Quoting: KithopI didn't really have any huge issue with either the old radeon or even proprietary fglrx drivers back in the day, and it's not that nVidia's are broken or unworkable (unless you like to keep up with kernel development)... but AMD invested a ton into mainlining the amdgpu drivers, while nVidia still refuses to release the firmware that would allow nouveau to enable reclocking.

That's true, AMD certainly does deserve some good will. As far as AMD goes, the big issues at least I had had to do with multi-monitor support "back when". Still, I don't see why it has to be a scale that tips in one or the others favor; Nvidia has provided solid drivers for linux for a long time even if AMD has (fairly recently) raised the bar.

Quoting: KithopAny other system builder targeting Windows, sure, nVidia is more popular. But for a Linux-first integrator pushing for openness, it's just odd to me to not even offer the equivalent hardware that doesn't require a binary blob. I'm not even saying not to sell or even default to nVidia if that's what they want, but I suppose there might be a way to sweet talk them into letting you order a GPU-less system and then BYO card.

We can only guess really. GPU-less certainly seems like a reasonable ask to me.

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Quoting: KithopEven if the Radeon options were just greyed out for now with 'out of stock', it's just so odd to push for openness everywhere else in the system...and then only offer nVidia's binary-blob-driver cards as GPUs.

Honestly I find it kind of strange the hate nVidia receives over their closed drivers recently. For a long, long, time ATI could've cared less about linux and while nvidia's drivers were closed they offered very good support (at least for my consumer desktop cards, I do understand that not-those cards weren't supported as well).

I've been a linux guy a long time so I get the whole frowny-face about it, but I mean like, ATI hasn't been friendly for all that long either. To the degree that I've used my nvidia cards for a long time, so long in fact that when I bought them the ATI/AMD support was still utter garbage in linux.

Not to derail too much, but I wish those System76 cases were available standalone; maybe without the giant "watermarking". Such a nice look compared to the energy-drink-reject look of so many desktop cases today.

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Quoting: GuestI really must find the time one day to sort out what is going wrong with DXVK on my system. Still cannot get Portal2 -vulkan to actually work, or newer DXVK versions in a system wine prefix, and I'm convinced that they are related.

I have the odd feeling that Valve will strip out the OpenGL backend and leave me unable to play it at all.

I can't speak for the portal2-bundled DXVK, but I had an issue with my system wine prefix a while back to watch out for -- especially since it's such an easy thing to miss. If it's an old prefix, be mindful that in recent years Wine started defaulting to 64-bit prefixes but as I'd been using the same prefix for years it was still 32-bit and I was trying to run a 64-bit app.

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Quoting: heidi.wenger

Quoting: dibz

Quoting: EikeAGS

Speaking of! Did you see that ScummVM is working on AGS support? Well, again -- it's not new, but it has renewed interest! It's not an official announcement either, but the news came via one of the dev blogs -- https://planet.scummvm.org/.

I'm thrilled personally. They noted in their post the same problem I had w/ using (linux in my context) native AGS builds w/ various games though -- that custom AGS plugins can be problematic at times. I'm hoping with ScummVM being as notable as it is, that it drives compatible builds of said plugins and renews interest. The last line of the blog post is especially interesting, "One day in the near future, expect to play some of the classic AGS games like the AGDI Sierra remakes in ScummVM :)". Though, since those remakes don't use special plugins, they actually work fine with native linux AGS builds already -- but exciting nonetheless!

So this (AGS) means that one can play or example Technobabylon thru ScummVM?

Eventually, yeah. Unfortunately Wadjet Eye games do tend to use custom plugins, so there is probably going to be a hurdle there. For Luxtorpeda when I initially contributed AGS support, I was able to use a replacement plugin that stubbed out all the steam-related stuff that the plugin was for (Achievements). For games where the custom plugins only do things like that it could be an option. Other games could use plugins for visual effects and things of that nature, so those couldn't be just stubbed out for instance.

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Quoting: EikeAGS

Speaking of! Did you see that ScummVM is working on AGS support? Well, again -- it's not new, but it has renewed interest! It's not an official announcement either, but the news came via one of the dev blogs -- https://planet.scummvm.org/.

I'm thrilled personally. They noted in their post the same problem I had w/ using (linux in my context) native AGS builds w/ various games though -- that custom AGS plugins can be problematic at times. I'm hoping with ScummVM being as notable as it is, that it drives compatible builds of said plugins and renews interest. The last line of the blog post is especially interesting, "One day in the near future, expect to play some of the classic AGS games like the AGDI Sierra remakes in ScummVM :)". Though, since those remakes don't use special plugins, they actually work fine with native linux AGS builds already -- but exciting nonetheless!

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyPersonally, I like Cinnamon quite well, but I use Mint with Mate because of a particular personal schtick: I like having a few launchers on the taskbar and launching my most-used applications that way. But I also like plenty of space on the taskbar for showing the different windows, because my long habit from old Windows days is to switch between things that way. So I like having two taskbars--one along the bottom for application switching, one going up the right hand side for launchers (on the side because widescreen real estate). Mate is happy to do that for me, and thus far every time I've tried Cinnamon I couldn't get that to happen. So I've stuck with Mate, but it's not like I have anything against Cinnamon; it's quite nice, it's just that one feature I want.

Recently when I got a new desktop I tried out Ubuntu Mate on it for a while. Didn't like it as much, I'm happy to be back with Mint.

Was the taskbar/panels thing perchance quite a few years ago? When I initially jumped ship from Gnome, about the time Gnome3 came out, at the time Cinnamon didn't really support multiple panels very well; and is ultimately how I decided on XFCE at the time. It came a long way in a short time back then and hasn't been an issue in a long time as far as I'm aware, but that said, I ended up loving XFCE so much I've never had a reason to switch to cinnamon.

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I'm honestly not sure on the good choice for gamers thing. I mostly game on my HTPC, which is Windows still, and that runs Kodi and my games on a big tv/armchair gaming.

That said, my main desktop/workstation has been Linux for a very long time; and I do do _some_ gaming on it, mostly keyboard+mouse stuff like RTS, point-and-click adventures, and generally light-duty single player stuff (after all, my gaming hardware isn't in this PC, so it's an older GTX for instance). For those games, it runs them great without any issues at all; this includes setup of course. Steam runs great, Proton does a great job, Minigalaxy is great, some Humblebundle linux games, some AGS games I set up myself, stuff like that. Lutris is good but I find I have to tweak too much to get games working, it's good, but the weird combination of a simple-interface-but-also-kind-of-a-pain-tweaking isn't for me.

So I guess yeah, being Ubuntu based, it's a good choice. Drivers are very easy to set up as well, Steam/the-others are easy to get going, etc. Mint also has sane default packaging that makes it even more ready to use then Ubuntu in my personal opinion. That said, I also don't really play big multiplayer/competitive games whatsoever -- they're just not my jam -- so I can pretty much guarantee that a "good experience" depends on what you want to play. I'm quite sure Anti-cheat stuff is still a problem for linux in general, it just doesn't apply to me since I don't really play those games.

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Quoting: scaineThat's really interesting. I only use about 3 or 4 PPAs (Mesa, Wine, Chrome/Dropbox and OBS), but I've found the Mint upgrade to be a real train wreck. It refused to upgrade unless I downgraded all my packages first, which took ages. Then finally upgraded, then I had to restore all my PPAs, and so on. It was painful stuff. To be fair, Ubuntu isn't hugely better - but it automates a lot of the process for you.

But just look at these instructions... holy cow. https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

You're not kidding about holy cow there, wow. Looks extremely verbose, and almost all of it seems to be about taking backups and such. That's also...not quite the right instructions, they should probably be more clear about that...

https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-20.html

I guess I was wrong about it being in upgrade manager, could've sworn it was. Uses the "mintupgrade" tool. I've taken backups like the doc suggests, but I've never bothered to downgrade any PPAs or anything; but then I don't use any PPAs that would interfere with system packages to begin with (that's "looking for trouble"). I will say this though, if you use any PPAs for newer graphics drivers it would be wise to downgrade and remove _that_ PPA in advance.

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Quoting: scaineCertainly, Mint's biggest problem is the lack of an upgrade path. You basically have to re-install every two years, simple as that. Hardly ideal. But otherwise, it's amazing. So why am I constantly on the lookout for another distro...?

Oh? The upgrade path typically "opens" shortly after new releases, and they appear as a menu item in the update manager. The update manager does not, however, alert you about this; I believe that's intentional as the Mint camp typically, as well as any sane person would, tell a person not to do a major upgrade unless they had an actual reason to. It's fair to say I probably only knew about this because I subscribe to their rss feed on their homepage, and when they announce new releases, they also announce upgrade instructions typically; I doubt I'd be aware of the details otherwise. It's a few clicks to do and is pretty similar to just doing a normal update. All that being the case, if you don't mind doing new installs, keep doing them IMHO. Any OS, Windows and OSX included, tends to appreciate a fresh start once in a while. I've used the upgrade method for the last few major versions.

That said, for a long, long, time I've only made two data partitions for my installs -- home, and everything else, so if/when I ever need to do the nuclear option and actually reinstall it takes maybe twenty minutes combined; including picking out whatever software selection post install. Pretty much all my settings/icons/themes are in my home directory anyway, so even a fresh install takes very little time -- but I still haven't had to in a long time now. Not to make this about Windows, but honestly, whenever I have to do a full windows install it tends to be an all day affair in comparison; I'm not sure when it happened, but I tell ya, setting up Linux sure became far easier then windows at some point.

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Quoting: NanobangI expect it'll end up being Mint XFCE in the end, though. :)

That's my personal favourite and is what I currently use. Incidentally, and I suspect many people started "touring" just like I did back when Gnome3 first came out coming from a Gnome2 preference at the time, after trying several I ended up with XFCE.

The funny thing is at the time I thought to myself "XFCE is a better Gnome2 then Gnome2 ever was."

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