[HN Gopher] I forked SteamOS for my living room PC
___________________________________________________________________
I forked SteamOS for my living room PC
Author : muterad_murilax
Score : 325 points
Date : 2023-12-31 10:45 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (iliana.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (iliana.fyi)
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I was totally blown away by how good Proton is in the post Steam
| Deck world. I now play Steam games on my Linux laptop almost
| daily because they "just work" even when the only listed
| supported platform is Windows
| gclawes wrote:
| That's awesome. How does proton treat anti-cheat software or
| DRM?
| jcastro wrote:
| Works if the developer enables it.
|
| For example: Halo Infinite works fine, but Destiny and Call
| of Duty don't.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yep. DRM'd online stuff and VR mainstays (Beat Saber,
| primarily) are the two sets of games that are keeping me
| tethered to Windows at the moment. VR games can be played
| via a Windows VM with GPU passthrough but for DRM'd online
| games you don't really have any other option, at least if
| you don't want to get banned.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| I also run a Windows VM for gaming. One thing to note is
| that some games have (robust!) VM detection checks on
| launch, so you can't even run them in the first place.
| Valorant is one example.
| diggan wrote:
| > I also run a Windows VM for gaming
|
| What do you use for the VM? Last time I checked, I
| couldn't find any free/FOSS VM tooling that allows me to
| do GPU pass-through on a Linux Host to Windows Guest.
| SXX wrote:
| It seems like you haven't looked into it much since it's
| was feasible for last 7-8 years..
|
| Linux hosts had GPU passthrough working well before
| commercial software had such options. Nowadays it's just
| work out-of-box with Virt-Manager that just run QEMU
| under KVM.
|
| It's been working for years for 99.9% of games excluding
| some invasive anti-cheats that ban you for VMs, but there
| literally only a few games that have issue with
| virtualization.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| I use Proxmox and GPU passthrough works just fine (via
| QEMU). Note that Nvidia GPUs have less issues with
| passthrough, at least last I checked. See this guide:
| https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough
|
| But if you're running a standard distro, there are guides
| for most them.
|
| * Arch guide (excellent resource, applicable to all
| distros):
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
|
| * Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/gpu-
| virtualization-with-qemu-...
|
| * Gentoo: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_wi
| th_libvirt_qe...
|
| You can also find countless blog posts and videos on
| setting up GPU passthrough.
|
| One excellent resource for gaming use-cases in particular
| is this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/
|
| Last thing to note is that your motherboard can make the
| process easier if it has good IOMMU support. Basically,
| you want a MB that puts your PCI slot in a separate IOMMU
| group. You can find examples by searching for "(MB name)
| IOMMU groups".
| Kerbonut wrote:
| Beat Saber does work on Linux if you can deal with VR on
| Linux's quirks.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Doing so requires a SteamVR headset, though. I'm using a
| Quest 2 which only works well with Windows.
|
| Up to date compelling SteamVR options are starting to
| appear however so I might see if I can move over to one
| of those in the next year or two.
| Filligree wrote:
| I haven't tried the quest link thing in years, and last I
| did it dropped FPS a lot vs. using SteamVR. Has that
| improved?
| jwells89 wrote:
| Not sure either but people with Indexes, Vives, etc seem
| to be competitive on the Beat Saber leaderboards so any
| loss can't be too bad.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| * depending on the anti-cheat or DRM
|
| This is true for at least EAC/EasyAntiCheat. This covers a
| lot, sure, but not _everything!_
| 0x457 wrote:
| It depends on both. Anti-cheat used by Destiny 2 is
| supported, but Bungie needs to allow it first.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Indeed. I meant to imply both if I managed otherwise.
| This is just a casual warning - Linux gaming is great [as
| much as the industry allows]
|
| I didn't really want to start itemizing things. Most
| competitive Counter-Strike anti-cheat _isn 't_ supported.
|
| I've had some luck with the Windows VM approach instead.
| One may have to disable quite a lot _(ie: Hyper-V
| enhancements)_ to truly trick them.
| Deathmax wrote:
| Battleye has integrations with Proton as well, but as
| with EAC, it's opt in by the developer, and not every dev
| enables it.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Sure - leads more to my point of... check the games you
| care about for support. I didn't really want to start
| itemizing these things.
|
| Most AC used in the competitive Counter-Strike community
| _isn 't_ supported, for example. Only first-party VAC.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Those games with anti-cheats are anti-player garbage anyway.
| You don't lose much without them.
| infecto wrote:
| I wish the Linux/OSS communities were less like this and
| more welcoming.
| ekianjo wrote:
| DRM is not welcoming by default... sounds like you have
| double standards
| IshKebab wrote:
| DRM is not the same as anti-cheat.
| arendtio wrote:
| They are not, but both are symptoms of a consumer-
| disrespecting mindset.
|
| - DRM does not serve the consumer, but the producer.
|
| - Anti-cheat only serves the consumer if it is well-
| designed. However, if someone is able to design a game
| (technically) well, anti-cheat is unnecessary. And if
| someone cannot design a game, their anti-cheat is often a
| disservice to the consumer.
|
| I don't like either DRM or anti-cheat solutions, not
| because I am not willing to pay the producers, but
| because I have been burned too many times by
| dysfunctional solutions.
| eropple wrote:
| _> Anti-cheat only serves the consumer if it is well-
| designed. However, if someone is able to design a game
| (technically) well, anti-cheat is unnecessary._
|
| That silly "speed of light" thing? Just design better.
| 0x457 wrote:
| There are cheats today that takes your monitor output and
| act like a hardware mouse. There is nothing you can do
| with game design about it.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > However, if someone is able to design a game
| (technically) well, anti-cheat is unnecessary.
|
| Nonsense. It's completely impossible to stop cheaters
| these days, but anti-cheat technology definitely raises
| the bar. It's only "unnecessary" if you're willing to
| accept a large number of cheaters.
|
| Some anti-cheat stuff definitely goes to far but to
| dismiss the idea entirely is just naive.
| aeonik wrote:
| Back in the day we had admins and communities of people.
| You'd get to know people more and establish trust. You
| could have registered brackets and independent
| tournaments with manual administration and banning for
| cheaters.
|
| It worked pretty good, but all of that was taken away.
| infecto wrote:
| You are conflating ideas. I don't think it will be a
| productive discussion to go down the road of anticheat
| systems and DRM. We can all have opinions that are
| different.
|
| What is productive is calling out hostile behavior and
| comments that do nothing but hurt the ecosystem. I see
| these type of strong negative opinions in a lot of areas
| of the Linux community. "Oh you do X, that's stupid you
| should not be using the product like that"
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| But it's the simple facts.
|
| The best possible, most correct, most defensible, most
| world-improving advice to give for dealing with a user-
| hostile product or service, is to have the strength of
| will to reject it and live without it, and live the
| example to show that it's possible and you won't die.
|
| Or at the very least, it is AT LEAST as defensible a
| stance as "The more pragmatic/adult approach is to give
| the bully whatever they want than to go without their
| product or service".
|
| That philosophy is not remotely automatically more
| correct or more adult or nuanced or any of the self-
| serving words anyone typically uses to try to grant their
| idea more legitimacy than it deserves.
|
| Calling the principled stance "hostile" is itself
| hostile.
|
| You can phrase it in a way that sounds emotional and
| shortsighted and jeuvenile, and certainly there are many
| juveniles who are guilty of that.
|
| Never the less, rejecting a bad deal is still
| fundamentally a reaction not an action, a defense not an
| offense.
|
| The publisher promulgating a user-hostile deal is
| _inarguably_ the offender, the initial hostile actor.
|
| You can decide that the bad deal is tolerable for
| yourself, but that is entirely your weakness and does not
| make that policy smarter or more correct than that of
| those that decline.
| infecto wrote:
| I genuinely appreciate you proving my point.
|
| I am not here debating DRM or anticheat. Simple pointing
| out that telling someone the game they play is garbage
| because it uses anticheat does nothing but hurts the
| Linux ecosystem.
|
| You can come up with another essay but I don't think it
| disproves what I am saying. Telling someone the game they
| play is garbage is not increasing the Linux user base. I
| am sure there will be a retort here, "we don't want those
| kind of users or related software".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > What is productive is calling out hostile behavior
|
| Okay; anti-cheat is user-hostile.
|
| > "Oh you do X, that's stupid you should not be using the
| product like that"
|
| Okay, the thing I want is to use a game that I paid for,
| play it on the machine I own, and run it without giving
| it any special privileges (certainly not modifying my
| kernel). I trust that you will support that and not be
| negative about the way I want to use it?
| infecto wrote:
| What are you even arguing? I am not here debating if
| drm/anticheat is good or bad.
|
| I am saying it's hostile to tell someone who wants to run
| software but cannot because of a limitation in the OS
| that it does not matter because it's garbage anyway.
| bitwize wrote:
| The players of the game are willing to put up with DRM
| and anticheat in order to get the game. By taking a
| hardline stance against these, the Linux community is
| being user-hostile.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Why aren't you saying that the DRM software is the
| unwelcoming party?
|
| That user would happily play that game, but the game
| publisher doesn't want them.
|
| Incredible.
| infecto wrote:
| The only thing incredible is how upset people are for
| pointing out that it's hostile to tell someone the game
| they enjoy playing is garbage and is not worth playing
| because it has anticheat.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A computer should serve its user. If the user is serving
| his computer, they're Linuxing right but otherwise doing it
| wrong.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Well if cheating is going to make the game almost
| unplayable the outcome is pretty much the same as you
| deciding to never install it in the first place due to
| disliking anticheat systems. So I don't really see the
| problem.
| arendtio wrote:
| Obviously, you haven't been in a position where you had
| to patch the anti-cheat solution yourself in order to
| play the game you paid for.
|
| Well-designed games offer limited potential for cheaters
| by design. An anti-cheat software can help to eliminate
| the little potential that is left, but often games are
| designed without cheating in mind and some anti-cheat
| software is put in place to solve all the issues that
| were produced by the bad design.
| mainde wrote:
| I think that there are very few tasks in competitive
| multiplayer games that humans perform better than
| machines[1], I don't think your statement holds true
| unless you exclude a huge amount of game genres or you
| take all the fun out of them. (E.g. no FPSs or ..FPSs
| with no aiming?)
|
| [1] Unless we're talking about captcha solving
| competitions, for now, maybe. :)
| kuschku wrote:
| You're right in that, if your server rejects inputs that
| are too fast, too precise, too robotic to be human, bots
| will emulate the top-playing humans ever more closely.
|
| But the question I want to ask is: Is that a problem?
|
| If all the bots and cheaters are playing
| indistinguishable from high-level real humans, where's
| the harm?
|
| Or, to quote Westworld: If you can't tell the difference,
| does it matter?
| mainde wrote:
| Uhm, yes, I think it is a problem because unfairly losing
| isn't as fun as fairly losing or fairly winning.
| Ignorance about the fairness of a game may work in a few
| instances but would not scale.
|
| You don't have to reach pro levels, it often only takes
| small assists to turn a balanced game on its head,
| ruining someone's experience with a game. Repeat often
| enough and the userbase will leave, feeling cheated or at
| least demoralised for being unable to compete or improve.
|
| And allowing machine-assists, thus leveling the playing
| field, turns the game into a completely different one
| that is (imho) drastically less fun whoever may not be
| interested in (or may be unable to) running/coding their
| bot.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?
|
| There is a difference in skill level distribution. If
| everyone playing at a highly skilled player level, then
| it's simply not fun and doesn't provide an opportunity to
| get better.
|
| Anyways, playing with cheaters isn't fun and if you want
| to play without them then you need anti-cheat and/or game
| to not be free.
| daveidol wrote:
| Do you mean the presence of anti-cheat software makes them
| anti-player? Because I'd disagree. It's a lot of work and
| expense to combat cheats, but is very much appreciated by
| many players (when it works)
| ekianjo wrote:
| Not every gamer wants an esport experience to have fun
| Wytwwww wrote:
| I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst
| multiplayer gamers? There is a lot less anonymity in
| esports and if you get caught and blacklisted.. well you
| just wasted thousands or tens of thousands of hours.
|
| It's pretty hard to have fun when the server is full of
| cheaters.
| diggan wrote:
| > I assumed that cheating is way more widespread amongst
| multiplayer gamers?
|
| I mean, hard to call cheating in a multiplayer game the
| same as cheating in a singleplayer game. The former ruins
| the experience of others, the latter just affects your
| own session. Hard to be against cheating in a
| singleplayer context.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| I was thinking about casual and professional online
| gamers (yet somehow managed to leave out a word in
| comment...). Of course "cheating" in single player games
| isn't even a real thing
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Cheating in single player is sort of like modding
| aseipp wrote:
| There's nothing "esports" about wanting to avoid
| wallhacks/aimbots in games like Tarkov, Rust, or Destiny,
| which completely ruin the entire game for every player in
| the lobby in an instant. It has nothing to do with
| "esports" and everything to do with actually being able
| to play the game. Do you also think it's because of
| "esports" when you're forbidden from cheating at a game
| of chess in person? When my friend plays Rust and gets
| upset because a flying aimbot hacker raids his base, gets
| banned, and comes back 1 hour later (buying a hot key off
| some shady 3rd party site), is he thinking "Damn, esports
| is really ruining this game"? No. The players are
| expected to fundamentally abide by the same rules. That's
| what a game is.
|
| Realistically these days with how expensive most of these
| games are to run and make, if you do not keep cheaters
| away it can tank the entire project, e.g. Cycle: The
| Frontier basically had to shut down because they couldn't
| keep cheaters at bay, in a system that heavily relies on
| player count to remain healthy and fun. Once the cheating
| gets bad enough, people stop playing the game, which
| leads to a death spiral: it starts with bad queue times,
| which leads to people playing other games, and that
| spiral further diminishes the playerbase beyond a point
| of no return. Cycle barely made it 12 months and the
| result was a multi-million dollar project getting flushed
| down the drain.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| RIP to the Cycle. It deserved better.
|
| I am glad that Bungie is going with fog of war for
| Marathon. And heck, given the features Marathon is
| getting, maybe someday Destiny can have those nice things
| too. We'll see...
| earthling8118 wrote:
| A kernel level invasion of privacy is required to stop
| flying players? That doesn't sound right to me. Not to
| mention that apparently it isn't working if your friend
| is witnessing it.
|
| So players of those games are sacrificing privacy for no
| security at all by the sounds of it.
| kaetemi wrote:
| Or they could just not trust the clients, instead of
| throwing the problem over the wall. A lot of these games
| with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools
| basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right
| here" and the server just does it. Garbage.
| charcircuit wrote:
| That is the way things are going with cloud gaming.
| dijit wrote:
| Realistically _some_ trust has to be in the client,
| otherwise your game will feel horribly sluggish and the
| corrections will drive you crazy.
|
| I can make a game with full server trust to show you if
| you like.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Wow, it's awesome you've solved the entirety of
| multiplayer gaming. Here I was thinking anti-cheating
| measures was a complex topic but it's great you've
| elucidated me.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a
| complex topic
|
| It isn't. If you play with people you don't know, some of
| them will cheat. If you don't want that, stop playing
| with strangers.
| yatac42 wrote:
| > A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection
| the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me
| a vehicle right here" and the server just does it.
|
| Citation needed. I'd be quite surprised if it were common
| for servers of professional games to trust the client in
| that sense (i.e. allowing it to decide game logic like
| what gets spawned where).
|
| As far as I'm aware the most common types of multiplayer
| cheats are
|
| * wall hacks, which you could probably prevent by not
| sending the client any information about objects that the
| player can't see, but that would require the server to
| calculate the line of sight for every player/object, *
| and aim bots, which I don't think you could prevent at
| all on the server side since they don't rely on the bot
| having access to any information that the player isn't
| supposed to have. They just rely on the bot being better
| at aiming. I suppose if you did all rendering server side
| and only sent the rendered graphics to the client (i.e.
| streaming), that would make it harder for the bot because
| it'd now have to do image recognition to find the target,
| but that just makes it harder, not impossible. Plus, game
| streaming wasn't well received for a reason and anyway, I
| don't think that's what you had in mind when you talked
| about "not trusting the client".
| j1elo wrote:
| "just" is (tongue in cheek) a forbidden word in HN. Next
| thing you might find yourself claiming is that Dropbox is
| a worthless idea because it's "just" FTP.
|
| Btw tell me exactly how an aimbot that takes the visuals
| from the player's screen and tilts the player's cursor so
| (or not so) slightly towards identified moving targets,
| are to be avoided from the server. Modern cheating is
| already a hard-ass problem to solve, much more so if no
| client-level monitoring is desired.
| kuschku wrote:
| > Btw tell me exactly how an aimbot that takes the
| visuals from the player's screen and tilts the player's
| cursor so (or not so) slightly towards identified moving
| targets, are to be avoided from the server. Modern
| cheating is already a hard-ass problem to solve, much
| more so if no client-level monitoring is desired.
|
| The very same way that you'd do it on the client. If I
| run an aimbot on an nvidia jetson devkit, using HDMI in
| to get the screen image and USB emulation to send inputs,
| your anticheat has to do the same work regardless if it's
| on the client or the server.
| j1elo wrote:
| I think that makes sense; but doing it on the client
| means that your computer has to do the work for you, thus
| distributing the load among all clients. Doing it on the
| server would mean that their machine has to do the work
| for all players.
|
| If we complain about companies being too quick closing up
| their servers when games are not as successful as they
| hoped... imagine if those servers were x10 or more
| expensive, due to that kind of analysis for all players.
| Companies would be much quicker to pull the plug, I
| guess.
| MrNeon wrote:
| If my cheat puts my crosshair on the opponent's head
| automatically what about that information is
| untrustworthy that would make you throw it out?
| serf wrote:
| it's anti-player when it is security theatre, which in
| 95% of cases it is.
|
| When I start a game and I see an Easy Anti-Cheat banner I
| think to myself "Great now I can be killed by an aimbot
| while simultaneously hosting a root-kit voluntarily."
|
| Why do you think these systems are advertised like that,
| at the forefront of the game load? It's so that the
| developers create a false trust in the playerbase that
| they're doing their damnedest to prevent cheaters, when
| the reality is that they paid a small amount of cash to a
| third party to use a system that does a piss-poor job at
| everything aside from being a symbol of effort and adding
| incompatibilities where there shouldn't be.
|
| eac bypassing is trivial to a laymen, that doesn't bode
| well as a defense against people that have made cheating
| their hobby.
|
| and to be clear : I use EAC as the example because to me
| it symbolizes the 'security theatre' side of the effort.
| Real anti-cheat efforts exist, and _those_ should be
| applauded. EAC ain 't it, but it's the industry
| standard... worrisome.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I personally would far rather have the occasional cheater
| than have the game install literal rootkits. It's
| absolutely bonkers that people are willing to accept
| that.
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| But does it ever work? Its just a game of cat and
| mouse.... like all other software, bugs will always be
| present apparently.
| tapoxi wrote:
| The Valorant community is incredibly in favor of the
| Vangard anti-cheat that loads as an early kernel mode
| driver, and the pro/pro-am Counter-Strike scene plays on
| FACEIT because they have a strong Kernel-based anticheat.
| VAC, and server-side VACnet just doesn't cut it.
| tyfon wrote:
| EAC has a proton build now so for new games it should work at
| least.
| charcircuit wrote:
| EAC has had a wine build for a long time (over a decade?).
| That doesn't mean games enable it.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Only if the developer enables it. Most don't.
| jorvi wrote:
| I'll dissent.
|
| After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I'd go full-in on
| Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is
| very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there
| Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues, Mirror's Edge
| doesn't work with wireless Xbox controllers. You lose out on a
| lot of GPU suite features that Windows has. Gnome doesn't
| support VRR. Etc etc.
|
| There's so many small issues it's held me back from deleting my
| Windows partition. Maybe in a year or two?
|
| That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.
| COGlory wrote:
| FYI Valve is primarily deploying KDE, which does support VRR.
| They can't really control what dumb decisions the GNOME folks
| make.
|
| For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?
| jorvi wrote:
| Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how
| scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I'm SoL. I've even
| looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope
| instance, but if you don't run Gamescope as your main
| window manager, you lose most of its benefits.
|
| > For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?
|
| Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver
| properly supports the Xbox wireless adapter, but it doesn't
| play nice with Mirror's Edge. Xpad and XpadNeo do work, but
| those require USB or Bluetooth.
|
| And me having to tweak a million things tells why gaming on
| Linux still sucks, aside from Deck's blessed config. I
| don't want to deal with a thousand papercuts, I want to
| boot my system and play. Windows is still closer to that
| experience than Linux.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how
| scattershot and buggy KDE feels
|
| But if it's the difference between gaming working or not
| for you, wouldn't you rather use it? Surely you barely
| interact with it anyway while gaming, only to get into
| Steam?
|
| If this is a machine you use for something else too, you
| could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and
| your normal user that uses Gnome?
| eropple wrote:
| _> Surely you barely interact with it anyway while
| gaming, only to get into Steam?_
|
| I'm a Linux desktop user and I drop into a game once in a
| while while I'm waiting for another meeting or waiting
| for a build to finish or whatever. My work desktop
| doesn't use VRR (the just-for-games PC uses Windows),
| otherwise I'd be in the same boat as 'jorvi because it
| quite matters to me that games on my desktop integrate
| into everything else at a passable level. For me, GNOME
| does a better job of integrating my different activities
| than KDE (which wasn't always the case! I was a KDE3 user
| for a long time!), so I use GNOME. And it remains an
| unsolved pain in the ass that the Linux desktop
| experience isn't coherent enough to mean that we should
| only be thinking about desktop environments _if we want
| to_.
|
| Coherent, holistic switching between tasks is a thing
| that people are allowed to want and attempting to
| convince people that they don't is a bad look.
|
| _> If this is a machine you use for something else too,
| you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and
| your normal user that uses Gnome?_
|
| This is a really sad observation on the state of the
| Linux desktop. Still.
| bee_rider wrote:
| >> If this is a machine you use for something else too,
| you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and
| your normal user that uses Gnome?
|
| > This is a really sad observation on the state of the
| Linux desktop. Still.
|
| It seems like a somewhat odd observation, is it really
| necessary to have another user to do this? I can easily
| switch between Gnome, i3, and Sway on my system, I mean
| that's going between X and Wayland, no issues... maybe
| KDE and Gnome have some specific incompatibility though?
| Odd.
|
| Anyway, at least there's a workaround. If Gnome is a hard
| requirement, how is Windows even a candidate?
| eropple wrote:
| _> maybe KDE and Gnome have some specific incompatibility
| though_
|
| It's a layer down from the DE itself, it's the window
| manager beneath it. GNOME ships Mutter and KDE ships
| KWin. GNOME is pretty tightly tied to Mutter; KDE is less
| tied to KWin, but KWin also tends to support shinier
| features than Mutter does anyway so I don't know why you
| wouldn't use it anyway.
|
| _> It seems like a somewhat odd observation, is it
| really necessary to have another user to do this?_
|
| Strictly no, but having to have another _login session_ ,
| period, is bonkers to me. It's reasonable to respond to
| that suggestion with incredulity.
|
| _> If Gnome is a hard requirement, how is Windows even a
| candidate?_
|
| For me, it's not. At the moment it's inertia, because
| Windows has legit become the best Linux dev environment I
| know of with WSL2. I originally switched back to a Linux
| desktop because I was working on some hardware stuff that
| benefited from being on a Linux platform, but I'm
| certainly not tied to it past that.
| Zekio wrote:
| you could try Xow it supports the wireless dongles for
| xbox controllers if that is what you are trying to use
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Isn't Xone the new version of Xow and Xow is no longer
| maintained?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Honestly it's the reverse for me, but I guess that's down
| to personal preference. "Gnome" apps keep updating with
| the "new" GTK style, which means the title bar becomes a
| conglomeration of a bunch of weird controls, the familiar
| dropdown menus vanish, everything gets moved into a tiny
| little hamburger menu and, _often_ , the layout breaks in
| subtle ways.
|
| The calculator app just recently did this, and now I have
| to type and enter one line of numbers before the text
| control realizes it's too small and resizes itself. That
| first line of numbers is nearly invisible. Happens again
| every time it's opened.
|
| I'm not sure who decided that desktop apps need to look
| and feel like touchscreen-first mobile apps, but I don't
| particularly like it. KDE still _feels_ like a desktop
| environment, so it 's my strong preference. I'll put up
| with a very slightly less polished experience if it means
| stuff stops rearranging itself just for the sake of
| change every couple of weeks.
|
| (Aside from KDE, Cinnamon is pretty solid and less
| feature packed, maybe give it a whirl?)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The calculator app just recently did this, and now I
| have to type and enter one line of numbers before the
| text control realizes it 's too small and resizes itself.
| That first line of numbers is nearly invisible. Happens
| again every time it's opened._
|
| OT, but I recently started using a Python REPL as a
| calculator, leaving it open full time in a window. It's
| pretty great. Haven't touched an actual calculator, or a
| calculator app, in weeks.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Hamburger menus are among my greatest gripes with GNOME.
| In apps with any functionality at all they end up being
| poorly organized junk drawers filled with odds and ends,
| and because they have to be somewhat short to be
| effective, functions that don't fit in them either get
| buried or cut.
|
| What makes this all worse is that GNOME has acres of
| space reserved at the top of the screen with its
| statusbar, most of which is empty and doing absolutely
| nothing. It could house a macOS-style global menubar (as
| Unity did for fullscreened windows) with room to spare...
| Though global menubars aren't everybody's cup of tea I
| think many would agree they're better than the
| alternative of oversimplified hamburger menus, and they
| would help achieve the clean look GNOME is going for
| without so dramatically impeding functionality.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Just chiming in to say gnome is wonderful to use and I
| miss it every time I have to use something else
| Audiophilip wrote:
| May I ask what "SoL" stands for? (Not a native English
| speaker.)
| 30 wrote:
| Shit out of Luck
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I've always heard it as "short on luck".
| ho_schi wrote:
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154
|
| You can install it upon Arch from AUR.
|
| Putting that aside:
|
| Windows users always find a reason not to switch to Linux
| because _some missing feature_. In two years? There will be
| another new feature or game on Windows. I remember people
| insisting on using Windows because it support their
| ,,3D-Shutter glasses" or their card from Nvidia. Either you
| want use Linux or not :)
|
| Why are many features initially only available on Windows?
|
| First. That is wrong. Important features like cgroups,
| namespace and containers/Flatpak where novelly developed
| upon Linux.
|
| Second? MBAs only look at past numbers. So Windows often
| get traditional Windows stuff first. You make guess it,
| innovative companies care about what will be possible in
| future. Valve for example.
|
| The MBA style thinking is also in many consumers. Still
| buying Nvidia? Because they were faster in the paper sheet?
| I prefer the cards which works well with Linux, so AMD or
| Intel. Frames actually generated are more worth than
| problems with proprietary drivers.
|
| PS: Linux has maybe won the war against drives. Seems like
| Nvidia open most stuff slowly and feature land in the
| nouveau-module or mesa. A decade to late. I'm already in
| _Team AMD_ ;)
| hhh wrote:
| I don't want to tweak stuff for a week to get a
| comparable experience playing games to a fresh W11
| install.
| developerDan wrote:
| Why don't people like Linux? Because it takes 8 bloody
| commands to do something as simple as add a new drive
| whereas Windows you can just open disk utility and
| format. I bounced off Linux a few weeks ago over this.
| It's for people who want to tinker more than actually use
| the system.
| accelbred wrote:
| On Gnome, you open the disk manager. You click format.
|
| In fact a lot of things are easier. On windows, you need
| a third party tool to install an iso onto a disk. On
| Gnome, you open disk manager, right click disk, click
| restore from image.
| bisby wrote:
| That's untrue though. Linux has a disk utility (I use
| gparted personally). And you can surely do it on the
| command line in a single command.
|
| On Linux you could automate that task. How would you
| propose automating "open disk utility and click a few
| buttons" on Windows?
|
| This is less of a "Linux can't" issue and more of a "I
| quickly know how to do it on Windows after years of
| experience and I don't know how to do it on Linux." Linux
| not being identical to Windows isn't a flaw. No one
| blames you for not wanting to relearn, but pretending
| like Linux is bad because your Windows muscle memory
| doesn't apply is nonsense.
| developerDan wrote:
| When I Googled how to complete this task I came across
| multiple results all of which suggesting to use a string
| of CLI commands. GParted was suggested in some of the
| results but it wasn't installed by default on the distro
| I was recommended (Lubuntu) so I had to punch in even
| more commands to get it installed. Then after creating
| the partition it was still unusable until I mounted the
| drive (which wasn't clear until after Googling why I
| can't use it). Mounting required yet more commands. I did
| a cursory glance at the GUI buttons on GParted and didn't
| see a simple mounting option. If you can't mount in
| GParted then my claim still stands that it's much more
| effort, and obscure, than Windows which automatically
| "mounts" the drive so to speak, when you create the
| partition.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > GParted was suggested in some of the results but it
| wasn't installed by default on the distro I was
| recommended (Lubuntu
|
| You got a less than stellar recommendation based on your
| desire for parity with ease of use with windows. Lubuntu
| is a more niche distro aimed at lower resource usage at
| the expense of the ease of use you are looking for.
|
| If you had installed KDE, you'd likely have explored the
| start menu and found gparted or typed 'disk' into search
| and found gparted.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| I swear the biggest problem with linux is the nerds
| pushing newbies towards esoteric garbage distros instead
| of established and widely supported ones like straight up
| Ubuntu with Gnome.
| freedomben wrote:
| You bounced quickly then without trying very hard. Gnome
| comes with a GUI disk utility tool pre-installed that is
| easy enough for a Windows user ;-)
| developerDan wrote:
| I was recommended a distro that doesn't use Gnome
| (Lubuntu). The system I was working with is very old and
| some light research made it seem like Gnome is pretty
| resource heavy.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| I think a lot of times recommending Lubuntu or other
| niche distros to first-time linux users is a mistake.
|
| Instead one should recommend using KDE or Gnome and
| turning down all of the graphical settings if needed to
| improve performance.
| mattl wrote:
| I think it comes from the idea that you should install
| Linux to get more time out of aging hardware.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Yeah, but for first time users I maintain it'd be better
| to risk potential slowness than "fast but unacceptable
| user experience".
| mattl wrote:
| Fully agree. I don't really know what the user groups are
| doing these days? Are installfests still a thing?
| chronogram wrote:
| How old are we talking about? 10+ years ago I was running
| Gnome3 on decent hardware of the time, and everything was
| snappy[0]. Now all the OS software got faster since then,
| so everything is still snappy on that thing despite that
| hardware now being old. Similarly that laptop came with
| Windows 7 and that was snappy, and the Windows 2021 LTSC
| on it is also snappy[0].
|
| 0: I care about responsiveness, so I've always disabled
| animations on every device, so I have no experience if
| some animations can run at 60fps on some hardware and
| 30fps on others.
| LegitShady wrote:
| to be fair a fresh W11 install still doesn't have a
| usable taskbar or start menu - you have to install
| explorer patcher to get those back.
| brnt wrote:
| Looking back, that may have been my switching point: when
| setting up my distro of choice took less time then
| windows after a fresh install. Life without package
| managers, even now that there is chocolatey, is just
| unnecessary pain. And as a DE, windows had no edge over
| something like KDE.
| hhh wrote:
| both are perfectly usable
| ho_schi wrote:
| I want tweak stuff to make it fit better for me. I don't
| want tweak stuff to get it initial usable.
|
| Likewise the rationale why people buy the Steamdeck.
| Other than Windows it just works. And it is tweakable.
| Arnavion wrote:
| >First. That is wrong. Important features like cgroups,
| namespace and containers/Flatpak where novelly developed
| upon Linux.
|
| I get your overall point, but the first "process
| containers" code that later became cgroups was merged to
| the kernel in 2007. Windows came out with the Job Objects
| API in Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) in 2000.
| jxf wrote:
| IMO, the Job Objects API was not really suitable to use
| in production settings; it had many weird edge cases, so
| although it looked similar to cgroups it often broke in
| strange and unpredictable ways.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Windows users always find a reason not to switch to
| Linux because some missing feature._
|
| Because the OS is a tool, not a religious/political
| statement.
|
| Therefore I'll use it if it works the way I need it and
| it solves my problem, or not use it if it doesn't work
| the way I want it and ends up creating more problems for
| me than it solves. Simple.
| luma wrote:
| You're using the phrase "MBA thinking" to mean "making
| decisions based on your personal use case and identifying
| solutions which match".
|
| I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. I don't run Linux
| to run games because Windows is a better supported
| platform for running games. I'm not "looking at past
| numbers", I'm looking at the situation in front of me as
| it exists, setting aside my personal feeling on what
| might have been and instead focusing on what actually
| exists, today, for the problem I am looking to solve
| today.
| ho_schi wrote:
| ,,Today"...MBA-Thinking.
|
| I don't want a huge problem tomorrow.
| cma wrote:
| > were you using Steam Input?
|
| Steam Input is rapidly becoming the Google Play Services of
| the desktop linux world. On Steam Deck for a long time you
| couldn't even use the touchpads without the Steam client
| running.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Cannot relate much. My 5800x3D and 6800XT deliver an
| outstanding Linux gaming experience. I don't play EA games,
| though. I do play some fast paced shooters that don't need
| VRR since you can manually cap fps to your liking. Also, it
| was my understanding that gnome has support for adaptive
| sync.
|
| May i ask what driver features are you missing? I only want
| some decent fan control instead of relying on random scripts
| off github. AMD has to release some sort of GUI panel for
| sure.
| tigeroil wrote:
| Similar specs but run Windows here, part of the reason
| being that I noticed that the ray tracing performance is
| just awful on Linux compared to Windows. I found I get
| slightly better framerates in most games in Linux, but
| anything that uses raytracing goes from "just about usable
| with FSR" on Windows to "totally unplayable" on Linux.
|
| I'm told it's better in Mesa 23.3 though, haven't tested.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > I only want some decent fan control instead of relying on
| random scripts off github. AMD has to release some sort of
| GUI panel for sure.
|
| Have you tried CoreCtrl [0]?
|
| > My 5800x3D and 6800XT deliver an outstanding Linux gaming
| experience.
|
| I have a 7900XTX and performance under Linux has been at
| least on par with Windows, sometimes better (though not by
| much).
|
| > May i ask what driver features are you missing?
|
| I'm not GP but I'd love to see frame gen and stuff like
| anti-lag and upscaling integrated into amdgpu with some
| sort of official way of setting it (though looking at
| Adrenaline it might actually be best if it's left up to the
| community to create the GUIs).
|
| [0] https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl
| tigeroil wrote:
| did you try playing mirrors edge through steam? I ask because
| steam input really does work wonders
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Did you try out 'gamescope'? This is something you find on
| the Deck but not _' for free'_ with Steam on other Linux.
|
| I find it helps with pacing. It also supports VRR with a
| commandline argument, _' --adaptive-sync'_.
|
| VRR may need support in the environment to work, I'm not
| sure. Sway/wlroots does it fine. Presumably KDE does/can too
| since that's what the Deck uses in 'desktop' mode
| _(otherwise, gamescope)_.
|
| edit: I see in another post - you have! Agreed on KDE being
| scattershot. I hope the Gnome people clear things up for you.
| I wouldn't go so far as to suggest i3/Sway, even though _I
| 'm_ happy with them
| colordrops wrote:
| Could you provide details on how you got gamescope working
| with sway? What is the full command line you used? I
| believe I ran into problems with it conflicting with
| XWayland or something like that.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Sure thing! Here's an example command line _(from Steam)_
| : env DXVK_ASYNC=1 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11
| gamemoderun taskset --cpu-list 0-7,16-23 gamescope -W
| 3840 -H 2160 -r 160 -o 160 --borderless --fullscreen --rt
| --steam -- %command%
|
| Gamescope has become odd with the introduction of _'
| --expose-wayland'_.
|
| I think the _' SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11'_ part may be key; I
| didn't need this before, but now I often do. Not every
| game requires it. It's weird.
|
| It helps if something crashes because _" wayland isn't
| available"_. Adding _' |& tee /tmp/game.log'_ is useful
| for debugging.
|
| Pinning _(taskset)_ /gamemode stuff left for context.
| This example gives a game the cache-rich threads on a
| 7950X3D.
|
| Beyond _' --adaptive-sync'_... I believe _VRR_ calls for
| the feature to be enabled on the _output_ in Sway.
|
| See _' man 5 sway-output'_, looking for _'
| adaptive_sync'_ for more info on that
|
| edit: One last note. I'm on Fedora - the libraries here
| are so new that Flatpak-based Steam tends to work best.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure why people are trying to convince you; Linux is
| free so there really isn't any benefit to us Linux users or
| to the Linux developers if you switch...
|
| Valve should be the only one that is worried about your
| opinion here. I think they develop SteamOS as a backup plan,
| though, in case Microsoft ever starts to take their own App
| Store seriously.
| freedomben wrote:
| That is surely part of the consideration, but certainly not
| all. Some engineers at Valve (especially the head honcho
| Gabe Newell) are legit Linux people (Debian IIRC). They
| believe in it, and I love them for it
| bee_rider wrote:
| And it left them well-positioned for the steam deck, I
| wonder if they were thinking about that when they started
| steamOS, or if it is just an example of the natural
| advantage that openness gives you.
|
| Anyway, agree--I wasn't trying to belittle Valve's
| motivations, just wanted to include a thought about why
| they seem to be happy serving both platforms.
| Adverblessly wrote:
| I don't dispute your claims, but I remember very clearly
| that back then it seemed obvious that SteamOS was a
| response to the Microsoft Store and a fear that Microsoft
| would mandate that all software on Windows come from the
| Microsoft Store.
|
| While that was obviously speculation, at least the dates
| match up (October 26, 2012 for Microsft Store launch and
| December 13, 2013 from SteamOS launch according to
| Wikipedia)
| freedomben wrote:
| Agree based on my memory. I think the Microsoft store
| threat is what finally tipped the scale. It took it from
| "we kind of support linux because we like it" to "we
| support linux because it's important business insurance
| for us in case Microsoft goes Apple (or Xbox or whatever
| example you want) and monopolizes app distribution on
| Windows.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I'd go full-in
| on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that
| is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on
| there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues
|
| Apex Legends run flawlessly for me, but only on KDE/X11 with
| Nvidia reflex enabled[0].
|
| If you are on Radeon though, I bet the problem is your window
| manager. I have the frame pacing issues on:
|
| - hyprland/wayland (even with no_direct_scanout = true; and
| floating game windows) - KDE/wayland
|
| I also had a weird issue using gamescope as my DM where apex
| got resized into a tiny frame in the top left that was like
| 200 pixels or so wide.
|
| > That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.
|
| Likely due to running into these graphics driver -> WM and
| similar compatibility issues and fixing them. The other
| performance improvements from kernel changes probably don't
| hurt either.
|
| 0: Requires unreleased proton-ge build:
| https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-
| custom/pull/104...
| blizzard_dev_17 wrote:
| I'm doing the same. Playing games I bought 10 years ago for the
| first time.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Bottles is the end game for wine style containers and windows
| games.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Pity that it solidifies Windows as the top PC gaming OS, that
| all studios should care about.
|
| Let Valve do the needful for running them under GNU/Linux, if
| at all.
| nindalf wrote:
| You're missing the bigger picture. Yes, developers really
| appreciate that their games work seamlessly on the Steam Deck
| and Linux with no effort on their part. But there are a
| couple of knock on effects.
|
| One is that developers now a specific hardware + software
| combo to test their games with. Even if it's the same build
| they're sending out, they're still testing their game on the
| Deck and fixing issues, leading to a better (but not perfect)
| experience for Linux gamers. Here's a video of Swen Vincke,
| CEO of Larian studios playing a game released by his studio
| on the Steam Deck - https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k. He's very
| pleased and promises to test future games released by his
| studio on the Deck. And he stuck to that promise - Larian
| released several fixes specifically for the Steam Deck to
| make Baldur's Gate III run better. Linux gamers benefit from
| that.
|
| Second, this increases the % of gamers using Linux. After the
| Deck's success in the last couple of years Linux is at 1.91%
| of the respondents of the Steam Hardware Survey for Nov 2023.
| Linux was at 1.15% 18 months ago. Doesn't sound impressive,
| but if that growth continues and it reaches 3-4%, at that
| point developers will find shipping native Linux builds more
| attractive.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Valve adocates are the ones failing to learn from OS/2
| history, "it does Windows better than Windows".
|
| Studios don't care about native GNU/Linux, despite the
| games being shipped with Android/NDK, PlayStation POSIX
| environment, and the available APIs on Switch OS.
|
| All of them much easier than porting from Windows/XBox,
| almost straight ports if coming from Android/NDK.
| brnt wrote:
| Having a desktop OS was a big thing 30 years ago, but now
| nobody cares anymore. Who interacts with their OS other
| than launching browsers or apps based on browsers? Not
| even most coders these days.
|
| OSes are irrelevant these days and having basically
| libwindows.so these days only underlines that.
| delfinom wrote:
| Valve inventing a portable game runtime that just works on
| all Linux distros without game studios needing an entire
| department to handle the dependency hell of Linux NIHisn
| would solve that issue.
| a1o wrote:
| Valve funds SDL development, I think
| Adverblessly wrote:
| You mean the Steam Linux Runtime?
|
| From a quick search this is the best description of it I
| found: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
| smoldesu wrote:
| Pity that Khronos never got the support they needed to make
| cross-platform raster APIs a reality. I mean really, what an
| _enormous_ and _crying shame_ that a successor to a highly-
| demanded API like OpenGL never emerged. It 's really quite
| sad that users never had a corporate champion to resist the
| allure of a proprietary graphics API. The stage was set for
| every modern OS to be unified under a new raster library, but
| the setting was dashed for a petty buck. Quite a tragedy.
|
| Ah well, it's funny to see people complaining because it
| really solos out the OS you're using. Windows users have
| native DirectX, Linux users have near-flawless DXVK, and Mac
| users... well, Mac users get what Apple gives them, and they
| have to learn to be happy with it.
| justinsaccount wrote:
| TIL about RAUC (https://rauc.io/) I had been wondering how valve
| implemented the A/B update scheme.
| quaffapint wrote:
| I actually just ordered a GPU for my unRaid NAS server just to be
| able to do Steam Headless via a nice docker image(1) and then use
| Moonlight (for example) as a client on my Windows laptop. If it
| works, it's much better than buying yet another piece of desktop
| hardware just to play games when my NAS is just sitting there
| idle most of the time. Just need to make sure I keep the power
| level setting on the Nvidia card to idle when not in use
| (hopefully a nvidia-persistenced call will do it).
|
| 1: https://github.com/Steam-Headless/docker-steam-headless
| Kerbonut wrote:
| That is crazy, thanks for sharing!
| sevagh wrote:
| This looks great. I currently use Sunshine + Moonlight, I'll
| test Steam Headless performance soon.
| sdl wrote:
| I spent some (too much) time trying to get pretty much the same
| thing running using GOW [1]. Was quite a bit harder than I
| thought, requiring a hdmi dummy plug to get the xserver config
| right etc.
|
| 1: https://github.com/games-on-whales/gow
| quaffapint wrote:
| Good call out - this does require a dummy plug as well.
| bormaj wrote:
| This is really interesting! Do you notice any limitations on
| input lag or video quality when streaming over a local network
| this way?
| moondev wrote:
| Another alternative, launch a kvm with GPU passthrough and use
| cloudinit to launch sunshine and the game, or just use the
| monitor directly.
|
| https://kubevirt.io/user-guide/virtual_machines/host-devices...
|
| Declarative cloud native game launching!
| kubectl apply -f crysis.yaml
| goda90 wrote:
| Oh nice. I've been day dreaming of setting up a server with
| turn based, hot seat enabled games (like Civilization) and a
| browser based way to remote into them so that friends and I can
| play long turn games from anywhere at any time.
| exitb wrote:
| There already are distributions based around elements of SteamOS,
| geared towards PCs and controller-based usage. ChimeraOS works
| for me quite flawlessly, including Steam Deck add-ons, like
| EmuDeck.
| Old-Assumption wrote:
| I wanted to do use SteamOS for our LR PC, our kitchen ambiance PC
| and our MBR PC but instead installed Ubuntu (upgraded to Kubuntu)
| then disabled Snap because SteamOS which runs KDE and was a great
| call by Valve, is built on Arch, a bad call IMHO.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > built on Arch, a bad call IMHO.
|
| I'd be curious to hear why. Arch deserves it's reputation for
| poor stability, but for Valve's application with OSTree and
| immutable root should work fine. For users who don't want to
| tinker, they can receive a quality first-party experience with
| smooth upgrades. Users that _do_ want to tinker are largely
| funneled into using Flatpak or AppImage, which are much more
| stable than AUR packages.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Can we please stop with the FUD around Arch and poor
| stability? It's an old meme which will never die, but it has
| no basis in reality. I've been using Arch on my personal and
| work laptops for probably 7 years now and the only time it
| had been a problem has been due to layer 8 issues and doing
| something stupid. I certainly wouldn't be using it for work
| if it was unstable.
| freedomben wrote:
| It's not FUD. If you stay very light then it is very
| stable, but the more stuff you add, the worse it gets
| (gnome extensions anybody?)
|
| I love Arch, but it is a demanding mistress. If you get
| behind on updates, you're asking for pain. Also it can be
| very disruptive to suddenly get a new major version of
| Gnome that breaks extensions you used, or applications,
| etc.
|
| What we instead should say is not that Arch is "unstable"
| because I agree it's not, but rather that Arch requires a
| lot more care and feeding and if you don't do that, it can
| lead to instability
| accelbred wrote:
| I used Arch for years, and left it due to poor stability.
| Every time I would try to use an AUR app it would be broken
| and need re-installing. Sure the non-AUR stuff was mostly
| fine, but a lot of necessary applictions are in AUR, and
| AUR is touted as a major selling point of Arch. When there
| was an issue during a system update, recovering the system
| was a mess. I also cannot call it stable when you can't
| update one application without updating the rest of the
| system.
|
| I switched to Gentoo and it fixed all the issues I was
| encountering with Arch, and was more stable. Now I'm on
| NixOS, which is far more stable than Arch or Gentoo were.
|
| Now, that said, the way SteamOS uses it, I don't see any
| issues. With an immutable system, A/B updates, and tested
| images, the compatibility and update issues are solved.
| Using flatpak for user applications solves the rest of the
| noted issues. Would be ideal if I could install with Nix
| instead of Flatpak, but ran into some trouble there.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Counterpoint to this; I have many packages from the AUR
| and I've never had any issues like you describe with
| them. Both of our viewpoints are polar opposites but they
| are only a single datapoint.
| 0x457 wrote:
| It's because plenty of arch users just copy and paste
| things from arch wiki and stackoverflow without thinking.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Agreed, Arch is not a good My First Linux for sure. I
| would never suggest it to someone without a decent bit of
| experience under their belt.
| mat0 wrote:
| What a thorough and interesting post. I would personally never do
| something like this. The most tinkering I've ever done with Linux
| was in my RaspberryPi era and that's 1% at most. So props to the
| author
| dixie_land wrote:
| I was in a similar situation as the author: for quite a while I
| had to build my own Redhat kernel for a very obscure case: by
| pass RMRR check to pass GPU to a windows VM. (similar to
| https://github.com/kiler129/relax-intel-rmrr ; not my repo)
|
| The root issue can only be addressed by ROM updates from the
| manufacturer but I'm running an old DL360 that's no longer
| supported by HPE.
|
| The patch itself is only one line change but updating the
| kernel is a pain since I have to : - get SRPM (there's no git
| repo) - unpack SRPM, apply patch - rebuild and install
| toxicunderGroov wrote:
| bazzite.gg alsof does this very well. On AMD hardware it did
| 120hz VRR out of the box and u can alpha test HDR support.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm shocked that Bazzite isn't more well known. It's exactly
| what I dreamed about but didn't know existed until recently
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Hadn't heard of Bazzite.
|
| > _Bazzite is an OCI image that serves as an alternative
| operating system for the Steam Deck, and a ready-to-game
| SteamOS-like for desktop computers, living room home theater
| PCs, and numerous other handheld PCs._
|
| https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/
|
| Worth visiting the readme even if not interested. There's a
| huge list of included stuff, and a lot of it seems really
| cool.and helpful (for gamers or streamers mostly).
| bsimpson wrote:
| Bazzite (and Immutable Linux as a whole) is fascinating.
|
| I'm not deep enough in their weeds to perfectly explain it in a
| concise HN comment, but it's all about having a read-only
| known-good Linux distro at the root and then layering packages
| on top, taking much inspiration from server-side containers.
| It's supposed to be both more secure and more
| reliable/reproducible/customizable than traditional Linux. You
| just write in a container manifest which packages you want.
| When an upgrade comes out, it runs the upgrade, then reinstalls
| your packages on top.
| goncalossilva wrote:
| 2023 was the first year I gamed exclusively on Linux according
| to Steam's year in review, including some of this year's
| titles. Most of that was on the Steam Deck or on a virtual
| machine with GPU passthrough running Bazzite. It is really well
| made.
| iotku wrote:
| Even more relevant is that you can "fork" Bazzite relatively
| simply and add any missing packages or configuration you need
| to your own custom image and let GitHub actions do most of the
| infra work for you
|
| https://universal-blue.org/guide/fork-your-own/
|
| And yes, you can roll back to previous images as its an
| "immutable" OS as well should issues arise
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| 2024 will for sure be the year of the Linux Desktop, and it
| starts in a couple of hours!!!
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Tangential: anyone have experience with unity and/or unreal on
| Linux these days? Last I checked (2-3 years ago), they
| technically worked but we're janky and buggy. Is it improved?
| calamari4065 wrote:
| Unity is only a little more janky and buggy than it is on
| Windows.
|
| I had a lot of trouble getting the unity editor working on my
| steam deck, but that may have been due to using an editor
| version from 2021 (for unrelated reasons). It seems to behave
| fine on a normal desktop environment though.
| jamies wrote:
| If you're interested in running SteamOS on a Linux PC, I'd
| recommend: https://github.com/HoloISO/holoiso
| slimsag wrote:
| > No. Not even questionable. If you have an NVIDIA GPU, You're
| on your own. Latest Valve updates for Steam client including
| normal and Jupiter bootstraps have broken gamepadui on NVIDIA
| GPUs, and if so, no support will be provided for you.
|
| Bummer. This rules out 76% of steam users, according to their
| hardware surveys.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That description is pretty hyperbolic. The SteamOS UI (eg.
| the Steam Deck-looking part) is very broken on Nvidia right
| now, but the actual gaming part (eg Proton and the Steam
| launcher) works fine. If you just want to play mouse-and-
| keyboard in desktop mode, recent Nvidia cards are generally
| pretty cooperative.
| slimsag wrote:
| Well, I'm not smart enough to know if it's hyperbolic but
| it's a pretty damning statement right there in the README.
| Certainly enough to turn me away from ever trying it on one
| of my machines.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I recently got my hands on a gaming handheld (the Legion Go) and
| have used it to get more exposure to Linux. I'd historically
| avoided it, because it seemed like a perpetual tinker timesink
| with limited compatibility with things I'd actually want to use.
| Reading about immutable filesystems and how traditional Linux
| gives root willy-nilly to all sorts of random software piqued my
| curiosity.
|
| I'm using NixOS, which can indeed be a tinker timesink, but is
| good for exploration. You can easily try different components,
| and then completely remove them (aside from some ~/.config
| pollution) if you don't want to keep them. It's also trivial to
| patch things before you install them (such as adding some kernel
| patches to make Linux usable on esoteric hardware like a gaming
| handheld).
|
| There's a NixOS community called Jovian that's reconstructing
| Valve's random SteamOS tarballs into tagged commits on GitHub,
| which you can browse as if you were a Valve employee. They've
| made it so you can install your own copy of SteamOS atop NixOS by
| adding a few lines to your Nix configuration. They're clearly
| Linux experts, and you can see from the source that you're
| getting Valve's packages unadulterated, save for simple
| adaptations like introspecting instead of hardcoding the power
| button location.
|
| So, if you want a pure SteamOS experience without hosting your
| own mirror of Valve's update system (or if you want to be able to
| browse Valve's source without downloading a 3GB tarball), give
| Jovian a try.
|
| Install instructions: https://jovian-
| experiments.github.io/Jovian-NixOS/getting-st...
|
| Mirrors of Valve's source: https://github.com/orgs/Jovian-
| Experiments/repositories?type...
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| I'm also successfully using Jovian-NixOS on my Steam Deck
| without issue, highly recommended.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Interesting read! The A/B upgrade sounds a bit overkill, you can
| always just pop up a live distro or install a recovery system (on
| an old version) in a partition in case something goes wrong.
|
| I recently moved to Arch after a few years of NixOS (preceded by
| years of Arch) and I think the fears of the author are misplaced.
|
| Arch is definitely a very serious and mature distro and I'd trust
| them more than Valve.
|
| The quality of the packages available for Arch is what made me
| move from NixOS. The main repos are updated really fast and AUR
| has a lot of useful packages.
| darkstar999 wrote:
| No way steam deck users should be expected to boot a live
| distro to fix a botched upgrade. It needs to be seamless and
| behind the curtain.
| embik wrote:
| > The A/B upgrade sounds a bit overkill, you can always just
| pop up a live distro or install a recovery system (on an old
| version) in a partition in case something goes wrong.
|
| You and I can, the overwhelming majority of computer users
| cannot. Valve clearly focuses on building for the average
| person, something that Linux distributions (as much as I love
| them) still don't really do (well).
|
| The system automatically recovering from a failed upgrade is
| essential in a low-maintenance OS at this point.
| stavros wrote:
| I can too, but I have better things to do than fix boot
| issues on my Steam Deck. I just want it to work.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The Steam Deck is essentially a Chromebook for video games, so
| ChromeOS's unbreakable partition scheme seems like a reasonable
| idea.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| > The quality of the packages available for Arch is what made
| me move from NixOS.
|
| Can you give some examples of this please?
|
| I generally find the NixOS packages high quality.
| dataangel wrote:
| Unless you care about packages from lang package managers
| like pip...
| techknowlogick wrote:
| I love this kind of deep dive into customizing the software/OS on
| a device you own. Glad that "Tivoization" isn't a concern for the
| steamdeck.
|
| The most interesting part of the article was the mention of a
| /nix partition, as I didn't realize the steamdeck supports
| nixpkgs, after researching it more, they do indeed (not installed
| by default, but at least it is possible without having to fork an
| entire os to get it on the device).
| frutiger wrote:
| nix has always been installable onto any *nix OS without
| requiring you to "fork an entire OS".
|
| You can put the nix store in any writable location and modify
| $PATH to point to the symlinks directory.
| denysvitali wrote:
| TIL: SteamOS is based on Arch Linux. This is so cool!
| sillywalk wrote:
| Anybody else sort of miss that Netscape meteor shower favicon?
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yes!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-31 23:00 UTC)