I don't use KDE anymore, but the one thing I adopted from Dolphin (which is an amazing file manager) is single-click open. It just makes so much more sense. Why click twice when you can click once? I have single-click behavior enabled for Nautilus, though Nautilus is not as good as Dolphin because it doesn't have select handles. Nonetheless, it's comfortable.

What was that KDE motto again? Familiar by Default, Powerful When Needed?

I use single-key open in lf, too

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Quoting: dziadulewiczFor example Flatpak can't be chosen for Vivaldi browser because of Flatpak engineering it would require Vivaldi to turn off Sandboxing for their browser - something they will not do. Snaps doesn't have this issue; they're more flexible.

Well, the more you know. Here's Snap's official documentation on how that works: https://snapcraft.io/docs/browser-support-interface

Snap allows you to disable its own sandbox and use the browser's internal sandbox instead. The other thing worth noting is that Flatpak is designed with graphical software in mind. Snap works for every kind of package.

Writing a Snap or Flatpak manifest seems similar to writing a Dockerfile. I'll have to give it a try one of these days...it seems like a really neat way of packaging.

Quoting: dziadulewiczLooks like Canonical verifies each Snap and who packaged it with dedicated staff. I don't know how Red Hat does it with Flatpaks. Snaps have not shown problems for me personally for years now, but looks like you're basically on a wrong distro for wrong reasons.

Well, there was a cryptocurrency miner masquerading as software found in the Ubuntu Snap Store in 2018: https://ubuntu.com/blog/trust-and-security-in-the-snap-store

It's a somewhat confusing response from Canonical...

Quoting: CanonicalOf course, it is misleading if there is no indication of the secondary purpose of the application. That’s in fact why the application was taken down in the store. There are no rules against mining cryptocurrencies, but misleading users is a problem.

You can verify whether Flatpak packages are packaged by the developer with the blue checkmark (no, you can't bribe Flathub to give it to you). See Thunderbird: https://flathub.org/apps/org.mozilla.Thunderbird

More about how verification works here: https://flathub.org/about

Quoting: dziadulewiczMost "angry" people writing about this "forcing" and "down the throat" ad nauseum miss the fact that you can do whatever to your Ubuntu. But if you don't like Canonical's choices (which obviously serve their model) why are you keeping with it then? That makes no sense. If only you'd explain adequately your objections in terms that beginners can also understand. Just stating "Canonical are taking away choice" isn't it. Right?

I was an Ubuntu Desktop user for a month (and a few weeks in a VM), but these users most often complain about apt installing Firefox as a Snap package, when they expect apt will only deal with native packages.

To be honest, I think this is actually a good thing. Having two separate package managers in an absolute pain to manage, and that's coming from someone who uses Arch. I think openSUSE has the right end of it by letting you install literally everything inside of YaST Software Manager.

From what I can tell, you can't install libraries or some software in the repositories inside of the Software Managers in Ubuntu; you need Synaptic for that. I don't think Synaptic is installed by default, but it should be. Alternatively, whatever pretty software manager Ubuntu has should let you install everything in every format. Don't make users jump around different places. For all I know, this is how Ubuntu is designed already, and if so, they have my praise for that. If not, I'll just keep endlessly praising openSUSE...

But I think there should be an option for apt that forces installation of either the Snap or .deb package. Maybe there is one already.

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Quoting: whizseI just claim them using the website.

It's the website I find to be a chore! Coming from Australia, the website takes a minute to load up and redirect. Once I get to the sign in screen, I need to fill out two screens of "Which of these is a dolphin?" hcaptcha to prove I'm a human. Then I go back to the incredibly slow website to claim the game, which is another 4 screens. Usually about 20 seconds or more between them. Oh, and now I need to click on the dog before I can claim it, twice.

This was my experience claiming the current free game on EGS 10 minutes ago. Heroic Launcher isn't any better, but at least the client is less heavy than the official client when you're trying to launch the game and has more useful features.

Additionally, I've looked and looked but I can't seem to find any way to view my library on the website. I see lots of poor design choices. Steam isn't great either but at least you can find what you're looking for fairly quickly and the website isn't glacial.

Quoting: whizseMost of the freebies I have been interested in have been free of DRM and doesn't require the client. I just exfiltrate them using legendary and run them with Wine/Proton as I see fit.

Oh, right! I didn't know that. I assumed they were encumbered by DRM as they don't give you an obvious way to extract the game files. That's a good thing!

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I hate the Epic Games Store. It's such a chore to even sign in to claim the two free games a month that I stopped doing it a long time ago. Heroic Games Launcher is actually nicely designed and fast.

There are also no Linux games on EGS. I like GOG because it's the only big store (aside from Itch) that gives you the game files you can copy and launch yourself, but EGS doesn't do that. I struggle to find a single positive thing to say about EGS, because I can't even say competition is a good thing. If EGS somehow starts beating Steam, everything is worse for everyone.

Competition is only a good thing when the competitor is pedaling something you want. EGS fails to serve any of my needs or wants. Steam, GOG, and Itch all serve varying numbers of my needs and wants to varying degrees.

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I don't think it's a great way to treat your customers, but at least it works on Linux.

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Quoting: whizsek












Just kidding! I felt a little guilty seeing my innocuous query result in a reply of such length, wasn't sure if I was the one who should say sorry!

Well, I'm no stranger to long comments, haha. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter and all that. You should have seen the Comfysnug wiki pages before my co-writer mercilessly cut and simplified many sections of it... (not that I disagree with them at all on that count)

Quoting: whizseAnyhow, I do appreciate your rant. I love these insights in other peoples gaming habits on Linux, especially when it's an area totally foreign to me.

Lots of trials and tribulations. The text copying thing, it would frustrate the heck out of me. It would be such a small change for the developer to make. But no.... It's fortunate that you guys don't seem to be lacking in passion or perseverance.

Thank you for the reply and good luck with the fight against DRM! Gambatte!

I'm happy if you found my rant interesting. While I would love to completely eschew DRM and not buy VNs from publishers who treat their customers that way...my catalogue would be almost completely empty if I did that.

The Japanese are notoriously gung-ho about copyright. Can you imagine being arrested for creating a 10-minute "Fast Movie Summary" and putting it on YouTube anywhere else? How about for just linking to copyrighted material?

And the worst part? Visual novels are still some of the most illegally redistributed material in Japan. It hurts a lot, because many visual novel publishers are small companies, so you can see why they want to protect themselves. But it doesn't work anyway. I think English localizers realized this just wasn't working and decided treating their customers better was the only way they would have a chance. It's so rampant even among Western players that some VNs on Linux guides just assume you didn't pay for the game and obtained some crack to get past the DRM.

But yes, I don't think you see anywhere near the amount of helper software created for learning any other language. Japanese is pretty unique in that regard. I should mention that another reason Text Hooking is important is for automatically creating Anki Flashcards. Textractor automatically copies the line of text, Yomichan looks it up, you hit ALT+E to create a flashcard based on the unknown word, and you're done. It would take much longer to do it manually.

Thanks for the encouragement, haha.

Quoting: whizse(JDM is a car thing mostly, I'm just name dropping for internet points, but it does seem to fit!)

Definitely more succinct and distinctive than "Japanese language Japanese visual novels", haha.

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Quoting: whizse

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualit seems to be because Soft Denchi wants to register a watchdog service that runs at all times from system boot on Windows. It seems to require privileged access based on an ActiveX control (?) that Wine can't provide—

Nightmare fuel.

Not sure if you touched on this in previous posts but are streaming services for, or browser based, JDM visual novels a thing? It seems to be a good match if you want to be (over) protective of your games?

I assume JDM stands for "Japanese Domestic Market", and thanks—that's a good way of distinguishing them from localized Japanese visual novels.

Browser-based visual novels are indeed a thing over at novelgame.jp, but from where I stand, they're actually a pretty cool thing. You have the option of playing them in your browser or downloading a Windows executable. All the games, as far as I'm aware, are completely free but you can tip the creators if you want. I see it as a cool thing because they haven't done away with downloads altogether, the browser-based version isn't DRM'd at all, and you can play the game on any computer with a modern browser (even a cellphone).

I first learned about this site when I was putting together the comfysnug wiki pages—I learned a lot of things from all that research, haha.

I remember hearing about DMM Game Player requiring the player to be always-online. Specifically, here's the Fuwanovel thread about it: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/20271-drm-in-dmm-games/#comment-480810

QuoteDMM does have DMM Game Player, which is an incredibly annoying, super restrictive form of DRM. If the game you want uses this, then chances are you cannot hook it. You can not play the game offline, and you must launch it from the DMM Game Player lancher.

Personally, I stopped buying from DMM the instant I realized the games were encumbered by Soft Denchi, which didn't work in Wine. I only started playing JDM visual novels after becoming a Linux user, so thankfully I don't have some giant library of DMM games holding me on Windows...

Note that these users are discussing Text Hooking, which is where you use a program like Textractor to inject hooks into the game to copy the Japanese text. Once you copy the Japanese text, you can paste it into a dictionary (or use something like Yomichan) to look up an unknown word. It's much harder to look up the word otherwise; if you don't know how the word is read, you'd have to use OCR, try to write the Kanji with the correct stroke order, or choose radicals off the screen on jisho.org. If OCR doesn't work (it's like 70% accurate), it's a laborious process.

DMM Game Player and other DRM can prevent you from injecting hooks. As I hope you understand from the explanation above, this becomes a huge pain in the ass for Japanese learners even on Windows.

In fact, since this comment has already become a DMM hit piece, I'll add that you need a Japanese IP address at some point between purchasing the game and activating it in order to play the game. Not always or consistently, but reliably enough that I need to mention it in the comfysnug wiki Buying guide.

DLsite is a cool alternative store where some games are encumbered by PlayDRM, which actually does work in Wine, some still use Soft Denchi (geh), and some have no DRM at all. No DRM! They also have an English interface and a For-Women section. Not as many visual novels here, but a good selection.

English localizers historically encumbered their visual novels in the exact same way as DMM; MangaGamer even used Soft Denchi at one point. But today, no English localizers sell visual novels encumbered by DRM—Johren is the sole exception. If you ask me, every English localizer abandoned DRM for a reason, and I don't think Johren is going to win this fight. I can only hope a similar seachange happens in Japan.

Sorry for the length...I tried to keep my previous comments brief but, well, you opened a can of worms haha.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAdobe Suite in Wine would be nice...

I know some folks who are waiting for the Affinity suite to work nicely under Wine, too, so that they can drop MacOS in favour of Linux. Hopefully one day!

Well, on the subject of Affinity Suite, progress is actually pretty good:

• https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182758-affinity-suite-v204-on-linux-wine/


• https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/166159-affinity-photo-running-on-linux-with-bottles/

I use Affinity sometimes but unfortunately can't replace the Adobe suite fully with it. I also need to use Descript sometimes...

From my understanding, Adobe Suite was previously supported in Wine—Google even paid for a GSoC to maintain that support many years ago. The DRM is the biggest reason it doesn't work anymore. I have a feeling that if they could get the DRM working, CodeWeavers would find it worthwhile to get Adobe Suite working in CrossOver.

ACK! So sorry, I forgot to quote you before! Many many thanks for this info - I'll pass it along!

Happy if it helps. It's still in the early stages and I think they're only focused on getting Affinity 2+ to work, which I don't own yet (or ever?). Some of the information was compiled into this codeberg repository which hasn't been updated for a while but should give you the step-by-step process, apparently: https://codeberg.org/wanesty/affinity-wine-docs

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Quoting: elmapuli found some visual novels that were renpy projects and you could run by just opening it as an renpy project then executing then, not sure about all the rest.
can you be more specific? maybe we can work on it togheter to figure out more work arrounds to play those games

Ren'Py officially supports Linux so visual novels developed with that engine work fine natively, and a lot of western visual novel developers use Ren'Py. However, a lot of Japanese visual novels don't use Ren'Py—certainly not many of the visual novels released before, say, 2010.

English localizers generally do engine hacking to clean things up as part of bringing Japanese visual novels to English-speaking audiences, and as a result, most English localizations tend to work well in Wine—sometimes, like in the case of Higurashi, the game even gets a native Linux binary that wasn't present in the original Japanese release. They are also almost never encumbered by DRM, which boosts compatibility. Johren games are an exception to this, and I would be very surprised if their DRM'd games work in Wine.

I'm talking about the original Japanese visual novels released in Japanese. And again, most of those games work in Wine, albeit fullscreen is usually broken, and sometimes there are codec issues with cutscenes/opening movies, but I consider that fine because I can actually play them.

The issue is that most Japanese language visual novels are encumbered by the Soft Denchi DRM, which does not work in Wine. Here's a report from fallenguru on WineHQ about Soft Denchi: https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=33825

Through some of my own investigation, I discovered this error seems to be related to some ActiveX functionality Wine is missing, but I couldn't tell you any more than that.

To avoid this, I generally purchase visual novels physically, as they are usually not encumbered by DRM, which means an extra $50-$100 per purchase because most digital versions are broken in Wine due to Soft Denchi.

Alright, if you want more detail, you can have a look at the DRM section on the comfysnug wiki: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#drm_and_region_restrictions

And I already started a workshopping thread on VNDB for getting a DRM field so we can more easily identify which VNs have DRM. You can contribute there if you want: https://vndb.org/t20399

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAdobe Suite in Wine would be nice...

I know some folks who are waiting for the Affinity suite to work nicely under Wine, too, so that they can drop MacOS in favour of Linux. Hopefully one day!

Well, on the subject of Affinity Suite, progress is actually pretty good:

• https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182758-affinity-suite-v204-on-linux-wine/


• https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/166159-affinity-photo-running-on-linux-with-bottles/

I use Affinity sometimes but unfortunately can't replace the Adobe suite fully with it. I also need to use Descript sometimes...

From my understanding, Adobe Suite was previously supported in Wine—Google even paid for a GSoC to maintain that support many years ago. The DRM is the biggest reason it doesn't work anymore. I have a feeling that if they could get the DRM working, CodeWeavers would find it worthwhile to get Adobe Suite working in CrossOver.

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