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Latest Comments by Creak
Steam Link app now available for the Linux desktop
17 March 2021 at 1:26 am UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy
Quoting: CreakEDIT: looking at Flatpak's wikipedia page, the support out-of-the-box seems as important if not more than for Snap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak#Support

Quoting: slaapliedjeWhere flatpaks and AppImages are open.

Well I have repeatedly stated above that this is the reason I think FlatPak is the superior "next-generation" package manager... I find that Snaps have noticeably better performance and they have certain technical advantages over FlatPak; but at the end of the day, being more "open" is more usually more important in the Grand Scheme of Things (at least in my opinion, anyway).
Which is weird, as everyone I have read says that snaps have terrible performance. The main reason I don't like Flatpaks is that they seem to use a lot more space than normally packaged software. I mean sure, part of that is that they don't use linked libraries, but it's large amounts, to the point where I've had to remove all flatpaks so I had disk space...

It does indeed take some disk space (especially the runtimes which are the base for every other packages).

I ran some test using `flatpak info APP_ID`:

Runtimes:
* org.freedesktop.Platform: 736.8 MB
* org.gnome.Platform: 948.8 MB
* org.kde.Platform: 992.1 MB

Applications:
* com.transmissionbt.Transmission: 3.9 MB
* com.obsproject.Studio: 49.3 MB
* org.inkscape.Inkscape: 238.9 MB
* com.valvesoftware.Steam: 40.6 MB
* org.pitivi.Pitivi: 197.3 MB
* org.videolan.VLC: 81.8 MB

But it's the price to pay to have sandboxed applications (I know it's not perfect yet, not completely sandboxed bla bla bla... some pieces of the puzzle need to settle down so that access right will be easier to manage and, overall, the system is rather new, but it has improved drastically in just a couple of years).

And also, I'd rather use Flatpak to run the closed source applications such as Steam, Teams, Slack, Unity Hub, etc..

Steam Link app now available for the Linux desktop
16 March 2021 at 12:43 am UTC

I didn't know Snap was installed by default on that many distros, I stand corrected.

EDIT: looking at Flatpak's wikipedia page, the support out-of-the-box seems as important if not more than for Snap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpak#Support

Steam Link app now available for the Linux desktop
15 March 2021 at 11:45 pm UTC

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyThere's not really all that much difference between most of the "next-generation package managers" (Snap / Flatpak / AppImage / etc...)
Well there is at least a huge difference between AppImage and the others (AppImage being merely a huge dump of files that are uncompressed at a specific location and run from there).

But overall I don't think the fragmentation is that bad because:
* AppImage is clearly not the way to go and I think most developers knows that
* Snap is basically Ubuntu-only
* Flatpak is cross-distributions

So it's just a matter of time before Flatpak will take the lead. Or, as usual, Canonical will ditch Snap and take Flatpak at some point, like any other in-house tech they've made so far.

Steam Link app now available for the Linux desktop
3 March 2021 at 12:57 am UTC Likes: 1

I really like the idea of Valve's Remote Play Together, it simply makes a lot of sense. I like to compare video games and board games, and you wouldn't ask every player of a board game to pay for the game.

So, as with board games, I like to discover new games my friends might have and, if I like them, I buy them in order to play it whenever I want too.

This is true for the multiplayer part of a game only. The solo/scenario part is yet another reason to buy a game (to me).

Transport Fever 2 gets a huge upgrade with Vulkan API support
26 February 2021 at 1:25 am UTC

That is soooooooo cool! I love this game but performance was always an issue. With this update it will just be perfect!

What we expect to come from Valve to help Linux gaming in 2021
17 January 2021 at 8:25 pm UTC Likes: 1

I'm sorry I didn't have the courage to read the whole 5 pages, but I read most of it ;)

My wishlist for Valve is:
  • Proton being able to run even better (it's already impressive, but reaching a point where you won't even ask yourself if it's going to work would be a huge sellpoint)

  • Proton being able to run with anti-cheat enabled games

  • A good UI overhaul for Steam (I'm tired of the multiple Steam windows that pops everywhere and steal the focus)

  • A Steam Machine made by Valve only and marketed as a full-fledged console with all the highly optimized HW/OS communication that is clearly an advantage for Linux. Moreover, being able to buy a game and play it on any platform (PC, console, portable console, mobile, streaming, VR) and, on top of that, keep the save states across the devices so you can shut down the console only to continue on your portable device! That would be absolutely fabulous

  • Valve investing in marketing for Linux, showing the benefits of running on Linux; right now, I think it's fair to say that Windows is better than Linux for games alone, but maybe there's a way to attract streamers to go full Linux by advertising the overall stability of it. That said, stability will need to be drastically improved as Linux is indeed stable.. for servers, but it's another story when in a desktop environment (should we talk about video acceleration? )



To get back on the matter of the article, whether this is the direction Valve is going to take or not, I am not really convinced by the idea. IMO right now, Windows gamers don't care about Linux because it doesn't bring anything better (technically). I prefer Linux, but because of the freedom it brings and some side-effects of it, but it is hard to find a killer feature on Linux (from a gamer perspective) that is not already on Windows.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year from GamingOnLinux
23 December 2020 at 5:48 pm UTC Likes: 1

Happy holidays GOL and the community! Still the best Linux website! ❤️

Unity Technologies committed to supporting the Linux Editor for the Unity game engine
6 November 2020 at 7:53 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt does seem like it's moving forward fast. I notice the way people talk about Godot has shifted significantly in the last few years. So not a faint hope, I would say.
I sure hope so too. I think of Godot a bit like Blender and hope that, one day, Godot will find the fame it deserves like Blender does right now.

Unity Technologies committed to supporting the Linux Editor for the Unity game engine
5 November 2020 at 1:07 pm UTC Likes: 1

Unity is still light years away, in terms of features, compared to Godot.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Godot and I am using it, but it is not ready yet for AA or AAA games, while Unity is. Hopefully, Godot will improve in the future and have better feature parity with Unity.

AMD reveal RDNA 2 with Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6800
29 October 2020 at 7:58 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: DiableI'll buy a AMD card when they have working Linux drivers available at launch. I'm not waiting six months for the Mesa guy to get their new cards working when Nvidia has Linux drivers available for their new card on day one. I'm not supporting a company that treats my OS of choice like a second class citizens.
In the defense of AMD devs, for each generation of GPU and CPU they are getting closer and closer to be ready at launch time. For instance, here, and if I'm not mistaken, Big Navi are supported in Mesa latest code (though not yet perfectly AFAIK). Now we're just missing the Mesa and Linux releases.

Personally, I don't really mind not having these GPUs ready at launch time since they are too expensive for me, but it means that the previous generation prices should go down a little bit! 😉

I doubt much companies really need day 1 releases though, as most companies won't on the latest GPUs as they just got out of the oven. For instance, I don't think Google Stadia is really interested right now about being able to get their hands on the latest GPUs, even though their servers runs on AMD (which is also a proof that even in a private company, open source apparently matters too, otherwise they would have chosen NVIDIA which have better performance/dollar ratio).

Which makes me think Microsoft and Sony are also using AMD GPUs in their consoles, so apparently it's not that bad 😉