Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by Cloversheen
Valve and others fined by the European Commission for 'geo-blocking' (updated)
22 January 2021 at 8:28 pm UTC

Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: x_wingBased on what it's written here Steam may not be able to restrict the access to the Russian store nor reject a credit card that is located in the EU.
But what's written there applies only to the EU, except if I missed or misinterpreted something.
I don't think anything in there applies to outside of the EU (like Russia).

You're right on that. Applied EU rules to any country of Europe... silly me.

Don't feel too bad, geo-politics are a mess... :/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Supranational_European_Bodies-en.svg

Valve and others fined by the European Commission for 'geo-blocking' (updated)
21 January 2021 at 7:01 am UTC Likes: 7

There is so much wrong with this thread it is honestly kinda scary.

Quoting: mphuZ
Quoting: TheSHEEEPThis is NOT about regional pricing, it is about region locking within the EU.
Do you understand that one thing leads to another? No?
What do you think will happen if the geo-blocking is removed? That's right - everyone will run to buy games from other countries at a reduced price.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

The geo-blocking has been removed for more than 5 years, and it didn't exist before Steam implemented it back in 2010. It only existed for 5 years and gaming did fine before and still does fine. The EEA has been around since 1994.

Quoting: mphuZ
Quoting: TheSHEEEPwent shopping (groceries, etc.)
Why are you comparing grocecies and digital products? You will not constantly order products from other countries for the sake of saving? I agree that this is not fair to honest users who bought the game on the territory of their country, and could not play it on a business trip because of geo-blocking. But this geo-blocking is aimed at freeloaders who want to get games for 10% of the price in their region.

Because that's how an economic area works, anyone living in the EEA have the legal and moral right to go shop wherever they want within the EEA, any company can choose to market their goods in the EEA as long as they play by the rules. We here might enjoy games more than most in the world but games are just another goods. Nothing special about it.

Quoting: mphuZ
Quoting: TheSHEEEPThose of us within the EU who know how to make a deal...
It is because of people like you that geo-blocking was created.
Can you suggest a better solution for sellers and buyers - suggest.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

QuoteThe elimination of region locks will also mean that publishers will likely raise prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage.

Regional locks where never allowed, the companies listed broke pre-existing law and had to pay the consequence. If you are a EU-citizen and disagree with said law, contact your representative. But you better prepare some better arguments to get through the queue.

Regional prices for less affluent areas in the EEA or any other part of the world are not going anywhere. There are over 400 million people living in the EU, no sane publisher will limit themselves to only a quarter of that market.

Fedora 33 released with lots of improvements to the Linux desktop
27 October 2020 at 8:04 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: dpanterBTRFS as default on a desktop distro... guess we'll find out how that experiment turns out before long.

openSUSE have done done it for a few years now, seems to generally work fine. It is also better tuned to be used as a default for the general masses than ext4 these days since it allows things like checksumming, compression, snapshots and copy-on-write while still being a widely used and integrated system compared to say ZFS.

Your average user or gamer will not be limited by the performance difference compared to EXT4 or XFS and can in some cases actually benefit from compression for reduced load-times on rotational drives.

For average Joe it doesn't really matter which file system crashes, they are not going to be fixing attempting to fix it regardless so the confusing docs are not really an issue either.

With my support-technician-hat on, I think it is a rather good default, and those that know they have specific demands also have the know-how to choose one that suits our workload better.

Steam Chat Filtering is now online for everyone as it exits Steam Labs
11 October 2020 at 1:02 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedjeWelcome to the USA. Where ultra violence is fine and sometimes encouraged. But don't you dare say a naughty word or try to see anyone fully naked!
(Had to bring that up as I was just getting into Conan Exiles again, where I had to order the UK version of the game so that the glory of full nude option is there on the PS4).

Good old Puritans.

Steam Chat Filtering is now online for everyone as it exits Steam Labs
7 October 2020 at 3:33 pm UTC Likes: 2

In general this sounds good to me.

The only thing I'm curious about is the international aspect. A lot of these filters tend to be very Anglo-centric which can be annoying when trying to converse in a native tongue. For instance one that has frequently tripped me and my friends up is the Swedish word for end which is a homograph of an English word that is sometimes used as an insult to a woman and thus understandably filtered.

There is also a similar issue within the Anglo-sphere, for instance with the common British word for a cigarette is a homonym of a derogatory term for homosexuals in the USA.

So if I want the filter to apply even to Friends, I won't be able to see or use that word while speaking my native language unless Steam is able to account for that, which sounds like a hard nut to crack for sure. Sure glad that isn't my job...

Since release Crusader Kings III has seen over 18 million murders - huge patch out now
5 October 2020 at 6:17 pm UTC

Quoting: SchattenspiegelWhen did it become ok, for companies, to openly post data, that they have needlessly mined from single player games, as advertisement?

It not really needlessly mined. Paradox actually uses that data to guide their development, you can see mentions of that in the developer diaries for all their games.

Since release Crusader Kings III has seen over 18 million murders - huge patch out now
29 September 2020 at 2:51 pm UTC

Holy Moly, that is a lengthy patch note!

Time to bring out the larger coffee mug and get to reading.

SteamTinkerLaunch is a huge all in one Linux wrapper tool for gaming
25 September 2020 at 2:43 pm UTC Likes: 3

This seems like an interesting project. Will give it a go for sure.

Quoting: fagnerlnThis GameScope looks really interesting, it really needs a specific release of Mesa? I don't want to mess with Mesa driver, I'm already using the Oibaf PPA

It works fine here with normal Mesa 20.1.7 or above, the tricky part is really just that it isn't wildly packaged yet. I put some details on how to get it compiled on Ubuntu and Fedora in a previous thread here.

Valve developer shows off Gamescope for Linux at XDC 2020
23 September 2020 at 8:09 pm UTC

Quoting: brokeassben
Quoting: shorbergOk... *phew* I think I got it.

Standard disclaimer applies to this, no warrenty, make sure you know what you are doing etc.

On a newly installed and fully updated Fedora 32:

sudo dnf install meson gcc-g++ cmake libcap-devel gslang-devel "pkgconfig(x11)" "pkgconfig(sdl2)" "pkgconfig(vulkan)" "pkgconfig(libinput)" "pkgconfig(xdamage)" "pkgconfig(xcomposite)" "pkgconfig(xrender" "pkgconfig(xext)" "pkgconfig(xxf86vm)" "pkgconfig(xtst)" "pkgconfig(pixman-1)" "pkgconfig(libdrm)" "pkgconfig(wayland-server)" "pkgconfig(wayland-protocols)" "pkgconfig(xkbcommon)" "pkgconfig(gbm)" "pkgconfig(libudev)"
(the quotation marks have to be like that in order to satisfy both the shell and dnf)

On a newly installed and fully updated Ubuntu 20.4 (focal)

sudo apt install build-essential git meson cmake libx11-dev libxdamage-dev libxcomposite-dev libxrender-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxtst-dev libpixman-1-dev libdrm-dev libvulkan-dev libwayland-dev wayland-protocols libinput-dev libxkbcommon-dev libcap-dev libsdl2-dev libgbm-dev glslang-tools libxcbcomposite0-dev libxcm-icccm4-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxcb-xinput-dev libsystemd-dev

Focal does not package an up-to-date version of meson so we need to install that separately from apt

$ sudo apt install python3-pip
$ pip3 install --user -I meson


Check which meson the system picks for you, if it isn't the one we just installed you probably don't have ~/.local/bin in your path, just log out and back in again and it should pick up this path per ~/.profile

$ which meson
/home/<user>/.local/bin/meson
$ meson --version
0.55.3 (or newer)


Build instructions (common)

$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope
$ cd gamescope
$ mkdir build
$ meson setup build
$ cd build
$ meson compile
$ sudo meson install


Edit:
Updating works like this
$ cd gamesope
$ rm -rf build
$ git pull
$ mkdir build
$ meson setup build
$ cd build
$ meson compile
$ sudo meson install
Thanks for taking the time to put this together for internet strangers. Hopefully others see your post and it isn't buried here.

I got it up and running and it makes CS:GO (and a couple Proton titles) much better looking at 1920x1080 on my ultra wide monitor. I'm guessing it'll help people with multiple monitors even more. It's a pretty sweet tool.

Happy it was of use! I'll see about sending a pull request upstream where it will be more useful.

Valve developer shows off Gamescope for Linux at XDC 2020
23 September 2020 at 2:54 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: cprnSo, if I understand it correctly, all this hassle is to get rid of micro freezes and tearing, i.e. to sync between GPU and app layer so that monitor driver could handle sync with the screen, right? I think there was a talk about limits of X from Ryan C. Gordon (Icculus) few years back that mentioned something like that is badly needed. So, yeah, finally. Way to go Pierre.

It is also for dealing with multi-monitor and different resolutions. Some games don't deal well with a multi-monitor setup and make their own (sometimes wrong) decision about which screen you want it to use and refuse to move. And sometimes they just don't want to work with certain resolutions etc. Previously you could use something like xpra for it, but doing it this way means you can essentially optimize it for the very specific case of games.

And as you said, "Way to go Pierre".

Buy Games
Buy games with our affiliate / partner links: