Well, then, don't let us know what you think of the latest release.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Fractional scaling only works in very specific circumstances, I'm surprised it's headlining the release, it's so half-baked.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Fractional scaling is the big thing for me, I have a 13" 1080p laptop and it's a must there. Let's just say it's VERY beta right now. :-)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I tried the demo for this and the performance was indeed horrible. Shame, as it’s supposedly very good.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I just got a Lenovo Ryzen lappy with no system preinstalled as a small token of gratitutde for them. I will be putting Mint on it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Linux is in pretty good shape, barring some snags for new users (e.g. the complete mess with snaps, flat packs, native packages and appimages).

What needs addressing and pronto is perception and market share. I think the only way for this to happen is millions into marketing, like what Apple did in the noughties. Idk who might be persuaded to put down the money. Maybe someone prominent in Linux with a proven advertising track record could start a crowdfunding campaign.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: damarrinMS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value.

This mindset always rubs me the wrong way. As if it's somehow a mechanical or natural process that doesn't involve human beings making decisions that benefit a relatively small set of human beings over the good of a larger set of human beings. Ethics applies to every single decision people make, and neither businesses nor governments deserve a free pass.

It's up to you if you want to reward harmful behaviour or not, but please don't buy into that bullshit mindset. And I'm not saying "all corporations are evil" here, just that as long as corporations wield influence and have legal rights that equal and indeed often exceed those of citizens, we can and should hold them to equal if not higher ethical standards as well.

My point here is that this is an inherent characteristic of a publicly traded company - it exists to generate value for shareholders only, all its other actions are ancillary to that. It takes genuine effort from many individuals within a company for it not to display exclusively this behaviour. That is why there are various laws, including anti-monopoly laws, which are designed to limit companies in the ways in which they can pursue said value.

Only in the case of MS, these laws, or rather law enforcers, fail to act. People, including those in power, want to continue using Windows and Office and so they take substitute action to pretend they're going against the MS monopoly, like telling them to offer browser choice or whatever. It's also a good example how this mechanism actually works, since MS no longer have a dominant browser. However, since it's not only MS themselves, but also practically everyone else, that want the desktop OS/office software monopoly to continue, it does.

It's a subtle kind of monopoly, though, and that's why it's so powerful. It's not that people can't get/use another product. It's that their lives are made more difficult if they do and thus they don't want to.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Oh, and one more thing. If there's a problem with WSL, if it runs slowly or something doesn't work, the perception will be it's Linux's fault, not Windows'. And yes, if someone writes something in DirectX or anything else that'll only work in WSL, the system requirement will immediately be "Linux in WSL".

This is exactly what happened with Java. MS started shipping Extended (as in the second E) Java with Windows and everyone immediately started writing exclusively for it, to the point Sun's Java became useless. This in turn meant that in practice you could only run the thousands of pieces of (the theoretically portable and cross-platform) Java software on the web if you were running Windows and IE. And that's what's happening with Linux right now.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

gradyvuckovic is so right it hurts.

MS is saying you don't need to go through the hassle of getting a Linux machine or installing it in a VM, it's right here all done for you, keep using Windows. It's also saying you don't need to learn OpenGL or Vulkan, you can just keep using DirectX.

WSL's capabilities or fitness for a particular purpose or technical merits right now are irrelevant. It'll evolve over time and the marketing message is already out there: you don't need Linux, you just need Windows. Plus the whole we love Linux thing, it's just meant to convince people MS isn't evil any more, MS has changed, come use our products.

MS isn't evil or good, it's a publicly traded company whose only purpose is to generate shareholder value. And they've been doing a very good job of it considering they're still around and they have a desktop OS and office software monopoly.

So this whole exercise is just meant to reinforce the general conviction that you can do everything in Windows, everything else is inferior because you can't do everything there. And they're right.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I tried playing Half-Life: Alyx after the native version came out as I couldn't before due to it being a stuttery mess on my Nvidia card. Now SteamVR doesn't even start throwing up an error. Haven't had time to fix that yet.

I also tried to continue my Mortal Kombat X story mode playthrough and now after a couple of fights the game repeatedly crashes on a keypress during a cutscene.

So the only thing I have been able to play this weekend is Xenosaga Episode III on the PS2. Splendid game.

View this comment - View article - View full comments