Quoting: damarrin. After all, as we Linux users all know, hunting the web for programs and downloading installers is the silliest thing ever.

no, its not.
it prevent OS vendor from abusing their customers with an monopoly using an biased store.
like promoting first party browsers (Chrome, edge, safari) instead of the best ones.

not to mention the repositories of the linux distros are serious lacking softwares that often exist for linux.
for example, look how many years took then to have something like godot, you can develop entire games in this meantime.

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" allows dynamically selecting the backend too"
that means switch between openGL and vulkan without rebooting godot and the godot game/app ?

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Quoting: CruelAngelQuick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.

not everyone has an computer, we have a bunch of people who are slaves, un employeed, have an low income/live in a country where everything is freaking expensive, hell some people barely have even water of food.
i saw the number of people who had windows computer some time ago and it was about 1.5 billions , agains 2.3 of android devices.
a few time later i saw the number 1.8billion of windows computers against 3 billions android devices, iOS is arround 700 million or 1 bi.
(the reason why i quoted the number of windows and android devices twice is because the first number was from the same date, the cecound 1.8 bi, 3bi is from different dates so its hard to compare)


if we count the linux marketshare as 1~2% then, microsoft is suppose to have betwen 45 and 90 more people than that.
in other words, linux may have something arround 20 or 40 millions of users.

lets make another guess:
according to statcounter, windows has 72.79%, linux 3.82%, chromeOS 2.42% and there is 4.61% of unknow devices, lets assume they are linux devices for the sake of being optimistic, lets also count chromeOS, if those 72.79% are windows devices, ahd those 10,85% count as linux...
assuming we have 1.8 billions of windows computers out there, this means: 268 millions.
i doubt that is the real number.
an more likely scenario, those 4.61% are windows devices that for some reason didnt got count.
that means: 77,4% of marketshare for windows (1.8 bi devices) 6.24% of marketshare for linux (145 millions of devices)
now, looking at it, that is an impressive number, if we ignore chromebook, about 88 million people are tech savy enough to swap the OS that came with their computer.

Btw im completely ignoring dualbooters, and im considering that the number of windows device is fixed, wich probably inst the case , linux growing in share generally means either an dual booter or someone who stoped using windows wich we should substract from the 1.8 bi.

being more realistic now, i think the most likely scenario is 1.8 billions of computers (not windows computers), 74,4% of marketshare for windows (or more likely stat counter is broken) so we have... ok im tired of math...
1.3 billions of windows devices against 112 millions of linux devices (68 million install by thenselves the rest are chromebooks)

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Quoting: Lachu

Quoting: mad_mesaAya are a Windows OEM. So they have almost certainly signed an agreement with Microsoft that includes language that in return for lower prices for Windows, they agree to (among other things) obtain a license for Microsoft's patents on every Windows-compatible system they sell. Shipping a licensed Windows install on the device grants the license, anything else pre-installed requires an additional fee paid to Microsoft to license their patents.

They probably thought that if SteamOS (or their own Linux distribution) didn't violate Microsoft's patents they wouldn't have to pay, and Microsoft reminded them that doesn't get them out of the terms of the agreement because those devices can still run Windows so it wouldn't matter.

The only way out of it is to not be a Windows OEM at all, use some kind of Windows-incompatible boot process, or fight Microsoft in court over the terms of a contract they entered into, all of which Aya aren't willing to do.

You are truth. There are rumors from companies in European telling court, MS sign trade ordering it to pay MS for each sold devices as it has Windows preinstalled, even if it does not. Of course, Windows license normally costs 100$ (around), but MS makes big deal for companies, which sign devil trade with MS. In this case, companies could install Windows on device, for example, for 20$, but it must install Windows on every device.
Companies sign trade, even if Windows is bad, because client seen this: same PC configuration without Windows license costs 70$ less and Windows license costs 100$. And people thinking Windows is good, because it normally costs 100$, so that's a deal!
In that way Windows got world domination - simple by users dull. User thinking Windows is good, because there no option in many stores to buy devices without Windows and Windows costs 100$. But this is only magic.
And, if user order device manufacturer/reseller to refund Windows costs, they must refund 100$, because Windows real costs is secret. In this case, hardware vendors does everything to not refund Windows, even telling lies about Linux, creating rumors, etc.
That was great strategy!

this strategy is as good as its illegal, but i heard about it a long time ago.
thinking about it for a moment, if an company sell 100.000 computers with windows and 1.000 computers with linux, microsoft may force then to sell windows on all the computers threatening to rise the price from 20 to 100, then the company will have to pay 10 millions instead of 2 millions.
i wonder if aya really planned to ship devices with linux or that was just their way of negotiating an better deal with microsoft.

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Quoting: CatKillerOf course another thing that they're going to have to consider is whether they're going to have to increase the price of their SteamOS HoloIso Windows 11 device to account for the licensing fee or whether whatever deal they managed to get for folding to Microsoft pressure will let them keep the same price point.

"Worse than a Steam Deck for more money than a Steam Deck" isn't a great place to position your product.

except that it will run more games due to... windows (in theory, im not considering games that might not run because the hardware is a potato) so they still have an argument to sell their device.

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Quoting: LachuI remember, what people from Poland do with Facebook plans to implement XMPP. They hound plans and Facebook on official forums. They do not know, how world working. They claims Facebook should implement support for Gadu-Gadu, closed source competitor of Facebook/XMPP. If Gadu-Gadu agree, that would be kill for it. People does not understood Gadu-Gadu protocols are closed source (so agreement, etc. needed) and XMPP are free. It brinks me think about discussion with Windows users on forums. Mental slayers of closed source/Microsoft/etc. They known nothing about software or how world works, but they pretend to be specialist for many different kind of knowledge, like politics, IT, psychologist, economics, etc. I think, that many Windows users forces producer of this device to deliver it with Windows. Simple: by scamming.

that reminds me of a few things, discussions i had with people who couldnt understand how microsoft was locking then and that its microsoft that should implement open standards not the open source tools that should do reverse enginering to support an proprietary standard or protocol...
as well as the people who claimed that consoles (including steam machines) were just pcs with aditional restrictions put into then so the companys can make a profit by seling those features separatedly or stuff like that.
they cant understand that features have a cost to develop, the reason why n64 didnt came with an cd player was not "greeedy" from nintendo...

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that is the perfect timing for valve to introduce ad-hoc multiplayer, and if this game have a trade system...

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Quoting: ObsidianBlkYou're not wanting to buy physically is totally your choice! You do what's convenient for yourself!

its not that i dont like physical media, if they were DRM free and i could afford, i would totally buy all my games in physical, and i dont see a big difference from having physical media or an steam key in terms of DRM (aside from all the conveniences that steam offer)

i just dont like the discourse arround it, as if physical was synonymous with preservation while digital was automagically bad, gog is a good exception to this rule!

the only downsides is that they can delist, ban your account, you cant resell (but you often pay less to accommodate for that) and... in cases where they sold something they dint really had the rights to sell, they may remove it... ok its quite inconvenient when you think about those issues.
but physical is not an guarantee either, with things like games that dont have the full content (or in some cases any) in the disk, they just act as an key to download the rest of the game (or even the entire game).

every "digital" game is being distributed to an physical media, and the content of every physical media is digital anyway (aside from things like superFX chips, you cant download then nor store hardware, at best you can emulate with an powerfull enough hardware)

the fact that people have being able to dump content and break DRM does not mean they will be able to do so forever, the same can be said about hacking servers to download content (take nintendo giga leak for example and compare to an cloud exclusive game, sure in theory we can hack the server and download the game to preserve it, in pratice we have no guarantee that we will be able to do that before it got deleted, so why risk it ?)

sure i hade a lot of problems with HDD in the past, not that i use an cd as often as i use an HDD, but im pretty sure optical media is better, the issue is that i can make as many copies as i want, so its not a big deal.
in theory breaking the DRM we can too, but there have been a few cases of multiple layers of DRM that hackers think they broke then all, only for the players to realize later on that they havent and end up losing progress and stuff like that, at least on gog i have the right to ask for an refund (or maybe even sue then) if i realize my game have any form of drm.

anyway, gog isnt perfect either.
i support steam for convenience, price and because they support linux gaming (and in my opinion we should win the battle on OS before we atempt to win the DRM battle)
i support gog because they have DRM Free games..
but both stores dont support things like 18+ anime games (or at least ecchi without censorship), i still have to find out an store that is "perfect" but it dont seems to exist...

oh i forgot to notice, if flash memory is safer than HDD then you can store your gog games on flash memory, if its not you can store in HDD, if SSD are safer you can store it there, if CD,DVD, Bluray is safer do an backup of it on it, so regardless of what is the safer option in your opinion, you still have it (unless some company make an tech that only then can produce copies of the game and distribute in such format, and it turns out to be safer than opitical media and everything else an consumer have access to, but still, making more copies and new copies from time to time seems like an more trusth worth option).

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Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: finaldestThe only exception being PC gaming as its simply impossible to buy games physically so I am sticking with Steam and maybe GOG in future if they ever give linux 1st class support.

gog is actually better than physical, you can have as many backups as you want, good luck riping your games that you have on physical media for other platforms, few people have the know how / tools to do that.

I will admit, it's not always strait forward to rip the physical media of non-PC discs, however, for most, it's not really rocket science either, and if a person is already at the point where they feel ripping their media is the way to go, they would probably have the where-with-all, if not the direct technical know-how, to figure the process out quickly enough. It's not the difficulty of ripping as the reason few do it, it's giving a shiz enough.

For those physical discs that have a higher than average ripping difficulty (looking at you, OG XBox discs), finding a rip online isn't horribly difficult either.

you said discs, dont forget the switch still uses catridges.
its not rocket science once some one figured it out, or to figure it yourself?

anyway, people who are purchasing something do so because they want to support the developers and dont want to go into the extra trouble of pirate it, i dont understand why people think the proprietary catridges and discs count as "preservation" despite the fact that it can rot and its hard to copy, while completely ignore gog.

i dont know about you, but i dont want to purchase something physical, expect that someone else will figure out how to dump it and distribute online, only for, years later realize no one did and just realize that after my copy is rotten.
digital is the way to go.
unless we count delisted games... speaking of it, how many games got delisted from gog?

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Quoting: PenglingI'm comfortable with not buying any Ubisoft games.

It's not like they've made anything I'd even want in decades anyway. And then they turned Rayman (protagonist of the only one of their series that potentially would've been of interest) into a violent cocaine-snorting alcoholic pervert propaganda-mouthpiece for a dystopian murder-machine in a recent animated production. That's commercial suicide for a franchise like that, so clearly they've got no plans to make anything else that I'd want to buy in the future anyway.

More money saved.

i think they tried to pull an "conkers bad fur day" wich is a fun game... except it didnt worked for then, at least not in my book i dont want to give it a chance.

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