moon_matter

You’re still stuck when it comes to anti-cheat in multiplayer games. Some do allow it to work on Linux, but a significant number don’t. Hopefully the tides slowly start to change thanks to the Steam Deck.

At least when it comes to Git I’m not too concerned. What could MS possibly do to you? Maybe vendor lock in via the issue tracker? They aren’t using it and it’s not exactly that hard to migrate off of it in the first place.

It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.

The problem with indie devs is purely a lack of knowledge and resources. They don’t feel comfortable testing and packaging binaries for distribution on Linux. A decent number of them are also self-taught and actually have almost no exposure to desktop Linux at all. So it’s actually a much higher hurdle than you think.

Popularity makes all forms of support infinitely easier. I’d struggle to come up with any technical reason that could be worth giving up the ability to easily google for issues or install software. That doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t use other distros, just that I believe Ubuntu is the best choice for a default install targeting average people.

The music industry wants their license fees and people want to play using those special controllers. So it’s prohibitively expensive to make this type of game on top of the added burden of the hardware. It’s a miracle the game even exists as is.

It’s kind mind boggling how often you have to ask the OP to actually post the command they tried to run or the full error message and some of them will actually try to argue that it won’t help. The people that frequent the forums start to get a bit annoyed at having to beg for bread crumbs and they eventually either become toxic or burn out and leave the community.

Sometimes they can afford to not know because they have a relative who can manage the device for them. In which case they really wouldn’t be installing software on their own really.

You would be surprised at how many people cannot even change the volume on their tablet.

A few series exist that let you do this, but none offer agency to the other players outside of battles to go talk to NPCs and get their own quests.

I think Divinity OS2 has this. You can go off on your own and do side quests. But you’re probably going to be restricted by how tight the difficulty curve is and can’t handle major battles solo. Though I guess a mod could change that.

Is this even a legitimate problem? Lots of people, myself included, have a “local” configuration. All of the services and credentials mentioned in the config are running on my personal machine for testing only during active development. None of those credentials refer to any sort of “real” service that’s on 24/7 and accessible via the internet. It’s effectively dummy data to the rest of the world and I imagine there are a ton of false positives like what I just described.

Windows auto-recovers from almost any issue the average user might encounter. It cannot be understated just how hard it is for an application or driver to break modern Windows. It goes much farther than just fixing a kernel panic. It will reset to a serviceable state for almost anything you can think of ( e.g. bad display settings, borked application install) and even in the worst situation will still give you some sort of GUI and try to walk you through the problem.

Linux sort of just gives up and lets you shoot yourself in the foot if you really ask it to. It’s up to you to then figure out how to fix things and that usually involves diving into the terminal. But even ignoring that, a lot of Linux applications have a serious UI/UX problem. I cannot count how many applications just do things like throw a config file at you even for common tasks and expect you to read a doc page in order to figure it out. I have better things to do than read yet another wall of text just to do something simple like remapping key bindings (e.g. mpv). That would be an unthinkable thing to do to a Windows user.

Linux developers seem to want to develop software for other developers. Windows developers develop software for average people. The fragmentation of 1000s of Linux distros, each with their own quirks only make matters worse by further complicating where and how to get help.

I hate myself for saying this, but the only way forward is to treat PCs like a highly moddable console. They need to come with some “exclusive” software that only makes its way to other platforms at a later date. They also need to be built for a specific purpose (e.g. media centre, gaming) with the expectation that most people won’t want to leave the comfort zone.

I’ve been using Linux for so long that it’s hard for me to give an approximation of what a new user might find challenging

The average person would fail on step 0 of Installing the OS. In fact 90% of the problem could be attributed to Linux distros not coming preinstalled on PCs sitting in big box stores.

All of Linux’s success stories for the average user (Android, Steam Deck, Chrome book) have one thing in common. They are low cost, simple, purpose built for very specific tasks with a bunch of exclusive games/software that people want to use. We need to start looking at PCs almost like they are highly moddable game consoles. It should come with the expectation that most users don’t want to leave the comfort of the walled garden.

We need the equivalent of what Android is for phones, but for the desktop. A preinstalled, very opinionated OS that completely eliminates issues 2-4 and is supported by a major corp. We need someone like Valve to take things a tiny step beyond some combination of a Chrome book and the Steam Deck.

Genshin community,

I get that communities for popular games can be a bit hit or miss, but communities for single player games are pretty chill. Competitive team games like the Source games you mentioned, League of Legends etc. are on a whole different level of toxic. They can’t even be compared.

For something like Genshin the real problem is content creators. Much of the so called toxicity has little to nothing to do with the game itself and is more an issue with huge cults of personality clashing with each other. I think every popular game is going to fall victim to this going forward and you just have to learn to ignore it.

Won’t Rocky have the same issue as Alma? RedHat has made RHEL closed source, so how can they maintain compatibility?

I suspect Rocky and other source rebuilds just haven’t made the announcement yet. Alma was merely the first to make an official statement.

Bash isn’t the only shell. Most systems can use zsh or fish or tcsh or whatever shell you prefer, if you like that better than bash. You’re gonna have to run a shell if you want to use the terminal, though, you understand that?

Defaults matter. There are a lot of situations where you aren’t allowed to install whatever you want. It would be less of an issue if other shells or language run-times came preinstalled. The problem isn’t really Bash itself. It’s the fact that it’s often the only dependable option. But thankfully that’s starting to change and you can usually find python preinstalled at minimum.

Software is definitely at the top of the list in terms of reasons. But the UX/UI definitely leaves something to be desired. I sigh heavily every time an application asks me to edit a text-based config file instead of giving me a GUI. It’s an unnecessary, error-prone process and most importantly I have better things to do than read yet another page of documentation. That doesn’t mean I want the config file to go away, it’s still very useful for a variety of reasons. But I shouldn’t have to mess around with it just to remap keys or other common tasks. Editing a config file should be a last resort for an end user.

You see similar problems when relying on the terminal. I don’t like this idea of the end user being allowed to mess around without a safety net or some sort of guidance.

The problem with copyleft is that it makes it inherently difficult to make a living off of developing software. It prevents people from using the most straight forward way of selling their product. To be fair, some people do make it work but it’s either because they sell enterprise support or SaaS. This model doesn’t work for desktop applications and regular users. All you’re left with is donations. Go look at some of the average salaries for incredibly popular software like VLC. You won’t like what you’ll find.