Maybe they will inspire their students to make games as nice or even better!

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: TherinS

Quoting: GBGamesAnd yet the rhetoric keeps getting repeated, and it sounds so innocent and earnestly about freedom when in fact it is often double-speak for driving the opposite outcome.

In a country that claims to value freedom as a whole, it makes no sense to say "And we'll turn it to the states to let the people decide if YOU get to have the same freedoms." We, in fact, tried that, and it turned out to be a terrible idea.

Unfortunately, that is the POINT of free states allowing its citizens to vote how they want thier state run, within the confines of some basic rules set in place at a Federal level. No one is being forced to remain in thier state (there's 48 easy to travel to) or being prevented from traveling to another state.

If one city decides jaywalking is legal and another decides its punishable by jail time, then don't jaywalk in the illegal areas. Nothing is keeping you from walking all you want, but jaywalking is viewed differently in the two cities. If the population of one city wants to make jaywalking legal, then vote into office the officials who will make that legal.

This decision is, in SPIRIT, no different than the example of jaywalking. The people can now vote for/against it as they wish and majority rules.

So hypothetically, what about repealing the second amendment and let each state decide on guns, gun control and even total gun ban?

Up until the most recent Supreme Court Decision, gun control was largely left up to local jurisdictions. Even down to the city level. Some cities banned handguns. Others required registration of firearms or set rules of the discharge if guns. States still set age restrictions, prohibitions, carry requirements, and licensing. What's legal in one city is not in another with regards to guns. If you have a license to carry in your state, it does not mean another state will honor it. If you are allowed to carry in your state without a license, you'll still need one to carry in a state that has a license requirement.

...Not confusing at all....

Over the last 20+ years, a lot of restrictions have been removed, often by courts or legislatures, but it's still very much locally controlled. The most recent decision combined with the ideological makeup of the court does throw into question how many of those regulations will still exist in the future, but for now, each state can regulate guns independently to some extent.


Sorry for the double post.

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Quoting: CyborgZetaThe most I can say is that I am not a fan of states picking which freedoms/rights they want to defend, and which ones they want to disregard as lesser (or just show disdain for altogether); any freedom/right should not end at the border to another state.

Quoting: SamsaiThe "states' rights" argument is basically just nonsense. It doesn't help anybody's democracy when the states that "benefit" from Roe v. Wade being overruled are ones that are horrendously voter suppressed and gerrymandered. We've also seen what this "states' rights" thing has been used to campaign for in the past and it definitely wasn't for something that would lead to greater equality and democracy for all.

I agree with you both, but would like to note a small counterpoint that is often often overlooked. While the vocal "States Rights" partisans over often use it to rail against Federal Oversight, standards, and restrict people's rights, there are quiet examples where states have granted extra rights and protections not found at the federal level. An easy example would be many State constitutions, which offer enhanced privacy protections beyond what is offered by the Constitution. You can also find examples in local laws and local Criminal Rules as well.

I think, in hypothetical government world, modern states might be more efficient if they only existed as administrative entities rather than political subdivisions. Of course, the difficulty would be in determining what local administrative authority would exist.

But, that would largely solve the issues of personal rights across borders. Maybe simplify some other things while we're at it.

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Hello.

For discussion sake, I noticed several people commenting on the bottom of the States rights in regards to the Federal rights. I presume people are talking about the 10th amendment, which needs some clarification.

The Amendment references the rights of the states from the federal and is largely interpreted to protect states from being forced into federal programs. It doesn't directly have anything to do with personal rights. The Federal government can enumerate rights beyond what is listed in the constitution. There are debating philosophies in judicial circles on this, though. Some favor a strict, literal reading, while others favor something more flexible.

Regardless of what side of judicial philosophy one happens to be on, there are a number of laws and court decisions that have conferred rights Federally over the years. (Anti-discrimination, marriage, education, firearms ownership, etc). On top of that, States can confer additional rights above and beyond what is recognized federally.

It makes for a rather complicated legal landscape that people have to navigate. Some of that is due to the nature of the drafting of the Constitution. It's had a lot of "Compromises" between free/slave states, high/low population states, and some holdovers from the previous government, of which many of those issues aren't exactly relevant anymore. I would agree a stream lining of quite a bit of it would be nice. Also, since we're throwing things at the wall, I'd be really ok with a multi party system. I'd argue, more than design, the lack of a robust multiparty system is the biggest detriment.

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Happy birthday!

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain ManGreat for Valve and the Steam Deck, but what does it really mean for Linux? It reminds me of the Android situation, where everybody who has an Android phone in their pocket is technically using Linux, but that in and of itself does nothing to advance the cause for Linux.

I think there is a pretty simple, key distinction here: Programs written to run on Android will not run on desktop Linux. But programs written to run on SteamOS, or for that matter programs SteamOS arranges to run even though they were written for Windows, do.
So. Improving the software ecosystem for Android does not improve it for Linux, but improving the software ecosystem for SteamOS does.

How many people buying a Steam Deck but have never used Linux are going to bother trying to install Linux on their desktop based on their experience with the Steam Deck? My guess is very few because it's a console that does everything it can to hide the operating system from the average user (although it does give "power users" more freedom than a typical console).

I tend to agree with this sentiment. Yes a few may try out Linux from their Steam Deck experience, and even fewer will stick with it. I worry It may even have the opposite effect. The default deck experience is highly currated, polished and very nice. Half of those advanced options we've seen demo'd on this site and others, I don't know how to do on my desktop without looking it up. People trying Linux for the first, expecting a Deck like experience, might be highly disappointed (why won't Steam update my system?!? Packages?!? Command line!?!? 🤪)

The nice thing is that most main line distros are highly polished, and some come with Steam. If that's all you want, that's cool, but then there's no reason to move away from SteamOS (when released, ofc). I hope it causes more people to be interested in Linux, but I'm not expecting it.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: denyasisI wouldn't be surprised if it does a survey on first run (which is ancedotally consistent with my experience with Steam; survey on new installation.)

Man, that's so weird to me - I've got Steam installed on three machines, and I've never had the survey at all! I'm a relatively recent Steam user though (my account's not even a year old yet), having returned to PC-gaming after an extremely long absence (I left it behind when you could still buy big-box games from Toys 'R' Us and Woolworths, and when Electronics Boutique UK still existed), so I wonder if that's a factor?

That's so odd. Well I stand corrected. I will say, everytime I've distro hoped, the first time I've run steam, I got the survey. Most recently a few months ago, when I switched to Manjaro on my desktop and laptop. I just assumed it was a first run thing on a new install.

I guess, with the Decks, it could just be harvesting it all in the background anyway. Not like steam doesn't phone home, I think it would be silly to think it doesn't send the same user data along with it.

Quoting: udekmp69

Quoting: denyasisQuestion, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

Yes. Although different applications have different permissions by default, I would recommend installing flatseal to a get a good GUI for permissions of each application including Steam. Steam's flatpak default permission cannot see anything other than ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/. You can give it an additional permission to see a 'steamlibrary' folder on a secondary hard drive as well. Flatpak has room for improvement but I generally prefer it for closed source applications if it works okay with it.

Thanks! I'll have to check it out. Steam lost a little bit of it's luster for me recently when it wouldn't allow me to start a game unless I let it upload the contents on the game directory to Valve (I had installed some mods manually). Kinda made me wonder what else it uploads and goes through.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: denyasisI'm no dev, and maybe I'm fundamentally not understanding the purpose of OSI and similar licenses, but I thought if you take an existing OSI licensed code base, added/changed/modified it, that your finished product would still need to be Open Source, right?

Nope. There are plenty of OSI-approved licences that aren't copyleft.

Quoting: dvd

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: NociferA) There is a slight difference between restructuring and open-sourcing an already existing code base, and developing something as open source from the ground up

I'm no dev, and maybe I'm fundamentally not understanding the purpose of OSI and similar licenses, but I thought if you take an existing OSI licensed code base, added/changed/modified it, that your finished product would still need to be Open Source, right?

Yeah, Valve could have written some closed source code for proton, but given the number of open source projects they rely on, how much could the realistically make closed? The installer script maybe?

I think the FSF has a good page explaining free software (and another how "open source" is not equivalent): FSF page

Thanks! I knew you could write proprietary code and have it "talk to" OSI stuff, I didn't know you could take some OSI stuff and make it proprietary. I guess a good example would be the proprietary tech porting houses use ( which is probably based on WINE), right?

Quoting: Frawo

Quoting: GuestIt's tricky and costly for me. IF the game is one I'll play on the Steam Deck then I obviously buy it on Steam...it's just too easy, but then I tend to add the game to my wishlist at GoG and when the price is low enough I plan to buy it on GoG to create an offline back for future game preservation playing. If it's a game I will only ever play on my PC, then I snag it on GoG only.
Being able to have an offline backup of a game (even if only Windows), is very important to me...I am also enjoying my old NES games now thanks to owning the physical game and getting an Analogue NT Mini a while back, and it got me think about what if I want to play a game (backlog or replay) in 10, 20, 30 years....will Steam be around?

P.S. Yes, I have an older computer and my current computer that I plan to keep alive and drivers back up offline for future needs.

There is no need to rebuy a game on GOG just to have an offline backup. For Steam games, you can also make a backup of your "common" folder (and maybe "compatdata" for non native games), and you're good to go.

I can't speak for everyone, but I believe the general thought here is when Valve and Steam are gone. If the game doesn't require Stan to run (DRM free), you would be ok, but otherwise, those games are lost.
Not presuming anyone's age here, but a lot of us probably remember the "store wars" 10-15 years ago. When those stores closed, you lost your games.

That was a BIG selling point for GOG at it's inception. Some people really hated the mandatory client/DRM thing Steam and others did.

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Quoting: NociferA) There is a slight difference between restructuring and open-sourcing an already existing code base, and developing something as open source from the ground up

I'm no dev, and maybe I'm fundamentally not understanding the purpose of OSI and similar licenses, but I thought if you take an existing OSI licensed code base, added/changed/modified it, that your finished product would still need to be Open Source, right?

Yeah, Valve could have written some closed source code for proton, but given the number of open source projects they rely on, how much could the realistically make closed? The installer script maybe?

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Quoting: Guest1.18% of the survey were GNU+Linux users, and 7.57% of those were Steam Deck owners, which means \~0.09% of Steam users have a Steam Deck (9 in 10,000).

Steam's last announced figure of 132 million monthly active users came at the beginning of 2022.
That comes out to a little over 100,000 Steam Decks in the wild (unless my maths is wrong). That seems reasonable, based on what I've heard about estimated numbers of shipped units (approx 6,000 per week).

Though not everyone with a Deck is getting opted-in to the survey, so it's more of a snapshot than definitive numbers.

Agreed, I think the 118k number is probably pretty accurate. It's also in Valve's interest to force a survey for every Deck, not only to show strong numbers, but to comparee purchase with usage. I wouldn't be surprised if it does a survey on first run (which is ancedotally consistent with my experience with Steam; survey on new installation.)

Quoting: udekmp69

Quoting: fireplaceI’m glad the Steam Flatpak is getting more traction. Native games on Linux sometimes required libraries outside of the Steam runtime, and developers don’t notice this and just say that it only supports ubuntu or fedora or some crap like that. Now with the Flatpak, it’ll be clear as day if the native game works or not.

Flatpak Steam has some issues but mostly with older native goldscr games and is easily fixable with a launch option. However I use it simply due to organization and the fact it limits read/write of all my other files on my desktop. 100% recommend the steam flatpak especially if you hate when native linux games just throw folders anywhere in /home/.

Question, I'm not familiar with snap/flatpack, but if it keeps everything in the container, does that mean it limits what it can access outside the container? Like prevents Steam from reading the rest of my /home partition for example?

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