Defender yet it was still running dog slow. The laptop had trouble with Thunderbolt 3 docking station, not recognising anything beyond connected displays. Intel graphics drivers were so unstable games kept crashing left and right.

    I got tired of fighting it and installed vanilla Ubuntu (didn’t want to disable Secure Boot). I’m not a Linux newbie by any means but these days it’s home server stuff and the like. I stumbled on Bitlocker protection that I’m 100% sure is there to discourage people from switching. Microsoft set it up so that when you look at it funny you have to find unlock keys at your account page. Funny thing about that - when my gf was typing the address for that page in Safari with Google search on her phone the first autocompleting result was a scam page. I’m fairly sure Google does this to spite Microsoft. Fuck big tech but I digress.

    After that it took an hour to install including figuring out that I had to add DisplayLink drivers for the dock myself. The process wasn’t great but I guess it’s a real niche case. Either way, this machine is now flying and Steam+Proton handle everything pretty well.

    Last time I used Windows on desktop was around W8 and it wasn’t half that bad. Microsoft is doomed if they offer this kind of experience. I was critical of Proton before but I need to acknowledge that some working solution had to be created ASAP to get people off this dumpster fire.





















  • misk@sopuli.xyztoGames@sh.itjust.worksArch Linux and Valve Collaboration
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    30 days ago

    sounds just a tad paranoid.

    Yeah, I would say that some years ago. Now it’s just waiting for more of the same to happen.

    the android situation is not really comparable to desktop linux.

    google has a monopoly over the distribution of all apps, android has never really been independent of the playstore.

    Doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. In Poland we had a telecom monopolist that was never anything else than a phone company. Yet, we split it into infrastructure provider and service provider. Miraculously internet got faster.

    unlike desktop linux which has an established ecosystem already

    Google took that open ecosystem and built a walled garden out of it. That’s what Valve is doing.

    they can lockdown their steamdeck & steamos but there is no point in running steamos unless it comes preinstalled.

    Steam OS is so good people install it on Steam Deck competitors. In time it will be preinstalled there too. This amount flexibility would suit Valve and is exactly what happened with Android. Remember people installing it on HTC HD2 and such back in the day?

    and they cant really make the installation on other distros more “fidly”, because the package manager handles installing software.

    Once they’re at the point described above it becomes very easy to introduce minor annoyances that push you towards their services.


  • Holy hell, is it bad. Oliver says it’s like early PS4 game but that outdoor lighting is straight out of Switch game. I’d say it’s better to run previous gen version so that at least it looks consistently bad. And it still drops to 40fps? They even managed to break VRR on Xbox which is pretty much free on that platform. LOL

    Also, is it just me or is this thing just too hard too read? Those fonts at such low contrast just make my eyes bleed (take a look at MP values for player character).

    Hopefully this is fixed by Metaphor: ReFantazio: ReFantazio’ed. I can wait.




  • misk@sopuli.xyztoGames@sh.itjust.worksArch Linux and Valve Collaboration
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    1 month ago

    Valve was always waiting for the moment when Microsoft would be at their weakest, possibly during some kind of transition. They were too early with Steam Machines as a response to Windows 8 but this might be the time. Xbox is faltering and ARM threatens to end Wintel ecosystem. I wouldn’t be quick to applaud those developments though.

    We have Google Linux for phones and it looks like we’ll have Valve Linux for gaming PCs. Valve is not your friend so this platform will be gradually locked down, for convenience at first. Then you’ll either use Valve Linux or you’ll be locked out of your games library - obviously not directly but alternatives will be too fiddly for mainstream. This will allow masses to be herded into Valve operated marketplace which was always the point.

    The biggest corpo mistake of last century, computing Wild West for mainstream will die bit by bit unless this process is stopped with regulations. It’s ironic that it’s happening with money made from Windows.