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Latest Comments by pleasereadthemanual
Wine 8.12 brings more Wayland work and performance improvements
9 July 2023 at 8:39 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlThe issue with stock vkd3d is not simply lack of features - it's going to perform worse because it's not using all available Vulkan options.
Worse performance is not much of an issue with visual novels because so little is going on most of the time, but it would be great to have better performance, of course.

Wine 8.12 brings more Wayland work and performance improvements
9 July 2023 at 8:33 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualDo you know if there is a way to use VKD3D-Proton for non-Steam games? I very much doubt I'll have need of more advanced D3D12 features, but it would be good to know.

I simply build dxvk and vkd3d-proton periodically and have them enabled in the prefix (as symlinks). So once that is set, you don't need to update the prefix, just update the built dlls in whatever location you store them.

For building, I made this script:

https://gist.github.com/shmerl/3d49bee2ca04c1016f72366dca9438ce

But I think both dxvk and vkd3d proton provide periodic releases where you can get their DLLs if you don't want to build them yourself.
For DXVK, I just use the winetricks verb and that has worked fine, but Winetricks doesn't provide a way keep verbs like dxvk up-to-date, unfortunately. Thanks for that script—that might become my preferred way of installing/updating dxvk outside of Lutris!

I was under the impression that VKD3D-Proton had some fixes/features that were specific to the Steam runtime. But if it's for general use, that's great.

Wine 8.12 brings more Wayland work and performance improvements
9 July 2023 at 8:11 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: GroganI've not heard anything more about that... just like you don't hear too much about them superseding dxvk anymore (and their vkd3d doesn't cut the mustard for DX12 gaming)
From what I've heard, their official vkd3d isn't meant as a replacement for vkd3d-proton, because they intend it to be usable on macOS over MoltenVK, so they are avoiding more advanced and recent Vulkan features that won't work there. In contrast vkd3d-proton is using whatever is available in Vulkan for best performance so I expect it to be always better (on Linux). Same goes for dxvk I assume.
Do you know if there is a way to use VKD3D-Proton for non-Steam games? I very much doubt I'll have need of more advanced D3D12 features, but it would be good to know.

On the other hand, I've never understood what the point of disabling VKD3D in Lutris's options is...it ships with WINE, and it's the only compatibility layer WINE has for D3D12. I guess it might make more sense with their own runtime?

Nearly 40% of Linux gamers on Steam are on Steam Deck
4 July 2023 at 5:46 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: TheRiddickScaling is hard to get right when everyone uses a completely different window backend. In saying that they should get it right for each of the major desktop engines like XFCE/GNOME/PLASMA/CINAMON etc... It's important to keep in mind that Linux desktop is going through a revolution phase atm so things are changing so old was stop working.
The old client worked perfectly well. It didn't have hardware acceleration, but at least the overlay worked back then. It was broken months ago in Beta, and now it's broken in Stable, so I have to assume this is very low priority for them. I wouldn't harp on about this except it makes partying up with friends much more annoying.

At a minimum, they should get it right for GNOME and KDE. The other desktop environments use either GTK or Qt, so it's unlikely for compatibility to be perfect in GNOME but absolutely broken in XFCE and Cinnamon, for example. Each has their own Wayland compositor, of course, so that makes things a bit trickier.

Presumably. I don't pretend to know much about the graphical side. Or much of anything, really.

Nearly 40% of Linux gamers on Steam are on Steam Deck
4 July 2023 at 12:39 am UTC

Quoting: denyasis
Quoting: MohandevirAfter the last update, for me Steam is now totally broken in my computer, fonts are huge and menus do not fit into the space they are given.

Is your computer "older"? I noticed on my older laptop (2015), Steam has gotten very sluggish this year. It takes almost 3-5 min to start (and that's with a new SSD and memory). I tend to game on my laptop, streaming from my desktop, so maybe this is their way of telling me I need to upgrade, lol.
I'll jump in here and say I'm having similar scaling issues on my <4 year old desktop with good hardware on the Steam client. It's just a general lack of quality control from Valve and something they seem unlikely to fix any time soon.

My issues: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/steam-overhauled-new-overlay-steam-deck-big-stable-update/page=1/#r245281

Classic LucasArts games emulator DREAMM adds early Linux support
30 June 2023 at 2:19 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: omer666
Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: CyrilNot open source, so not interested... And the reasons given, seems too much selfish for me.
Out of curiosity, what justification would you accept?

I don't think there's a more common reason for releasing an application under a proprietary license than, "I would like to reserve the exclusive right to commercial exploitation."

Interesting to note the developer of this emulator originally worked on official ports to other operating systems for LucasArts in the '90s.
Can't talk in Cyril's name, but we've seen many such (really good) projects, like Kega Fusion or pSX just to name a few, disappear with their dev altogether after a few years.

Let's say it's okay if you've got one of these games laying around but you can't take this as a permanent solution for playing these until it's open sourced or it's become an official way of running them bundled on Steam.
I'm the first to advocate for free software, and it would be good for DREAMM to be released under a free license for the reasons you state. I was curious about what reason would not be "selfish" enough for Cyril to accept to release your software under a proprietary license (and I got my answer).

Classic LucasArts games emulator DREAMM adds early Linux support
30 June 2023 at 2:12 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOut of curiosity, what justification would you accept?
Honestly: none. But this one is particularly selfish I think. Plus I don't believe your software have to be proprietary to have "exclusive right to commercial exploitation". You can make money from Free Software, and that's not necessarily a bad thing...
I agree with what others said, especially Purple Library Guy (who's surprised?).
Sorry, I don't login much anymore. Took a while to see this reply.

But my point is free software means you give up your exclusive right to commercial exploitation. Read Drew DeVault's post on this: https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.html

Anyone can exploit free software for commercial gain. That's an important feature of free software.

Classic LucasArts games emulator DREAMM adds early Linux support
23 June 2023 at 12:19 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: CyrilNot open source, so not interested... And the reasons given, seems too much selfish for me.
Out of curiosity, what justification would you accept?

I don't think there's a more common reason for releasing an application under a proprietary license than, "I would like to reserve the exclusive right to commercial exploitation."

Interesting to note the developer of this emulator originally worked on official ports to other operating systems for LucasArts in the '90s.

AMD reveals initial open source openSIL code to replace AGESA Firmware
16 June 2023 at 12:25 am UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: MayeulC
Quoting: PikoloI'm confused. Why add Pluton to the same CPUs then? So you get open-source firmware with a backdoor?

From Wikipedia:

QuotePluton is a Microsoft-designed security subsystem that implements a hardware-based root of trust for Azure Sphere. It includes a security processor core, cryptographic engines, a hardware random number generator, public/private key generation, asymmetric and symmetric encryption, support for elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) verification for secured boot, and measured boot in silicon to support remote attestation with a cloud service, and various tampering counter-measures.


I don't see anything that constitutes a backdoor here. It's more akin to a TPM. From what I'm reading above, this processor probably can't access system memory, spy or change anything on the main machine.
Measured boot is typically done "manually" by bootloader, IIRC, each stage providing a hash of the next stage before executing it.

One should maintain a healthy dose of skepticism against Microsoft-provided solutions, but this doesn't mean spreading FUD :)
I was reading the GNU Project's article on Trusted Computing recently, and one thing that stood out to me is that remote attestation is the one thing that makes all the nefarious stuff work:

Quoting: rmsAs of 2015, the main method of distributing copies of anything is over the internet, and specifically over the web. Nowadays, the companies that want to impose DRM on the world want it to be enforced by programs that talk to web servers to get copies. This means that they are determined to control your browser as well as your operating system. The way they do this is through “remote attestation”—a facility with which your computer can “attest” to the web server precisely what software it is running, such that there is no way you can disguise it. The software it would attest to would include the web browser (to prove it implements DRM and gives you no way to extract the unencrypted data), the kernel (to prove it gives no way to patch the running browser), the boot software (to prove it gives no way to patch the kernel when starting it), and anything else relating to the security of the DRM companies' dominion over you.

Under an evil empire, the only crack by which you can reduce its effective power over you is to have a way to hide or disguise what you are doing. In other words, you need a way to lie to the empire's secret police. “Remote attestation” is a plan to force your computer to tell the truth to a company when its web server asks the computer whether you have liberated it.

As of 2015, treacherous computing has been implemented for PCs in the form of the “Trusted Platform Module”; however, for practical reasons, the TPM has proved a total failure for the goal of providing a platform for remote attestation to verify Digital Restrictions Management. Thus, companies implement DRM using other methods. At present, “Trusted Platform Modules” are not being used for DRM at all, and there are reasons to think that it will not be feasible to use them for DRM. Ironically, this means that the only current uses of the “Trusted Platform Modules” are the innocent secondary uses—for instance, to verify that no one has surreptitiously changed the system in a computer.

...

This also does not mean that remote attestation is not a threat. If ever a device succeeds in implementing that, it will be a grave threat to users' freedom. The current “Trusted Platform Module” is harmless only because it failed in the attempt to make remote attestation feasible. We must not presume that all future attempts will fail too.

As of 2022, the TPM2, a new “Trusted Platform Module”, really does support remote attestation and can support DRM. The threat I warned about in 2002 has become terrifyingly real.