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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Quoting: DerpFoxBut for the onsite premium support you have to shell out a pretty big sum of money most of the time, nearly as much as the price of the machine itself.

This is certainly true. The 5 year support term was 1/3 of the price of the laptop, but I also think that it's completely worth it. I'd be spending more than that in 2-3 years when it breaks and I have to get a new laptop.

Quoting: DerpFoxThe big problem is consumer grade brands, they are inconsistent in their design and the warranty is subpar. Most of the time you can't just go buy spare parts. Or have to rely on third parties for that.

What I find surprising is how expensive business line laptops and parts are when they are so standardized and stream lined.

Completely agree on the low quality of consumer-grade laptops. As for the expense of business laptops...businesses are always willing to pay more for reliability. It's why Microsoft makes most of its money out of businesses, not consumers; they're a more reliable market.

While not all B2B companies treat their business customers well (Oracle), in general, they are treated far better than regular customers. If you treat business customers well, you will be rewarded with years and years of loyalty and guaranteed cashflow. You can also afford to knock up the prices a bit over time without fear of your customers jumping ship to whatever looks cheaper, because they'll start worrying about whether it's reliable as what they have now.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualOn the flip side, Dell has always been the best option if you want to keep your laptop for a long time. You can get up to 5 years of next-day business repair, anywhere in the world.

For me, this is like arguing against criticism of Microsoft's practises with "on the flip side, they got a really good support department!".

I realise this example is incidental to the point you're making, but Microsoft's support department is terrible. They pioneered having terrible support so that customers would never contact them for help, and now every mega technology corporation like Google and Facebook has followed suit. Have you tried contacting Microsoft's support department recently? I have.

I'm not saying that Dell's great support cancels out all they've done wrong but rather explaining why I made the choice to use them exclusively recently. It's not a counter-point but something additional to consider. I view the laptop market in general as an unfriendly industry, leaving people with terrible choices to make.

It was a lot of hard work trying to find a laptop WITHOUT a discrete GPU but with reasonable ports, like an ethernet port, 3+ USB-A ports, a headphone jack, and a HDMI port. I really don't want to play the dongle game. Dell has a business lineup of laptops that has good ports but no discrete GPU, which is exactly what I wanted. That was another reason I went for them.

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI spent several hours looking for a replacement charger for my ASUS laptop, but no one sells one.

See, this is the point: You don't NEED a ASUS charger unless ASUS are jerks. You can use any multi-charger with the right output, make sure it's the right voltage and ampere and off you go. That's the whole point.

I have several multi-chargers at home (due to a unhealthy obsession with guitar pedals :D) and the charger connectors on laptops today are largely standard (inner and outer ring). Also on the Dell laptops. So you CAN use a non-Dell charger on that laptop, it will boot and run, the motherboard will just not allow the battery to be charged due to a tiny controller on the motherboard that checks this.

And no support department in the world justifies this, imo. It's bad practise.

As someone with...not much knowledge about electronics, I personally have no idea what to do here. Where do I even find a charger like this? How do I get the right output? I was looking for a charger compatible with the ASUS-supplied charger, but they don't exist (for a laptop sold 2 years ago). At least I know Dell won't leave me out to dry or force me to buy an entirely new product to replace it (Apple). Companies intentionally encumbering their products annoys me, and that's why I'm so vehemently against DRM. I'm not attempting to justify this behaviour.

I'm not sure how long I'll stick with Dell, but I'm definitely never going back to buying a laptop from a physical store location. That's when you get wrapped up in their customer support scams which are always worse than what the manufacturer offers. Even if you bought a Dell laptop at one of these locations, they wouldn't offer you the 5 years of next-day business repair service.

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Quoting: BeamboomDo Dell still operate with a charger technology where the battery won't charge unless it's an original Dell charger?
They had an additional signal sent in the charger cable that told the motherboard if it was a charger from their brand. If not, the battery would not charge.

That's what made me promise to never touch a Dell product again. Stuff like that furiates me.

On the flip side, Dell has always been the best option if you want to keep your laptop for a long time. You can get up to 5 years of next-day business repair, anywhere in the world. Dell will come to you even if you are on holiday, to your hotel, to repair your laptop for you. No other manufacturer offers you this that I am aware of; they always want you to send your laptop in, if not ship it via post, wait 2-4 weeks, and more than likely they'll be unable to repair it because they stopped producing those parts months or years ago.

Dell sells replacement/spare parts on their official website. I spent several hours looking for a replacement charger for my ASUS laptop, but no one sells one. In order to get a replacement charger, I had to send my laptop in for repair and wait a month for it to come back. Huge pain.

That's when I made the decision never to buy a laptop from any manufacturer other than Dell. I had always used Dell laptops before, but my previous two laptops were ASUS laptops. After experiencing trouble with both of them, I've just accepted that it's a fact of life that laptops are going to break down, faster than you think.

On chargers: when I bought my current laptop, Dell upsold me the wrong spare charger (which was actually a power bank); the power bank could only be charged using a charger from 6+ years ago, which I fortunately had because I've had Dell laptops for a long time.

Laptops invariably all suck, I think, but Dell offers you the most recourse. At least Framework is around now for those interested in repairing their own devices.

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