Now, if only indie Japanese publishers—namely, those who publish visual novels—expressed equivalent interest in Steam. That said, I do wonder if Valve is actually interested in having more visual novels on their platform...

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Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyone figure out how to get it onto the SteamDeck yet? Still maintain that Gnome would have been a better interface on it...

Gnome would be a worse interface due to it’s forceful restrictions and constant desire to break it’s addons.

Plasma is looser but less likely to decide things like “the global file menu isn’t necessary” or “the calendar and clock should be centered”.

So don't use addons. The only one that's necessary in some instances is AppIndicators. Can you name some of these forceful restrictions?

Yikes, that’s the whole issue with Gnome is telling it’s users what they do and don’t need. I don’t use Gnome at all because it’s very restrictive. To the point where you have to install a separate config utility to tweak certain options on the desktop.

So I will gladly not use addons because I don’t use Gnome I use KDE Plasma.

I'm not making any assumptions about what you want with your desktop. I'm simply saying that if you want GNOME to be reliable, don't rely on extensions. If you can't use GNOME without extensions, it almost certainly isn't for you, and you'll have a bad time with it.

Maintaining an extensions API requires time and attention that can't be spent anywhere else. That's why the GIMP Team almost deprecated their extensions feature recently until somebody offered to maintain it. I can't begrudge the GNOME Team for focusing on what they believe is important at the expense of what they don't.

GNOME being opinionated is a good thing, as well. It means their small team only needs to focus on specific use cases they want to support, and most features work very reliably. More features are being moved from GNOME Tweaks to the general settings application over time, though I think the only feature that doesn't belong in Tweaks right now is Startup Applications.

There are things about GNOME that I wish were different, of course:

• I wish that I didn't have to go through dconf-editor to add keyboard shortcuts for workspaces 5-10 (and I wish that I didn't have to spend far too much time figuring out the keysyms to get this done, even working around a bug that prevents the "correct" keysym from being used)


• I wish that there was an option that dismissed notifications after 3 seconds.


• I wish GNOME Books wasn't useless.

I'm actually using Sway right now, but I've always been fond of GNOME. I think it takes all the good things from macOS, combines that with solid window management and workspace management, and doesn't ship a terrible file manager. I've always treated it as a WM with far less time investment required from the user.

I really don't think GNOME is particularly restrictive...it just doesn't have some of the features you want, and if you want them, you can rely on an extension at your peril. If GNOME were really adamant about their way being the only way, they wouldn't bother maintaining their extensions feature at all, and they wouldn't ship GNOME Tweaks. Instead, they nudge their users into considering an alternative to the traditional desktop metaphor because they think it's better.

Or I’ll continue using KDE which is stable and has many ways to extend the desktop. Why would I sacrifice usability for opinionated desktop? Especially if I can get that opinionated style with greater flexibility elsewhere.

You'll notice that I never suggested you use GNOME.

But you did suggest using Gnome without extensions. Which I wouldn’t ever do. A lot of extensions are things like “system tray shortcut for X app”. Those break all the time and it’s often weeks before it is working again. I don’t know how Gnome fans can continue to ignore it but I literally changed distros from Pop_OS to Manjaro because of Gnome and it’s extension breakage.

Maybe they think it’s better to restrict the desktop but I have a strong disagree.

As for terrible things in Gnome, the file manager might be one of the biggest.

I suggested that if you can't use GNOME without extensions, GNOME is not the desktop for you. It's very common for users to complain about GNOME being unstable due to running any number of extensions in an effort to introduce a lot of new and differing functionality they want out of GNOME, which I generally view as uninformed criticism. These users would be far better off giving GNOME a chance on its own merits or using another desktop environment. Distributions like Ubuntu can afford to load up GNOME with extensions because they hold back newer versions of GNOME when their extensions stop working.

I have only ever used the AppIndicators extension because I have never needed anything else. I have never experienced any issues with it. Part of why I used GNOME was that it was a far more reliable experience than KDE.

While I think Dolphin is better by virtue of having a clickable path and handles on folders/files in one-click mode, I quite like Nautilus. I'm also curious what it is about Nautilus you think makes it terrible. I've used Finder—that's the bottom of the barrel of file managers as far as I'm concerned.

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Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyone figure out how to get it onto the SteamDeck yet? Still maintain that Gnome would have been a better interface on it...

Gnome would be a worse interface due to it’s forceful restrictions and constant desire to break it’s addons.

Plasma is looser but less likely to decide things like “the global file menu isn’t necessary” or “the calendar and clock should be centered”.

So don't use addons. The only one that's necessary in some instances is AppIndicators. Can you name some of these forceful restrictions?

Yikes, that’s the whole issue with Gnome is telling it’s users what they do and don’t need. I don’t use Gnome at all because it’s very restrictive. To the point where you have to install a separate config utility to tweak certain options on the desktop.

So I will gladly not use addons because I don’t use Gnome I use KDE Plasma.

I'm not making any assumptions about what you want with your desktop. I'm simply saying that if you want GNOME to be reliable, don't rely on extensions. If you can't use GNOME without extensions, it almost certainly isn't for you, and you'll have a bad time with it.

Maintaining an extensions API requires time and attention that can't be spent anywhere else. That's why the GIMP Team almost deprecated their extensions feature recently until somebody offered to maintain it. I can't begrudge the GNOME Team for focusing on what they believe is important at the expense of what they don't.

GNOME being opinionated is a good thing, as well. It means their small team only needs to focus on specific use cases they want to support, and most features work very reliably. More features are being moved from GNOME Tweaks to the general settings application over time, though I think the only feature that doesn't belong in Tweaks right now is Startup Applications.

There are things about GNOME that I wish were different, of course:

• I wish that I didn't have to go through dconf-editor to add keyboard shortcuts for workspaces 5-10 (and I wish that I didn't have to spend far too much time figuring out the keysyms to get this done, even working around a bug that prevents the "correct" keysym from being used)


• I wish that there was an option that dismissed notifications after 3 seconds.


• I wish GNOME Books wasn't useless.

I'm actually using Sway right now, but I've always been fond of GNOME. I think it takes all the good things from macOS, combines that with solid window management and workspace management, and doesn't ship a terrible file manager. I've always treated it as a WM with far less time investment required from the user.

I really don't think GNOME is particularly restrictive...it just doesn't have some of the features you want, and if you want them, you can rely on an extension at your peril. If GNOME were really adamant about their way being the only way, they wouldn't bother maintaining their extensions feature at all, and they wouldn't ship GNOME Tweaks. Instead, they nudge their users into considering an alternative to the traditional desktop metaphor because they think it's better.

Or I’ll continue using KDE which is stable and has many ways to extend the desktop. Why would I sacrifice usability for opinionated desktop? Especially if I can get that opinionated style with greater flexibility elsewhere.

You'll notice that I never suggested you use GNOME.

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Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyone figure out how to get it onto the SteamDeck yet? Still maintain that Gnome would have been a better interface on it...

Gnome would be a worse interface due to it’s forceful restrictions and constant desire to break it’s addons.

Plasma is looser but less likely to decide things like “the global file menu isn’t necessary” or “the calendar and clock should be centered”.

So don't use addons. The only one that's necessary in some instances is AppIndicators. Can you name some of these forceful restrictions?

Yikes, that’s the whole issue with Gnome is telling it’s users what they do and don’t need. I don’t use Gnome at all because it’s very restrictive. To the point where you have to install a separate config utility to tweak certain options on the desktop.

So I will gladly not use addons because I don’t use Gnome I use KDE Plasma.

I'm not making any assumptions about what you want with your desktop. I'm simply saying that if you want GNOME to be reliable, don't rely on extensions. If you can't use GNOME without extensions, it almost certainly isn't for you, and you'll have a bad time with it.

Maintaining an extensions API requires time and attention that can't be spent anywhere else. That's why the GIMP Team almost deprecated their extensions feature recently until somebody offered to maintain it. I can't begrudge the GNOME Team for focusing on what they believe is important at the expense of what they don't.

GNOME being opinionated is a good thing, as well. It means their small team only needs to focus on specific use cases they want to support, and most features work very reliably. More features are being moved from GNOME Tweaks to the general settings application over time, though I think the only feature that doesn't belong in Tweaks right now is Startup Applications.

There are things about GNOME that I wish were different, of course:

• I wish that I didn't have to go through dconf-editor to add keyboard shortcuts for workspaces 5-10 (and I wish that I didn't have to spend far too much time figuring out the keysyms to get this done, even working around a bug that prevents the "correct" keysym from being used)


• I wish that there was an option that dismissed notifications after 3 seconds.


• I wish GNOME Books wasn't useless.

I'm actually using Sway right now, but I've always been fond of GNOME. I think it takes all the good things from macOS, combines that with solid window management and workspace management, and doesn't ship a terrible file manager. I've always treated it as a WM with far less time investment required from the user.

I really don't think GNOME is particularly restrictive...it just doesn't have some of the features you want, and if you want them, you can rely on an extension at your peril. If GNOME were really adamant about their way being the only way, they wouldn't bother maintaining their extensions feature at all, and they wouldn't ship GNOME Tweaks. Instead, they nudge their users into considering an alternative to the traditional desktop metaphor because they think it's better.

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Quoting: itscalledreality

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyone figure out how to get it onto the SteamDeck yet? Still maintain that Gnome would have been a better interface on it...

Gnome would be a worse interface due to it’s forceful restrictions and constant desire to break it’s addons.

Plasma is looser but less likely to decide things like “the global file menu isn’t necessary” or “the calendar and clock should be centered”.

So don't use addons. The only one that's necessary in some instances is AppIndicators. Can you name some of these forceful restrictions?

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Quoting: mylka

Quoting: redman

Quoting: ShmerlNo GOG release for some reason?

I assume DRM Free is not compatible with Disney... I really wish it goes to GOG but my expectation is really low, like the Linux version of it, really really low.

do linux games have DRM?

If nothing else, many Steam games are encumbered with Steamworks CEG DRM. The native Linux versions of the Higurashi games on Steam prevent Textractor from working, so I ended up having to buy the games again from MangaGamer's website to get my texthooker to work. As it turns out, the games are only encumbered on Steam.

However, there's no reason for developers to stop there with DRM on Linux. As another, non-game example, there's Widevine's EME modules for web browsers, which sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime use to encrypt their video, which also works on Linux.

Yes, Native Linux games can and do have DRM.

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Quoting: elmapulsecond: WSL wouldnt work on windows 7, 8 and 8.1, people whould be forced to use windows 10/11 or linux (wich is unlikely they would)

I have to wonder why developers are expected to support operating systems that have reached end-of-life or will reach end-of-life in less than a year.

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Quoting: foobrewThings changed a bit about seven or eight years ago. I think they realized there was more money to be made catering to the MacOS crowd rather than Linux users and their focus very clearly shifted in that direction. This is largely because they found they could sell their porting expertise as a service to the actual game devs and publishers who wanted their Windows-only app or game to also have a Mac version. They still would make improvements to game compatibility on the Linux side but it just wasn't as rapid or significant as earlier. Honestly, I've half-expected them to announce dropping Linux support altogether for years now.

I don't think Codeweavers makes all that much more money from CrossOver on macOS than Linux (you can check the number of forum posts on the macOS vs Linux topics, and while it is larger, it is not significantly larger), but macOS users certainly *need* CrossOver more. Their other WINE choices are limited - PlayOnMac tends to be the most popular free software alternative.

But something important to remember is that Codeweavers is the principal organisation behind WINE. They are responsible for over one-third of the commits to the project, and they've hired dozens of core WINE developers over the years (including Alexandre Juliard, project lead of WINE since 1993). While there have been other companies that have pushed WINE development forward over the years, including TransGaming, CodeWeavers differs in that they have always been the most enthusiastic in contributing their changes back to WINE once they are ready to be accepted. CodeWeavers have been around the longest, and they're also responsible for hosting the winehq website and maintaining other WINE infrastructure.

WINE (the free software project) and Codeweavers are far more intricately tied together than you may initially realise, and I don't think that GNU/Linux support is going away any time soon. Even if it's not a lucrative market. I think there are too many people at CodeWeavers that care about GNU/Linux for that to happen (all the way up to James Ramsey).

Now, I assume they're making a lot of their money contracting with Valve on parts of Proton. They're working with Valve in a great effort to undermine their own product on the GNU/Linux platform, and have succeeded quite handily (but keep in mind they have been doing this for decades already with WINE). It's hard to say, but I don't think CodeWeavers are struggling. I like to believe they're still earning a lot of cashflow in their partnership with Valve and through other contracting work.

QuoteFor myself, I won't be renewing and I won't really miss it either. There's just too many other fine solutions which provide an experience as good or better for..nothing.

I can agree with this. I originally became a CrossOver customer because I needed to use Microsoft Word...and I don't, anymore. It was the only WINE wrapper that worked on Office 365 for me, though. It also worked for Kindle For PC...which I also intend never to use again. CrossOver has very limited use cases on GNU/Linux. I was hoping they might get around to getting the Affinity Creative Suite working one of these days.

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Happy if this means more Japanese-language VNs on Steam.

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Quoting: tuubiThat said, next business day on-site support is available from most of the big business brands. Dell, HP and Lenovo for sure. Price and quality of support might differ though. And they don't usually cover anything outside of their business ranges of products.

Thanks for letting me know this! I did wonder why Dell appeared to be the only brand that did this for years, when their support is actually fulfilled by IBM's network, of all companies, given that Dell is the company that took the largest slice of IBM's PC market share way back when.

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