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Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: tfk

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: tfkI've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

Can we see too, when you do?
Documenting your experience in a forum post or something can really help others.

Well, the forum is back online, so I think I can do that. While it is in transit, I can think about how to do this while keeping things private. One thing I can already tell you is that you have to calculate in the import costs. I expect those to be around 160 extra.

The import costs are unfortunate but I paid those with the PinePhone as well. For a very small team they're doing wonders, I really hope it takes off this year and they can get established. I know you'll enjoy the FLX1s 😀

Yeah. Just wanted to be transparent when looking at the price. But I am excited about this device. The hardware switches to switch off stuff on the hardware level is very nice. I hope the experience will be almost the same as on my desktop machines. A device which I am the administrator of, not Google and definitely not Microsoft. Me. And being able to install common Linux apps via an open repository.

I've tested Pure Maps on my desktop. That looks like the perfect replacement of Google Maps. Nice map view, and it turns into a 3D map mode when entering a route. Very cool.

But now I have to wait for the shipping to complete.

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Quoting: tfk

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: tfkI've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

Can we see too, when you do?
Documenting your experience in a forum post or something can really help others.

Well, the forum is back online, so I think I can do that. While it is in transit, I can think about how to do this while keeping things private. One thing I can already tell you is that you have to calculate in the import costs. I expect those to be around 160 extra.

The import costs are unfortunate but I paid those with the PinePhone as well. For a very small team they're doing wonders, I really hope it takes off this year and they can get established. I know you'll enjoy the FLX1s 😀

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All that stuff about Steam and Arm got me thinking... SteamOS on rpi for light gaming and emulation purpose... Sounds like something I will be willing to try. 🤔

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Quoting: rea987Yup, Firefox gargled by snap issue is what forced me to quit Ubuntu and migrate to Debian couple months ago. The issue might be fixed for the latest versions of Ubuntu but it still was there for 24.04 LTS release.

I didn't have problems with snap Firefox startup on 24.04 LTS and I upgraded in October to Ubuntu 25.10 and it still starts fast.

Also when I installed Strawberry music player snap and started it for the first time, there was a warning popup that it might be slow (and so on) because it is installed as a snap package. It isn't packaged as snap by the developer of the program, but I am certain that the warning is from the developer. And gues what I can't tell a difference beetween the .deb install of Strawberry and the snap one.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Tethys84Except nobody will be able to afford the Steam Machine. I would be surprised if Valve didn't indefinitely delay or even eventually cancel it because of the skyrocketing prices on RAM alone.

It depends. If they made a fixed price contract early enough, they might be able to offer their boxes cheap.

Yeah. After all, this is not a cost of production problem, it is a "what the traffic will bear" supply and demand problem. So if some manufacturer has a contract to deliver hardware for $X, they will still make money doing that, just not as much money as they think they can bilk us for.

They need to have at least some RAM stocked up for production, considering they announced it, so the design was finalised etc.

If anyone's familiar with how this works I'd be curious to learn what happens typically (insofar as "typically" can apply here).

I think the issue isn't even the high RAM prices - it's the instability of the market. After they burn through whatever stock they secured they might get more, they might not, at least not immediately. They might get it at this price, or they might get it at that price, or at some different price entirely day to day. I assume they can't sell the Gabecube at what they originally expected to sell it at and then just adjust the pricing as they go along, but the real question is what do you even sell it for when you can't know your costs or plan for stock (I assume). No subsidising complicates this further, I think. The Steam Deck was just a Valve thing, so if they decide to eat the price of the instability of the market here they effectively abandon their entire concept for the Steam Machine (anyone can make one, but not everyone can afford to leverage their empire of a video game distribution platform). It could actually be better to hold off until the market stabilises, whatever that stability entails.

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Quoting: scaine

Quoting: phil995511Snaps = non-free (proprietary) file format belonging to Canonical

=> No thanks, I don't want it on my operating systems

But... you don't have snaps on your operating system? Unless you're using Ubuntu? So it's not "no thanks", it's literally "this doesn't affect me in any way". So why the negativity?

I don't want to quote everything again, but it's a good comment.

I use (X)ubuntu and like the fact that I can use both Snap and Flatpak. It is also possible to switch Snap packages back to normal package management. I have already done this when there were problems with Snap packages (e.g. Firefox).

Of course, it's not the "canonical" idea to use Ubuntu and then remove Snap completely. In that case, it's better to use a different distribution.

And this freedom is what we love so much about Linux. Every person is different and has their own needs and preferences. And even as a long-time Linux user, you get a bit lazy with age. ;)

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Quoting: phil995511Snaps = non-free (proprietary) file format belonging to Canonical

=> No thanks, I don't want it on my operating systems

But... you don't have snaps on your operating system? Unless you're using Ubuntu? So it's not "no thanks", it's literally "this doesn't affect me in any way". So why the negativity?

And it's proprietary? So what? Or do you not use Steam, in which case, fine, I guess you're on Debian on the whole Richard Stallman philosophy, which is kind of admirable, but definitely not for me.

But hating on snaps because they're proprietary, and not hating on flatpaks where anyone can upload a dodgy flatpak to flathub feels really disingenuous to me. Even the fact that flatpak can be run from sources other than flathub... for 99.99% of flatpak users out there, that's irrelevant, because that's where flatpaks are hosted. It might as well be proprietary, because no-one is using it in any other way.

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Snaps = non-free (proprietary) file format belonging to Canonical

=> No thanks, I don't want it on my operating systems

I don't like using AppImage either, it's too cumbersome to use for launching applications and there's no built-in application update system.

The only format of this type that I occasionally use is Flatpak, and only if the package authors are known and verified, and their packages are therefore safe and secure.

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Quoting: rustynail

Quoting: JarmerNice! Gotta love these huge improvements for same hardware.

Although: that said, I'm not sure I notice/care that much about raytracing just in general. It makes things look SLIGHTLY just a tiny bit better at a huge frame cost? But maybe with this the frame cost will be minimal so that slightly better look will be okay?

Apparently some developers are mostly using ray tracing not to improve the visuals but as a crutch that allows them to not bother implementing lighting at all as they normally should, like iirc the latest Doom game doesn't work without ray tracing at all, although when you set it to low the performance is not as horrible as you may expect from ray tracing (but still pretty horrible)

Ray Tracing is quick to implement for devs compared to manually lighting the whole world, and it has the added benefit of not requiring many gigabytes (sometimes hundreds) that normal lighting techniques need. Considering how AAA games development costs are ballooning, and studios being closed because they don't make enough sales to recoup those costs, ray tracing might be the technology that saves many of them.

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Quoting: StellaSnap needs to just die imo. Flatpak is the future! 😇

While I agree that Snap needs to die, it's important to mention that Flatpak is also guilty of re-inventing the wheel. AppImages existed a whole 10 years before both Flatpak and Snap. They could've contributed to AppImage rather than reinventing the wheel and fragment the ecosystem.

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Quoting: StenPettI wonder what will be left once the AI bubble bursts. I sincerely hope this "we need to put AI into *everything*" trend is one of the things that goes away...

Well they are trying to make everything cloud based, right down to your toilet mate! What happens when the cloud has a bad day? or internet goes down? well often these devices just stop working. What happens when the company goes bust that is paying for this 'cloud' service? well they can send a KILL switch to all devices.

It is a DARK future indeed, one that humanity will likely be forced to reject outside of the billionaires running the world who can afford it all. WHY? because eventually we won't have any money to actually use or benefit from this crap, not with the way society functions now, so unless their going to give people $2000 UBI per week then I see a major cataclysm coming.

I wonder how Earth will look with a %98 poverty rate?

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ntsync does help many games BUT some benefit more by just using fsync. It is difficult to understand why and how but it is what it is.

The end results matter more then if it is CORRECT or not.

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Quoting: juxuanuOn the other side, as a solo game developer being able to generate some assets for your game can mean your project is now feasible.

Yeah its quite helpful, but I do suggest to put in %10 of hand touch-up effort to AI assets to clean them up and also correct artistic styling. I'm not a fan of DIRECT injection of AI assets because you end up with some very cringe and obvious mistakes all over the game.

One thing I'd like developers to use which has yet to catch on is training VOICE models and getting much more voice acting into games, something that smaller dev studios normally can't afford due to high cost of human VA. Fact is, VA need to just live with this consequence of AI impacting their jobs.

Your voice is NOT all that unique, many people share extremely similar voice patterns and voice actors have been replicating other peoples voices for a long time in comedy. Should someone be sued if they sound like a famous actor? it all comes down to the sourced training data and consent! not if a AI-Voice sounds similar to someone else!

ART on the other hand, that is very tricky as their pirating copyrighted content in order to train many of these LLM models up, its licensed to be viewed by the public BUT NOT commercially replicated for sale, which is what these AI graphics models often do. If they training it off genuine public works and resell-able free art then that is fine.

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Quoting: scaineSounds like your PC has a problem. Or are you referring to the long-fixed Firefox start up delay?

Snap might not still be the absolute fastest at startup, because it unpacks some libraries on first launch, but it's quick enough that you'd likely not notice unless you already knew.

Yup, Firefox gargled by snap issue is what forced me to quit Ubuntu and migrate to Debian couple months ago. The issue might be fixed for the latest versions of Ubuntu but it still was there for 24.04 LTS release.

The only scenario that I find such containerised solutions useful is the legacy software whose dependencies cannot be satisfied another way. Modern software, especially the libre software offers source code access (Firefox) shouldn't require snap, flatpak, appimage, etc unless there is a specific security and/or privacy reason demanding it.

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hopefully steam will force user-accessible games versioning on all games, because I don't want to download depots via steam console each time fallout 4 or skyrim updates.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: bolokanar

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: bolokanarA little too late.

What makes you say that? What about it makes it too late?

It's been years...

And? Doesn’t really answer the question. It’s here now. Why is it too late? Too late for what?

To care. To matter.

They finally got off their but. Well, I'm not buying it...

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Hi, if Valve wanted to make playing older versions of games simpler, there is one simple change they could make to allow the users to disable auto / forced updates. Then the user can use the Steam console or depot downloader to downgrade the game

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Quoting: rea987Using Snap so any time I launch a program, it hang for 5 seconds as if it is on a 5200 rpm spinning HDD. No thanks.

Sounds like your PC has a problem. Or are you referring to the long-fixed Firefox start up delay?

Snap might not still be the absolute fastest at startup, because it unpacks some libraries on first launch, but it's quick enough that you'd likely not notice unless you already knew.

As for getting "annoyed" about snaps, it's like using Debian and being annoyed that Fedora uses RPMs. If you're not on Ubuntu, it doesn't affect you. Move on.

Jesus. People love to hate Canonical for weird-ass "reasons".

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Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: tfkI've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

Can we see too, when you do?
Documenting your experience in a forum post or something can really help others.

Well, the forum is back online, so I think I can do that. While it is in transit, I can think about how to do this while keeping things private. One thing I can already tell you is that you have to calculate in the import costs. I expect those to be around 160 extra.

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Quoting: bolokanar

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: bolokanarA little too late.

What makes you say that? What about it makes it too late?

It's been years...

And? Doesn’t really answer the question. It’s here now. Why is it too late? Too late for what?

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LinuxerSteam snap works greatt including all the goodies inside fo gamer by default too but the flatpak of Steam is still a mess cos of access restrictions etc and cant be recommended just sayin

My distro packages Steam, so it's kind of a non-issue. IMO Flatpak is for things the distro isn't already packaging and for commercial things the distro can't package. And Snap is, um, for if you're using Ubuntu I guess.

Snap is for if you really, really want vendor support and/or if you're using Ubuntu.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: bolokanarA little too late.

What makes you say that? What about it makes it too late?

It's been years...

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Quoting: AsciiWolf

Quoting: RedjeAnd I don’t really get the hype for flatpak.

and actually makes desktop Linux usable even for regular, non-technical users.

Flatpak has uses, some of the stuff you said is true, but this is ridiculous. I am a regular, non-technical user. I use Mint, it's the most user-friendly distro around. It is possible to install Flatpaks in Mint, and I have installed a couple, but not enough to make a noticeable difference to how usable my desktop is. Flatpaks are some icing on one or two slices of the cake for "regular, non-technical users".

Being non-technical does not mean I can't recognize a statement that completely contradicts the reality of my experience when I see one.

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Quoting: _wojtek

Quoting: dpanterSnap? Uh, no. No thanks.

Cannonical is just annoying… What's more - it's not like they created something exceptionally new, they just want to ride the hype wave on something that mostly other created…

I strongly disagree with that statement, but whatever... 😅

From the enduser perspective, I'm very satisfied with snaps and with the 3rd party content it brings.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Tethys84Except nobody will be able to afford the Steam Machine. I would be surprised if Valve didn't indefinitely delay or even eventually cancel it because of the skyrocketing prices on RAM alone.

It depends. If they made a fixed price contract early enough, they might be able to offer their boxes cheap.

Yeah. After all, this is not a cost of production problem, it is a "what the traffic will bear" supply and demand problem. So if some manufacturer has a contract to deliver hardware for $X, they will still make money doing that, just not as much money as they think they can bilk us for.

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Quoting: LinuxerSteam snap works greatt including all the goodies inside fo gamer by default too but the flatpak of Steam is still a mess cos of access restrictions etc and cant be recommended just sayin

My distro packages Steam, so it's kind of a non-issue. IMO Flatpak is for things the distro isn't already packaging and for commercial things the distro can't package. And Snap is, um, for if you're using Ubuntu I guess.

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Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: dannielloAnd in the near future - Steam Pocket. The first true Linux phone with decent performance! (of course advertised as only for gaming, so Google should be OK with it... In the same sense like Steam Machine is just Linux PC so Sony and Microsoft also should be OK with it;)

That's already available, it's called the FuriPhone <https://furilabs.com/>.

The . . . Furry Phone?

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Quoting: tfkI've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

Can we see too, when you do?
Documenting your experience in a forum post or something can really help others.

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I've ordered the FLX1s bundle. Let's see if this phone will set me free of Google's claws.

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I think this is great news.
Canonical might unnecessarily cling to snap, but at least they're doing research in a known and reported problem.
Steam's compatibility with containerized package formats and repo policies.

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