Had not heard that, interesting!

Ok so youre being ludicrous now.

1. Would more accurately be stated as ‘there are no problems if you can follow basic instructions and not wildly do things you dont fully understand’

2. This simply assumes as matter of indisputable fact that Valve having more marketshare is… bad? For… some reason? Is there some inherent reason why an extremely niche handheld basically gaming device with additional capabilities, a thing they pioneered not too long ago, is there some reason this is not entirely to be expected by a manufacturer pioneering a totally new kind of product?

Seriously, what?

Ok so very quickly, yes SteamOS is immutable amd I was unaware of that as I do not have literally all the free time in the world, but thats all irrelevant to the point I was making there?

I am not equipped with enough knowledge or foresight to perfectly predict the evolution of new products markets and technology and never claimed to, and you have suddenly shifted into that frame of reference to respond to me.

If Valve ever reverses course on being, you know, the most effective FOSS advocate in terms of getting members of the general public maybe likely to switch to FOSS to actually do so, then I will be pretty shocked and surprised.

If they suddenly come out with some kind of obvious policy that would be very bad for FOSS in general, then I’d be critical of it.

Companies shittifying is obviously a thing that happens in the tech industry, and I guess you see Valve laying some kind of groundwork for this. I currently disagree, but if it does happen, then everyone in FOSS will do what everyone in FOSS has always done and adapt.

I am sorry, I would think it would make way more sense to be critical of things like what Canonical has been doing for a while now if you want to be worried about the FOSS scene.

Sorry I am unable to reply again in exhaustive detail, but:

I have never had any significant problems using Linux native emulators on debian, set up to use sources and just be updated via sudo apt get update && sudo apt get uprade.

As to your troubles with Nvidia hardware, thats not surprising, they are far more black box with their code than AMD is, which is why Valve partnered with them for the SteamDeck.

As to an Android like situation, well, one, I meant fixed OS as in only one OS on the SteamDeck as opposed to multiple possible OSs, not as in immutable. SteamOS is not immutable. Its largely derived from Arch for Christs sake haha.

But all that aside, yes your Android style situation is possible, but uh to me that seems like a good argument to stick with a SteamDeck?

Yes I would make the argument that using package managers is vastly more simple than hunting down exes on the internet, yes.

And I do not think that asking someone to learn how package managers work, while using a Linux system, is unreasonable.

Its not very complicated once the basics are learned. And its a fundamental step to understanding how basically any Linux OS works. And once youve got the basics down, its generally far simpler and more convenient to use than the Windows alternative, in many cases.

Handles all the needed libraries, no need to hunt for additional dependencies elsewhere on the internet.

Unless you go hog wild with it and install a bunch of experimental garbage that some random guy told you is really cool and way better for blah blah reasons that blows up and then that same gug goes oh thats because -insanely specific procedure or insanely specific dependency or insanely specific compatibility problem because /actually/ that guy is a maniac who has no idea how to develop qualitt software-, leaving you in dependency conflict hell…

…Unless you do that.

And this is a trap that many Windows power users fall into that many non Windows power users /do not/ fall into, myself included as originally falling into that trap.

The Windows Power User /will almost always/ overestimate both the need to, and their ability to customize and trick out a Linux install, precisely because they are so very used to needing to try every little weird thing to get Windows to do what they want, but they do not usually realize until it is too late that the ways they learned to do this more or less do not really apply to Linux.

Its the whole thing I mentioned earlier.

MSFT PC Gamers, who often by necessity are also Windows Power Users, get frustrated that their expertise of customizing Windows is nearly useless and often counter productive on Linux.

Then they have a bad experience, get mad about it, meanwhile people who come from different backgrounds rarely have this problem.

Finally, on SteamOS, on a SteamDeck, well youve got a matched and static OS and Hardware configuration. So… your emus either will or wont work, just gotta find one solution for one problem, or wait for the emu devs to patch a bug.

No need to figure out a million potential issues caused by a million potential different hardware configs on a Windows DesktopPC.

Well I was talking specifically about the ease of setting up emulation on in particular SteamOS vs Windows.

Its complex on both compared to say installing a game from Steam on either Windows or SteamOS, but installing Emus is more user friendly on SteamOS than on Windows.

Also its fairly easy to see if a game will work on SteamOS. You look for the little SteamDeck verified icon.

Well I think its fair to agree to disagree, or hold different stances on that first point.

Yep, I just dont care about such people, in terms say wanting to make a game any of them would want to play.

I acknowledge thats just me personally and of course other people in other situations would be valid in caring about that demographic.

As to the second point, you may be right, and I may be wrong.

I would say there are far too many variables to forecast how everything will evolve accurately, but I guess I can say that I am confident that the share of linux gamers will grow, and that it will almost certainly spawn analagous, linux games to the current Windows Exclusive ecosystem, but i grant that many other forces at play may impede or prevent certain existing games from doing the work to allow online linux capability, or for bigger established studios heavily influenced or outright funded by MSFT to develop new games or compatibilize existing games in that manner.

You’re right, its not perfect, but the ball is now rolling down the mountain, picking up more and more snow.

The technical foundations are now clearly evidenced to be viable, all problems that remain more or less revolve around whether or not a developer decides to intentionally not support linux via a Windows Only AntiCheat that is actually a RootKit or not.

And thats up to momentum of overall users on linux, which is up to other kinds of games making the platform more relatively popular, which we already see happening but of course cannot predict everything about.

Maybe some kind of game developer who is a bit jaded with MSFT for various reasons will make a significantly popular Linux Exclusive game. Who knows?

But yes uh Windows does often fight you in ways when you try to emulate. Most of these ways can be overcome by reasonably competent Windows users, but its far more straightforward on say, a SteamDeck.

In this case it comes down to the experience of the noob user, who will be scared and confused by the experience of maybe i went to a bad website and downloaded a virus, windows is asking me to make sure i know what i am doing and i dont, wow this sure seems risky!

On SteamDeck and SteamOS its less confusing and scary.

Also, theres the whole Pluton thing which I am still baffled people do not know about. The latest gen of AMD and i believe now also Intel CPUs are designed with a basically below ring 0 bit of always active, network enabled microcode than runs below Windows, even below the BIOS/UEFI, and this is a physically seperate part of the CPU that is not possible to physically remove without destroying the CPU.

The whole point of this is advertised as being necessary for security, but it actually isnt. It interfaces with Windows in a way it /almost/ certainly cannot on Linux, and its capable of accessing literally everything on your computer.

It is highly likely that what it will actually be used for is DRM at a below the OS level.

Oh you wanna install known binary with know signature of latest release of an emulator? Nope, not allowed, no matter what you do.

It hasnt happened yet, but the security minded section of the linux community have basically already worked out that its entirely capable of doing this and its absolutely within MSFTs uh, philosophy or market strategy or whatever to do this.

Its also literally documented to have been developed as a result of MSFT not being able to figure out how stop XBoxes from being hard modded and softmodded to allow it to run emulators, amongst other things.

Anyway in regards to emulators on linux vs windows, so far in my experience ive had great luck using linux native emus, usually work better tham windows ones through proton in most cases for st least me personally.

Well, honestly at this point, generally speaking, the kinds of games that currently are hugely popular and only work on Windows?

They usually have very toxic communities.

They usually are expensive.

They are often addicting and they are often designed to coax players into more and more microtransactions and are thus unethical.

They are nearly always a kind of gameplay that is actually not very original, or engaging or challenging for anyone who has a good amount of experience with a wide variety of games, but draw people in due to featuring a popular IP characters/setting/world.

There are nearly always alternative games that take aforementioned extremely unoriginal at this point game mechanics and actually improve on them, but are less popular due to being a less recognizable IP.

Do you see where I am going with this?

You are talking about the most stereotyoically gamer type people that give basically all people who enjoy games but also have a personality outside of that a hugely bad rap.

These are, generally speaking, the idiots that keep shelling out money to hugely exploitative game studios that consistently release buggy unfinished garbage, or are widely known to have horrible working conditions for their employees, or both.

These are the people who I was talking about, the ones that just need whats comfortable, need that latest version of their favorite IP game, number 7 or 9 in the series.

Now, I am being hyperbolic and I realize that there are exceptions to this, there are actually good games that are still basically currently Windows only because they dont have a large enough staff to keep updating their games and also make multiplayer work on linux.

But, if you look into the technicals of that situation… in many cases the technical fix for this is actually so easy that I have seen people literally submit all of the code for this directly to the devs, or if its closed source a comprehensive overview of how to implement something… and they just do not notice it or say that nobody plays on linux so who cares.

But they are likely to change that stance when they see more and more SteamDeck and Linux Desktop users.

I will be completely fine if all of the COD 386 players are still using Windows in 5 years when someone has figured out how to do a more fun, less bullshit, less toxicity inducing shooter on Linux, or something analogous to that.

Let them keep paying for their own suffering while others move on and… you know. Have fun. Playing games. Remember when games were fun, and engaging instead of soul crushing addictions that ruin you and your life?

If I am not mistaken, you /can/ have that be a thing, as I am fairly sure the actual SteamOS is open source and Valve would /probably?/ allow that to come stock on a potential alternate handheld…

But kind of their whole thing is it is optimized for the hardware set up they are using.

So… you could theoretically have an or multiple competing Not Valve but Yes SteamOS Decks, but from the standpoint of the economics of building a market viable gaming machine, Valve would still probably have a serious edge in that market for a while.

Almost like Valve actually understands the entire tech industry better than nearly any other tech company or something.

I am shocked, shocked I tell you that MSFT using PC Gamers still have not realized they are MSFT fanboys basically exactly the same way you had console fanboys a decade ago.

But, but, they spent so much time learning how to do so much weird esoteric bullshit to make Windows actually run games well, and nearly none of that translates over to a Linux system!

You mean my decades of mastery of an increasingly enshittifying Operating System is… worthless?

That a better alternative exists if I would only take the time to do literally any work to learn something actually out of my comfort zone?

…

I think the modern equivalent of Socrates getting old and complaining about the youths being disrespectful and dancing too lewd of dances is basically people who styled themselves as early adopters and technologically savvy in their childhood and early adulthood, and then just entirely gave up on that while basically simultaneously still claiming to be tech savvy but also being inherently afraid and dismissive of any /actually/ useful new tech innovations.

Yeah I am baffled at this point anyone at all would consider a MSFT portable PC.

Linux has finally actually arrived, Proton works amazingly well compares to just a few years ago and honestly Valve as a manufacturer of gaming peripherals has a shockingly good track record for solid build quality, even if some of their devices are not super popular.

Oh right did anyone mention you can emulate basically anything other than current gen consoles on a Steam Deck, and the operating system is not going to fight you on that?

Half Life 3 - Hybrid Action Shooter / Alternate Reality Game.

Is that random person you are walking past in AD 2038 a PMC guarding your local refugee camp after climate change has destroyed the world’s economy?

Now theyre a Civil Protection Officer!

Then the game instructs you to find a real life crowbar and present it to the Steam Deck 3 camera for verification.

HEV suit voice: You know what to do.

Uh ok… well if you had ProtonVPN on, selected an endpoint and both those websites showed that your IP is indicated as coming from the selected endpoint, in another country, that is good!

Unfortunately that doesnt tell us all that you would need to know though.

I have to go to sleep, but if you would like send me a screenshot of what both those sites say when ProtonVPN is on, I could probably tell you if you are good to go, or if you need to dive into ProtonVPN settings.

God help us both if the problem isnt the ProtonVPN config and somehow something with your linux config is fucky, lol.

EDIT: I mean pm me the screenshot, not post them here lol.

Also… yeah I used to use ProtonVPN, switched to linux and dear fucking god the non CLI version was so buggy and broken I switched to i think another VPN provider that actually had a working GUI on a debian based linux build, then to a different one that was CLI only, then more or less gave up amd went with Mozilla because at least the fucking GUI worked.

DO NOT USE IPV6

Seriously, figure out how to configure it to NEVER use IPv6, make it so it doesnt default fail back from IPv4 to IPv6 for whatever reason!

ISPs are generally still able to serve cease and desist notices if you torrent via IPv6, it usually DNS leaks all over the place.

Use both of these sites to test and make sure your VPN configuration will not leak.

https://ipleak.net/

https://dnsleaktest.com/

Finally, FINALLY we can have… not the smellovision nickelodeon promised us… but something SUPERIOR!

Aromatic Gaming!

swift cut to gamer playing HL2 on his Steam Arom-OLED Deck, actually wretching and vomiting when Gordon gets to Ravenholm

Hrm… I wonder what GMANs time stasis pocket dimension… smells like.

Hrm.

Ozone, maybe?