Quoting: GustyGhostOne thing is for sure, it would be hilarious watching all of you guys who are so deeply embedded in Steam freak out over a Microsoft acquisition. A little lesson in all your eggs in one basket if you know what I mean.

This is one of the "key" reasons why GOG.com is my first choice for games these days - because they're DRM-free and thus, I am not "locked" to one proprietary company... I only really buy from Steam if they're the only place that have a particular game for Linux and even though, I go out of my way to make sure it's never going to be sold on GOG.com first.

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Microsoft can have EA... People can defend them all they want, but EA have some of the worst business practices in the entire industry. Not to mention the fact that when it comes to customer service, I can't think of too many companies (in any industry) which can compete with EA for poor standards - in their defence, EA aren't the worst, but they're certainly high on the list.

Valve Software though? I agree it won't happen, but in the unlikely event that it did, I'd be closing my Steam account the very next day - Microsoft has always been sketchy at best, but at least under Bill Gates, I sort-of trusted the company (yep, I'm anti-Microsoft, but a pretty big admirer of Bill Gates!)... It's been a long time since I've had any trust for Microsoft though, and if they were still updating them, I wouldn't even trust them with the dozen or so Handheld PCs I have in the garage!

Fortunately, we have GOG.com and whilst they lost much of their "Linux steam" (pun intended) once they had launched the initial 100 Linux games they promised, they still seem to be semi-dedicated to Linux... Linux releases have slowed to a trickle, but every once in a while they surprise us with something particularly awesome.

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Quoting: musojon74I'd use an open driver over the nvidia blob if it was better. But I don't see why I have to use exclusively open source stuff.

I don't buy into the whole "you must use Open Source stuff exclusively" mentality that a lot of Linux users seem to have.

Yes Open Source software has a lot of advantages over proprietary software and partially because of this, I'll use Open Source software where I can... But there's just as many scenarios out there where it is not feasible to offer Open Source software, and/or proprietary software simply outperforms the Open Source equivalents.

You can still be a pretty strong Open Source advocate without restricting yourself Richard Stallman-style...

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Quoting: GuestA lot of the comments though, it really doesn't seem like open software ideals matter, and they want things like on windows. So when I read about how things that should attract more users, I have to wonder at the cost. Surely open drivers that are installed out of the box will do far more to keep the OS open and free, and GNU/Linux, than reliance on blobs? Which means Intel and AMD (firmware notwithstanding), and encouraging users to look at nouveau.

Most of what I use is Open Source and I will usually choose Open Source software over proprietary software... But I also don't want to spend all day fixing my computers or in the case of gaming, spend hours on end trying to maximize the performance, only to end up with a sub-par experience.

It's not ideal that NVIDIA users need to proprietary drivers for the best performance... But sometimes compromises need to be made.

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Quoting: Leopard

Quoting: tmtvlUgh, still so many people using the crappy NVidia garbage. I suppose that'll change as Wayland becomes more prominent.

Wonder how many people are gonna switch from Intel to AMD after the IME stuff...

Because it works most of the time and performs better than AMD.

This.

Every computer I've had with AMD over the years (including fairly recent models) has caused my nothing but grief... When I bought a new laptop a few months back, I went out of my way to buy a laptop with NVIDIA graphics this time around (my partner's laptop had NVIDIA, and everything always "just worked" ) - the difference has been like night and day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the sort of guy that often barracks/roots for the underdog and I'd love for AMD to be successful... But I have a literally a dozen laptops surrounding me at the moment, and the only ones that have not had never-ending graphics problems or poor game performance is the two NVIDIA laptops we have.

AMD say they're working on all these problems - but they've been saying this for years and the progress is so ridiculously slow that in my opinion, it's just not worth "waiting another year" for them to sort their s#*t out... NVIDIA might be the "big evil empire", but their stuff "just works" and for now, that's fine by me.

Maybe somewhere down the track I'll give AMD another shot... But it probably won't be for a while.

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You need to add System 76's "Pop!_OS", and the NVIDIA GeForce 920MX; both are it is missing from the computer specifications.

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For a game that is Open Source, 0 A.D. is grossly under-rated and even when compared to commercial games, it's pretty impressive... If you haven't yet taken this for a spin, I highly recommend you do so.

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QuoteStrangely though, they're actually cheaper on Steam, looks like the GOG prices are a little inflated.

I'd rather pay a little more for a DRM-free version of a game via GOG.com any day of the week... This is why when I purchase a game, I always look at GOG.com first, then the developer's web site (sometimes they offer DRM-free versions via their website) then Steam.

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Quoting: razing32Nice they ported it .
Sadly , I recall this one was the weakest in the series.

I too don't think it was the strongest game in the series... Heck, I thought the original ("Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons" ) was better.

But eventually I'll pick it up, purely because they've gone to the effort of porting it to Linux.

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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyThis is great and all, but I'm still waiting for the "Wolfenstein" and "Doom" sagas to be made available for Linux-based operating systems on GOG.com... All those wonderful games are sitting on my "wish" list, just waiting for purchase, GOG.com!

I will be picking-up this package (the Earthworm Jim package) as soon as I can though, because I'm old enough to remember when these games originally came out and Earthworm Jim is awesome.

*Facepalm*

So after all that, it turns out that not only do I already own both "Earthworm Jim" games from waaay back in my Windows days, but also all three "classic" Doom games... Earthworm Jim now obviously has a native Linux port and appears to work flawlessly, whilst the "Doom" games seem to work just fine via WINE, most of the time (occasionally they crash when I try to run them).

It's a shame that I wasn't able to make all these games count as "Linux" sales, but it did give me an excuse to buy the Jazz Jackrabbit Collection instead, and I'll probably pickup Tacoma a little later...

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