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forget flatpaks, i cant wait to see things like our 3D desktops and beloved cube in an 3D enviroment!

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Quoting: Phlebiacbut I suppose the comparison was for "advergames"

Yeah, my bad. Just a comparison of advergames. lol

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Quoting: fabertawe

Quoting: JarmerI would LOVE to switch to a linux phone, but for me a daily driver has to have the following:

• banking apps for remote deposit and other stuff


• reliable maps with gps and navigation


• whatsapp & signal & sms


• bluetooth connection to car audio


• all day long battery with medium usage


• decent camera - don't need fanstastic features, just need to be able to quickly open and snap kids moments

so far I don't think there is anything?

The phone I already mentioned does all of those things apart from maybe the banking app (depends on the bank). I use PureMaps (Linux) with voice navigation. I have bluetoothed to my car, bluetooth speaker, TV, earbuds and headphones. Also records video.

Edit: disclaimer: there are teething troubles with the new phone (I have the original) but they will get ironed out very quickly (as with the original, no issues for me), the devs are amazingly productive for a small team and super helpful.

Also, you can't switch your Granny to one of these from Android (that's what they're ultimately aiming for though), you'll need some Linux experience to get the best out of it and really enjoy it.

The granny problem is probably what Steam pocket people are hoping Valve will fix, since they made such great strides in handling that on the Steam Deck.

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^ Interesting! Unfortunately I'm on Verizon in the US and it's unsupported. I could do tmobile and it'd work though. I wager that's not specifically this phone though, I bet all the linux options are this way. Verizon is horrible for stuff like this. But they're the best network. Oh well.

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

That's easy: Regular Linux packaging is an unpredictable, outdated and in many cases broken mess. Flatpak is not ideal, but fixes most of the biggest packaging problems and actually makes desktop Linux usable even for regular, non-technical users. Especially when combined with "immutable" distributions such as Bazzite.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.

Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.

As a Debian user myself I just happen to directly be in a position to point you to a package that they don't maintain in their repo and I myself use happily with an already existing deb version and is fully dpkg compliant AppimageLauncher.
Also on versions. For every library I encounter in my development work apt offers like 8 different versions. For example gtk library: 2.0, 3 and 4 and the mosquitto library in several different implementations.
Debian also this year published a desperate request for help, because of a lasting 100% manpower shortage for the debian data protection team.
I've also encountered several times that debian warned me about the fact that this version still had unpatched vulnerabilities.

Edit: I'm willing to believe the flathub maintainers to be more lax than the Debian maintainers and thus leave more unpatched packages in their repo, but flathub isn't flatpack. Fedora has its own repo and a few others do too. This is actually the primary feature that differentiates it from Snap.

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Previously, baby mobs were just smaller versions of the adults.

Well, not quite – (at least) some of the babies had much bigger heads proportionally to their body size than adults did*. But this is a welcome change nonetheless. 🙂

*I don't feel like checking all of them, but it's true for chickens, cows, pigs, and sheep, at least.

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Quoting: PyrateI hope Valve goes all in and makes an official Steam client flatpak.

Also hope SteamOS finally moves to Wayland whenever the Frame and Machine come out.

Flatpak's advantages are curious, I've noticed that the convenience benefits it brings have started to come in opposition with the security and containerization aspect it first featured. For me, I'd drop the containerization if it meant Flatpak becoming the user package manager for all Linux. Maybe there can be a standalone variant for the security benefits so that aspect is still present in a separate capacity.

To me the containerization is the price for a few very important flatpack/flathub features.
A. Distro independence. By having every package keep to itself differences between distros don't hurt the packages.
B. Unsigned proprietary packages. FOSS packages are easy to verify, because you can inspect them for unwanted behavior. Especially, since uncovering the tools used is one of the primary ways to identify malware developers. It's, why many repositories can include packages from people they wouldn't normally trust or even totally anonymous sources. For proprietary packages you don't have this luxury unless your name is Apple. As such the trust placed in proprietary packages normally flows directly from the trust in their developer, which is achieved with having them sign their packages. Now the question arises, what if we want proprietary packages, but their developer refuses to support our obscure package manager and thus sign it. This is where the hybrid approach of containerization comes in: you might not be able to inspect the code, but you can inspect the container limits and at least assure yourself it doesn't touch anything it shouldn't touch.

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I agree, Architect of Ruin's art style is excellent.

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Quoting: LoudTechieIt creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages.

It does. It's Debian.

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.

Except for some special cases with two major versions (which both are security fixed) - nope, this doesn't happen. Version 2.17 and version 2.18 of whatever uses the same places for the files, so they cannot coexist.

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Correct – the previous attempts are technically wrong and broken but are good enough in many cases while ntsync is supposed to be correct.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.

How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?

It creates a problem for you, because your distribution doesn't have enough manpower to maintain all packages. This means they will skip some packages which might be critical for your workflow.

The ideal of a Flatpack like situation is that all maintainers together need to do just as much work as one distribution.

Edit: On the different versions support: yeah probably, Debian, Red Hat and Canonical do that too. Backwards compatibility and usability sometimes require work. This time though each of these versions need only to be maintained once for all distros.

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Quoting: JarmerI would LOVE to switch to a linux phone, but for me a daily driver has to have the following:

• banking apps for remote deposit and other stuff


• reliable maps with gps and navigation


• whatsapp & signal & sms


• bluetooth connection to car audio


• all day long battery with medium usage


• decent camera - don't need fanstastic features, just need to be able to quickly open and snap kids moments

so far I don't think there is anything?

The phone I already mentioned does all of those things apart from maybe the banking app (depends on the bank). I use PureMaps (Linux) with voice navigation. I have bluetoothed to my car, bluetooth speaker, TV, earbuds and headphones. Also records video.

Edit: disclaimer: there are teething troubles with the new phone (I have the original) but they will get ironed out very quickly (as with the original, no issues for me), the devs are amazingly productive for a small team and super helpful.

Also, you can't switch your Granny to one of these from Android (that's what they're ultimately aiming for though), you'll need some Linux experience to get the best out of it and really enjoy it.

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Quoting: phil995511

"Linux has, historically, been quite messy when it comes to software distribution. We have various distribution-specific packaging formats like .deb (Debian / Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora) and the list just goes on and on. Canonical also went their own way with Ubuntu for the likes of Snap, but the real winner is going to end up being Flatpak and the main Flathub store."

Software distribution under Linux is anything but chaotic. On the contrary, it is extremely orderly.Each distribution offers its own software library and package format. This, among other things, increases system security. This makes it much more difficult to implant malware under Linux.

Snap was most certainly developed by Ubuntu to try to provide unique packages for all variants of its distributions, thus avoiding having to recompile packages x times for each of the Ubuntu versions still in use.

Flatpack will never replace .deb, .rpm, or other packages. Furthermore, unverified Flatpacks can pose serious security problems on a system.

Flatpack is used as the primary source of software access on distributions at the stage of development alpha / beta, on distributions that are immutable due to their structural complexity, or on new distributions that do not yet have enough software to offer their users. Flatpack is in no way intended to replace .deb, .rpm or other formats.

To understand Linux, analyze all of this from the perspective of developers and system engineers/architects. As an amateur unfamiliar with Linux, it is impossible to speculate on this subject without making a mistake.

From a down-to-earth point of view, Linux is free and benefits large groups such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc.

It's not Valve and its Steam client that are giving Linux a boost, but rather the other way around. Linux is provided to Valve in a fully functional state. Valve then simply adds its own layer (just like with Android for telephony), allowing them to launch an operating system bearing their name while drastically reducing research and development costs.

Today Linux is much easier to access for inexperienced users, but it should not be forgotten that this is an operating system developed by and for experienced professionals.

A. Liam writes to new users or at least not kernel developer level users
B. As the history of appimage and android APK's clearly displays those large players you mentioned would've loved a neatly unified approach to package distribution.
C. The third software freedom is formulated by the fsf as and I quote here: "The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this." Clarifying here clearly that shared by those experts you mentioned aren't only meant for themselves, but for the entire community. You might argue that only the developers qualify under the community, but that isn't how I see it used generally. Most of the time it's used to describe all users. The fsf is a group of those contributing experts. This implies that at least some of these experts don't develop it just for experts.
D. The beauty of open source is that it's the tide that lifts all boats. As such Valve indeed gets to lift on the works of others with Linux and the ecosystem. Yet, it also adds to Linux and the ecosystem by submitting its own patches. These patches add value for many beyond Valve. For these patches I'm thankful towards Valve even though they as such benefit from community support and R&D savings. They drastically improved Wine, gave KDE some neat extras, solved several driver issues and enabled equal graphics processing with Windows through their contributions to the Khronos project.
E. Your Snap analysis shows, why Flatpack has massive value for those experienced professionals. They don't want to compile their programs a billion times for a billion different distros and versions. Snap offered insufficient room for competition and customization as such faltpack was introduced.
F. Unverified flatpacks aren't half as dangerous as unverified packages(yes, you can download and install debs straight from the web), since these have full root access. Unverified is just dangerous.

Having said that:
A. You're completely right .deb/.rdp/.snap aren't going away, but they'll be brought back to the place they belong: root level system extensions like drivers, virus scanners and such. I still get shivers every time I install a game or a production program through apt and it requires root.
B. Yes, it makes malware spreading harder, because it makes software distribution generally harder. That's a bug not a feature.
C. Flathub(not Flatpack) does add a level of insecurity Linux didn't previously have. It has a pretty loose security policy. Most repos including the fedora flatpack repository require the repo maintainers to have compiled and understood the code before pushing it(canonicals snap store is an exception). Flathub doesn't. This is dangerous as Canonical has displayed with several cryptoscam wallets in their snap store.
Especially and this probably what you meant with the danger of unverified Flatpacks, because flathub does make it dangerously easy to install non-developer signed(unverified) Flatpacks. Most repos get away with providing non-developer signed packages, because they can check them for themselves. Flathub doesn't do that.

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Quoting: Liam DaweI firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package.

How does this create a problem for me? My distribution cares for it.

And doesn't Flatpak support different versions of the same package as the same time? So, you can have one without the security flaw - and at the same time one with the security flaw?

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I imagine that most developers choose not to retain older versions because of support issues. Having to determine which version of the game is being used to troubleshoot the user's problem would be a pain in the butt! Of course, the solution would be a notice from the developer that they will only provide support for the latest version.

It reminds me of a bug report experience I had long ago with Morrowind. I had discovered an issue and decided to report it to Bethesda. I had to applaud the tech on this one. I was so embarrassed. It turned out I hadn't installed the latest patch, which had been out for awhile. The Bethesda tech, once realizing this, just politely told me that the bug had already been addressed in the latest patch and provided a link. 😆

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Quoting: Caldathras

And most games do exactly that. They ship their 32bit modules.(not all 32bit libraries, mind you, but still!)

And it's a shame more of them don't ship ALL of the needed libraries (32-bit or 64-bit). It's annoying to download a supposedly universal/generic installer only to have it fail on account of a missing version of a particular library. If they did, I'll bet we wouldn't have to worry as much about old native games failing in newer versions of Linux. (Missing libraries even happen with flatpaks & AppImages due to poor packaging jobs by devs.)

Looking at you, OpenMW 0.50.0!

Steam Linux Runtime 4 turned out to be the solution to getting OpenMW 0.50.0 to run on my less current but still supported version of Linux Mint (Version 21.3). I posted a how-to comment here:

How to Setup OpenMW for Modern Morrowind on Linux

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Architect of Ruin looks very interesting. The no AI stance makes it even more so.

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Quoting: phil995511

"Linux has, historically, been quite messy when it comes to software distribution. We have various distribution-specific packaging formats like .deb (Debian / Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora) and the list just goes on and on. Canonical also went their own way with Ubuntu for the likes of Snap, but the real winner is going to end up being Flatpak and the main Flathub store."

Software distribution under Linux is anything but chaotic. On the contrary, it is extremely orderly.Each distribution offers its own software library and package format. This, among other things, increases system security. This makes it much more difficult to implant malware under Linux.

I firmly disagree. That is chaos. Every distribution has a different set of packages and versions, with security problems having to go through each distro for each package. It's not good, and chaos for developers to support - they've complained about it since forever. Having Flatpak with Flathub is great, for reasons already explained.

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I would LOVE to switch to a linux phone, but for me a daily driver has to have the following:

• banking apps for remote deposit and other stuff


• reliable maps with gps and navigation


• whatsapp & signal & sms


• bluetooth connection to car audio


• all day long battery with medium usage


• decent camera - don't need fanstastic features, just need to be able to quickly open and snap kids moments

so far I don't think there is anything?

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"Linux has, historically, been quite messy when it comes to software distribution. We have various distribution-specific packaging formats like .deb (Debian / Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora) and the list just goes on and on. Canonical also went their own way with Ubuntu for the likes of Snap, but the real winner is going to end up being Flatpak and the main Flathub store."

Software distribution under Linux is anything but chaotic. On the contrary, it is extremely orderly.Each distribution offers its own software library and package format. This, among other things, increases system security. This makes it much more difficult to implant malware under Linux.

Snap was most certainly developed by Ubuntu to try to provide unique packages for all variants of its distributions, thus avoiding having to recompile packages x times for each of the Ubuntu versions still in use.

Flatpack will never replace .deb, .rpm, or other packages. Furthermore, unverified Flatpacks can pose serious security problems on a system.

Flatpack is used as the primary source of software access on distributions at the stage of development alpha / beta, on distributions that are immutable due to their structural complexity, or on new distributions that do not yet have enough software to offer their users. Flatpack is in no way intended to replace .deb, .rpm or other formats.

To understand Linux, analyze all of this from the perspective of developers and system engineers/architects. As an amateur unfamiliar with Linux, it is impossible to speculate on this subject without making a mistake.

From a down-to-earth point of view, Linux is free and benefits large groups such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc.

It's not Valve and its Steam client that are giving Linux a boost, but rather the other way around. Linux is provided to Valve in a fully functional state. Valve then simply adds its own layer (just like with Android for telephony), allowing them to launch an operating system bearing their name while drastically reducing research and development costs.

Today Linux is much easier to access for inexperienced users, but it should not be forgotten that this is an operating system developed by and for experienced professionals.

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That's one the games I have on my radar for this year. Kingdoms and Castles was fun (even though I did not spend that much time with it), and it received updates for years. Nova Roma looks even better.

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For immutable image type setups like SteamOS, it totally makes sense, but I'm loathe to have a bunch of different versions of libraries around because Flatpak A still depends on them and hasn't been updated yet - but I'm not the target audience if I'm actually reading the list of everything pacman (or apt, yum, etc.) wants to update and actively reviewing and deciding what I'm about to proceed with. (Looking at you, holding back Mesa for months because of that SteamVR regression.)

Containerisation is potentially nice, for sure, for all the same reasons Docker or Podman are. It's also potentially a pain in the butt for all the same reasons, if you have something that really needs a whole lot of permissions in the first place. 😅

I remember the days when Windows Vista(?)'s incessant UAC prompts just pushed people into turning it off entirely, and while my (mostly Steam Deck) experience with Flatpak has never been that bad, I've had to mess with Flatseal more than I want to, for things that 'just worked' on my desktop. I think giving emulators access to Bluetooth and USB gamepads was one of them - minor stuff, but the kind of stuff you'd expect an emulator to have the appropriate permissions for out of the box.

tl;dr, Flatpak is a great option, but I'm not moving from distro-native package management any time soon, and that's okay, because it doesn't have to be an either-or, and that's why Linux (and BSD, etc.) are awesome. 🩷

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Yeah, it would be great if more developers retained old versions. It would be better if it was mandatory. Being forced to update when regressions are pushed is never going to be cool with me.

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I'm more interested in the hardware itself, and Valve has proven their support is solid. Plus, they're uniquely positioned to genuinely care, as opposed to Oculus/Meta, Sony etc. If I'm going to be jumping onto anything VR at this point Valve hardware is probably the very top of that potential list.

Very curious about the pricing, though. I'm somewhat excited for some specific games, but not THAT excited about VR in general.

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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.

It'll only cost you all your ethics! A bargain!

That said, with the way public opinion is heading, particularly in the indie gaming space, I don't imagine having people find out you used AI on your game is going to gain you any fans, and some will likely see it as a betrayal. Word spreads fast about stuff like this so it's a heck of a risk.

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I hope Valve goes all in and makes an official Steam client flatpak.

Also hope SteamOS finally moves to Wayland whenever the Frame and Machine come out.

Flatpak's advantages are curious, I've noticed that the convenience benefits it brings have started to come in opposition with the security and containerization aspect it first featured. For me, I'd drop the containerization if it meant Flatpak becoming the user package manager for all Linux. Maybe there can be a standalone variant for the security benefits so that aspect is still present in a separate capacity.

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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.

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Except 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.

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Quoting: posthum4nI made a chick crusher 2000 and now I feel bad.

With the bounding box changes do automated cooked chicken contraptions work anymore, I wonder. I'm curious if it didn't IMPROVE the rates actually.

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