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Latest Comments by scaine
Canonical detail improvements the Steam Snap, work to advance gaming continues on Ubuntu
22 June 2024 at 11:58 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: poiuzThat's your opinion but off-topic.
It was entirely on-topic to the comment I was replying to. Welcome to the internet, where opinions are stated frequently.

Quoting: poiuzThat's what I mean: Pushing Unity had absolutely nothing to do with GNOME 3 user backlash but was about self-interest.
Gnome 3 had a big impact the way I remember it. Canonical wanted to tailor the experience either upstream itself, or via extensions, but neither option panned out.

Quoting: poiuzGreat point: It would be a success had it been a success.
Please don't oversimplify my point just to make a snide internet victory. I said the if the phone had succeeded, we would have a very different desktop experience.

Quoting: poiuzBut this shows the issues with Canonical projects: They're not sustainable.
This is obviously false. Or maybe it's just your opinion? I remember things like Upstart being adopted distro-wide for many years before being replaced by systemd, and Uncomplicated Firewall is the default is in most distros today. Launchpad is still widely used. And a host of smaller enhancements to Gnome, like software-properties to help simplify Nvidia driver installs/change repos, or more agnostic projects, like lightdm, the apport error reporting system, or the ubiquity installer.

From the tone of your reply, it sounds like you have real beef with Canonical. I don't advocate for them anymore, but I still respect the impact they had and still have today. Why so negative on them?

Canonical detail improvements the Steam Snap, work to advance gaming continues on Ubuntu
20 June 2024 at 11:59 am UTC

Quoting: poiuz
Quoting: F.UltraCanonical was somewhat invested in GNOME development at the time and the design plans for what became GNOME Shell was announced already back in 2008 at the GNOME User Experience Hackfest in Boston and pre releases of GNOME Shell was relased in 2009.

Also the Unity released in 2010 was a pure shell on top of GNOME meant to be used on netbooks and wasn't planned to replace GNOME on the regular Ubuntu until the backlash of GNOME 3 so they brought it back and changed it for Ubuntu 11.04 in 2011.
GNOME 3 was released in 2011, the backlash happened in 2011 (see Mate fork) but the shift to Unity happened before 2011. There's a lot drama documented in various posts, it does not include "the users wanted it".

Had Canonical their users in mind, they wouldn't have released Unity in 11.04. The criticism was plenty & the release was not ready.

Nope, it wasn't ready. But it was still a better experience than Shell back then, which had hidden activities and weird mouse zones and all sorts of strange workflow changes. They also considered staying on Gnome 2, if I remember correctly, but Mark (Shuttleworth) already had one eye on his upcoming phone UX, and so doing their own thing with Unity/Mir was a pretty bold step for them.

I suspect that if the Unity Phone had succeeded in their IndieGogo campaign, Unity would still be the primary desktop on Ubuntu today, and likely, powered by Mir. When the phone failed, however, priorities subtlety changed over the next five years, until of course, they abandoned several technologies (Upstart, Mir, Unity) to consolidate their efforts on cloud, core, and snap.

The hybrid combat mechanics in The Nightscarred: Forgotten Gods sounds exciting
18 June 2024 at 12:31 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: RTherenIt looks like a spiritual successor to Dark Messiah (conveniently placed spike walls anyone?).

Correction: This is VERY Dark Messiah successor :D
Wow, you're not kidding. And about time too! Bullet storm scratched my Dark Messiah itch for a while, but even that game was years ago!

I'll be gutted if this gets Denuvo, haha!

Nice announcement on Steam Deck on their Steam FAQ page too!

Canonical detail improvements the Steam Snap, work to advance gaming continues on Ubuntu
18 June 2024 at 7:12 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualLike any GNOME purist, I completely disagree with the premise. GNOME is great even without extensions and I don't use any.
I'm sure that's true now, (for you and many others, even though I still disagree) but back in 2010, the original Shell beta was baffling and largely unusable unless you followed blogs that described the philosophy behind it.

Canonical detail improvements the Steam Snap, work to advance gaming continues on Ubuntu
17 June 2024 at 8:01 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: slaapliedjeThere were definitely previews of Gnome-Shell long before Unity was out. Unity was literally Ubuntu's answer to Gnome-shell being weird for people.
Yep, Unity was developed over the six months following Gnome Shell's first preview. Because Shell was absolute ass and unusable without extensions, and the Gnome developers wouldn't build in the necessary extension framework that would allow Canonical to keep using it.

The extension framework did eventually land, making Shell usable again, but by that time Unity had a groundswell of fans.

As usual, it baffles me that people pick on Canonical as the bad guy whenever they innovate. They're not afraid to drop things when better things come along, but they have a vision and when existing tech can't supply on that vision, they innovate. The essence of Linux, but they're constantly trashed for it.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown gets a Steam release in August
15 June 2024 at 6:20 pm UTC Likes: 7

Quoting: sarmadCan someone explain what's wrong with Denuvo? Does it work on Linux/Proton or not?

Denuvo works okay on Linux under Proton. So far. Who knows if they'll break things in future, like anti-cheat does.

There are several issues with Denuvo:

1. Cost - protecting a game with Denuvo costs the publisher $25K per month. There is also a one-off fee of $0.5 per activation. So if your game sells 100K copies, that's a $50K up front fee, plus the $25K every month you keep Denuvo on there. This is all money that isn't going into development, QA, DLC, paying staff, or advertising your game.

2. Performance. Mixed reports on this, but there's a perception that Denuvo encumbered games will perform worse. Reports on how much worse vary wildly, from a few frames to (e.g. Resident Evil Village) 50% performance. When there's a big hit, the publisher is often forced to remove it (e.g. Village, Rage 2).

3. What it's designed to do, which is prevent you "activating" the game more than 5 times. Probably not a huge issue normally, but if you play about with different versions of Proton, every time you delete your prefix (the PFX folder), you're re-activating the game on a "new PC", which will eventually lock you out of the game.

4. The principle its based on, which is that it "protects" sales, by forcing would-be pirates to buy the game. There are two issues with that. First, would-be pirates are proven in a couple of studies (such as this that they wouldn't buy the game anyway, if they can't pirate it. So it's not protecting sales. In fact, piracy can actually encourage game sales, where the pirates download cracked versions as "demos", and if they're impressed, they buy legitimately. Second, Denuvo encumbered games are often cracked anyway, and pirated anyway. So, in those cases, money wasted.

5. It's anti-consumer. That is, it provides the paying customer a worse experience than if you pirated the game. It "protects" the publisher by punishing the very people the publisher relies on to succeed. It treats paying customers as untrustworthy scum.

...which is why I never buy anything encumbered by Denuvo.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Killer Bean looks absolutely nuts in the latest trailer
14 June 2024 at 3:35 pm UTC Likes: 7

I don't know what I expected, but... it wasn't a break-dancing, ninja cross between Max Payne and Duke Nukem.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown gets a Steam release in August
14 June 2024 at 2:28 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: BlooAlien
QuoteWarning: This title uses 3rd-party DRM (Ubisoft Connect, Denuvo Anti-Tamper).

Well, that dashes that hope right to the rocks...
Denuvo doesn't stop games working with Proton.

Yep, it's surprisingly proton-friendly, and I can't imagine its performance impact (real or imagined) will have much effect on a game like PoP.

But personally, I don't buy Denuvo-encumbered games as a point of principle. I follow this curator on Steam, and that reminds me if any potential purchase features Denuvo and their anti-consumer bs. Really helpful.

This is another title that I'd have bought in a heartbeat if it wasn't for Denuvo. The character movement has a nice Dead Cells feel to it, and some of the fighting counters reminded me of Salt & Sanctuary, two amazing games. I had high hopes. But given that it's Ubisoft, I suppose I should have known better.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has a new trailer - still releasing September 5
9 June 2024 at 11:02 pm UTC

Played the originals back in 2018 for the first time - struggled with it for a couple of hours, trying to see the "magic" that everyone loved about this series, but it didn't click for me either. Good to hear it's cultural references, and not gameplay that made it so beloved.

I doubt I'll pick this up. It looks very similar in style to the Metro series, and I've had my fill of them.

The Queer Games Bundle returns for 2024
5 June 2024 at 9:35 am UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: nwildnerAnd just as a reminder: ITCH does not automatically adds games to your library. While you will be able to download them, you have to manually enter the game and add it to your library.

It is kinda weird but, it is their way of managing game collections. That happened back in 2020 with the "Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality" which had tons of games and you could get lots because it is hard to keep track of the games you own on Itch.

And that is something that it will not change as per Itch owners/develpers: https://itch.io/t/1979459/give-me-an-option-to-add-all-ukraine-bundle-items-to-my-library

So, a greasemonkey script on Firefox/Chrome is a good idea if you want to add those games to your library.

I gave up on Itch for this reason. Ended up buying a game I'd already gotten in a bundle. Tragically poor consumer experience.