Baŝto

Just the simple fact that someone can’t plug in a hard drive and have it work every time, they have to go into a specific folder and write a specific arbitrary un-memorable UUID and tell it to always mount it on boot.

You can also mount partitions by label (LABEL=), but you have to name them yourself and make sure you don’t give two partitions the same name. The point of generating UUIDs is to have an extremely low risk of two partitions getting the same UUID generated.

But I think I get the issue, when I search for “linux automounting hard drive” I only see tutorials which explain how to use /etc/fstab.

It depends on what kind of automounting you are looking for, what they explain is the rare process of switching/adding internal drives that get mounted right after boot. First time that should be set up by the OS installer.

In case you were looking for automatically mounting USB drives/sticks, there are tools like udisks/udiskies who can do that and it’s possible they can handle internal drives too, but I never tried that since I want them to show up in specific places (~/Games, /var etc). Though I’d expect Gnome and KDE to have something like that included.

Steam Deck

That’s a machine that comes with a preinstalled and preconfigured distro with a very specific purpose. You can also buy preconfigured PCs/Laptops with support from System76, Tuxedo Computers etc.

people still had issues setting and forgetting their password For Windows, you are sacrificing security

If you encrypt your hard drives you are generally fucked if you completely lose your passwords, but that aside: On Linux you can basically just overwrite it withpasswd from grub shell or a live cd in combination with chroot and a physical intruder can do that as well. On windows you need to remember your security question or you need to have created a password reset disk to reset your local password. If you have/remember neither, sites recommend Reset this PC > Remove everything > Only the drive where Windows is installed > Just remove my files > Reset 🙃 I couldn’t find third party tools in reasonable time, but there might be some. You’d need a live cd as well, but secureboot can make that impossible.

I’d say for Linux you probably can reset your password in more situations than on Windows, but it’s less convenient and less secure (especially grub shell).

It’s a completely different story if you use a Microsoft account since Microsoft can basically change your password at will. If you don’t wanna get attacked from Microsoft it’s less secure, but since it allows two factor authentication and such it’s more secure in all other situations. You just can’t log in without internet.

I can’t remember many native games not working (any longer). Basically only the Anomaly series, Ticket to Ride and some other indie game. Anomaly has a serious bug that gets it trapped in an infinite loop on modern systems during loading screen, but there is a community patch for that. Ticket to Ride removed the Linux port on steam instead of fixing it. The indie game worked, but they forgot to make the executable actually executable.

Though there are certainly a bunch of games from humble bundle era who got a half-hearted Linux port basically as a fee to enter the bundle, with no updates or support since then.

If you are talking about running game through wine/proton, then yes that’s expected. It works surprisingly well, but any new proton/wine version can have indeed regressions and game updates break stuff. Games that don’t get any updates anymore should work a bit better. An exception are games that are officially supported by Valve since those are bound to specific proton version and they even support some DRM solutions (steam+proton only), but they can break on updates as well.

Best situation is if they have a somewhat fixed release and maybe a few updates. Having updates very month is a bit a problem. Online games that lock out older client versions are a huge problem. Online games should generally rather be viewed as a temporary service, they’ll never be as reliable as fully offline single player games are.

Games that use directshow/Media Foundation for cut scenes also don’t work great when playing them through steam for legal reasons. Valve won’t distribute decoders and doesn’t want to depend on them being installed in the system. They convert videos on their servers, but only the first time a player encounters that video and that player will see a placeholder. Wine supports those cut scenes.

You won’t even have an perfect experience on officially support platforms, but you can expect it to work better and the devs to test stuff.

You generally can’t expect Windows/Mac/Playstation/Xbox… games to run on Linux, though they might do.

In one word: browser

If the CPUs get strong enough, they could run old raytracing games at some point … especially on hardware platforms that don’t have ray tracing GPUs available for them.

DP also has the DRMs HDCP 2.2 and DisplayPort content protection 1.0

And MPEG LA claims they have patents that are needed to implement the DP standard.

There are two ways of doing doing bullet points (unordered lists) in markdown:

- now using ULWGL-protonfixes
- can now call the winetricks gui using `util.protontricks(‘gui’)`
- winetricks now performs an internet check before attempting any downloads
[…]
* protonfixes added for Alien Breed: Impact
* protonfixes added for Alien Breed 2: Assault
* protonfixes added for Alien Breed 3: Descent
* protonfixes added for Black Desert Online `NOSTEAM=1` option. Launch game like `NOSTEAM=1 %command%` to launch non-steam standalone version. 

It also supports ordered lists:

1. fixed `[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init()` failed; no appID found. from being reported when running non-steam games
2. non-steam games will now run using wine inside proton rather than calling steam.exe with wine then the game inside steam -- this goes alongside the API failure fix
3. controller axis patch added from 8-27 has been removed as it is now properly upstreamed

On arch the default java environment can be checked with archlinux-java status if archlinux-java-run is installed

I don’t think decompilation is the best way due to higher risks of git repo takedowns due to copyright violations. And the above mentioned “clean-room reverse engineered decompilations” contradicts itself since it’s either decompiled or clean room.

But that aside it can be somwhat useful for games with similar engines, but yes they are usually games with a quite active community. As soon as one of the games has a working port basing ports for other games on it is a lot easier than starting from scratch. This can affect not so important games using bigger engines.

examples:

• ScummVM supports a lot of engines (90 something) and even more games (325) by now. With few engines (SCUMM, SCI) supporting a lot of games.
• OpenRCT2 has its original/main focus on Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, but also (works on) supports Rollercoaster Tycoon.
• Openage has its original/main focus on Age of Empires II, but also (works on) supports Age of Empires and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
• OpenRW has its original/main focus on Grand Theft Auto III, but also (works on) supports Vice City and San Andreas.
• OpenMW has its original/main focus on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind , but also (works on) supports Oblivian and Skyrim.
• FreeHL (based on doom) has its original/main focus on old Half Life and Half-Life: Deathmatch, but the author also works on various mods for it: Counter-Strike 1.5, Team Fortress Classic, Scientist Hunt, Gunman Chronicles, Poke646, They Hunger, Opposing Force.
• OpenRA has its original/main focus on Command & Conquer: Red Alert, but also (works on) supports Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Dune 2000, Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2.
• Julius has its original/main focus on Caesar III, but also (works on) supports Pharaoh.
• Xoreos has its original/main focus on Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but also (works on) supports Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Jade Empire, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, The Witcher, Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II.
• GemRB implements Infinity Engine and no idea if it ever was focuse on a single game, but they (works on) supports Baldur’s Gate 1, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 2.

Their posts sounded a lot like they already collected that data based their pricing on that. They are desperate to become profitable, I don’t think they themselves thought this was the best idea.

I would like to see godot rise.

Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?

We treat different devices as different installs. We don’t want to track identity across different devices.

Is collecting the install data GDPR and CCPA compliant?

The method we are using to calculate installs is currently derived from aggregated data from various sources collected in compliance with all privacy laws and used to build a confidence around our estimate. If anything changes, we will provide you with notice and compliance mechanisms to assure all parties remain in compliance with applicable laws. Please note we will always work with our customers to ensure accurate billing.

Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?

We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates#unity-runtime-fee

They likely don’t track identities because that would be personal information, which is what GDPR protects.

Well it sounds a lot like they’ll track it with the engine and then send bills to the developer. That’s also not DRM if they collect usage data.

How is an install defined?

An install is defined as the installation and initialization of a project on an end user’s device.

How is Unity collecting the number of installs?

We leverage our own proprietary data model and will provide estimates of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project – this estimate will cover an invoice for all platforms.

https://unity.com/pricing-updates#unity-runtime-fee

Then I misunderstood you. How does that impact your library?

You also have to run them and let unity engine phone home

Unity made it clear that reinstalling on the same device doesn’t count. Though installing on multiple devices counts since they don’t track who installed it.

It seems they switched from Haxe/OpenFL to Haxe/Unity in march

Do you boycott unitygames now?

I just make normal backups before I update

The kickoff meeting for Vulkan was hosted by Valve. Like everything it’s not only Valve, but they had their fingers in this too. Valve is just one of the companies/groups that is pushing linux ports and vulkan support.

Valve is mostly moving interests of big game companies with steam machines and steam deck. Steam machines flopped, but initially they made companies consider ports. The success of steam deck will likely result into them paying more attention to not break wine/proton.

Yes, they just started to pay who already worked on all that stuff and had the know how. They paid CodeWeavers to work on proton, started to pay the DXVK person, I’m not sure if the D9VK fork person was paid but I think so, paid the FNA person.

Though DXVK wouldn’t be possible without Vulkan and Valve was involved in Vulkan since the beginning. They also pay people to work on linux drivers since 2014.

Let’s not forget that Valve released a Linux port for TF2 in 2012, released their native client in 2013, released SteamOS in 2013 and in the end ported nearly all their games to linux. It didn’t start with Proton.

But Humble Bundle pushed ports before that, because games had to have a Linux port in order to get into the bundle.