TheHarpyEagle

I find this kind of baffling, honestly. Like I’ll follow this one to see how reviews turn out, but superstars was by all accounts what people had been asking for. So they released it and… that’s it, no updates for more characters and maps, not even as paid DLC. Why didn’t they do more development on it?

I think the rub here is that most developers aren’t developing/publishing their own software, but honing their skills on writing proprietary code while also putting food on the table. To that end, a permissively licensed library is better because the company will actually use it and the developer will gain experience with it that they can then use outside of the proprietary environment to contribute to FOSS projects (some of which may well use GPL). If a GPL end user product gets popular enough, it will eventually be able to use all of that gained experience to compete with the propriety alternatives, so I do think the two can work in tandem.

Indeed, I think it’s just two philosophies that don’t necessarily need to be at odds. Permissive licenses help speed the adoption of languages and libraries, which ultimately feeds into the slowly building momentum of the copyleft projects that use them.

I think we generally agree, but I worry that a new platform couldn’t do more than GoG+Lutris already do. Perhaps, though, it could be done with a reputable foundation.

And the lawsuit is more or less what I was radio referring to with Steam’s price rules. I would definitely be on board with striking the requirement for publishers to offer the same price on all platforms at the same time.

On that note, though, I wouldn’t take the whole case at face value, as I think parts of it are pretty frivolous (unless they prove that Steam is actually actively stifling competition and, you know, not just a decent platform that entered the space first.) I also think it’s silly to point out Epic’s lower commission rate since they’ve been giving out free games like candy and actually making third party games exclusive to their platform in a very clear attempt to compete with Stream. There’s absolutely no guarantee that they won’t raise their commission once they have a foothold in the market (though I do concede that their licensing terms for Unreal Engine have remained fairly reasonable).

On the one hand, yeah it’s absolutely important not to idolize any company, because they have no sense of loyalty or generosity. Telling yourself otherwise is a guaranteed path to disappointment.

On the other hand, of all the shit sandwiches we’ve been served, Steam is one of the fresher ones. Though they developed Proton for their own benefit, it’s pretty undeniable that it has made gaming on Linux way more viable than it has ever been, and it’s open source. I mean no shade to FOSS solutions like Lutris, but having paid developers work on a project full-time certainly has its advantages.

I do think that the concerns about Steam’s pricing rules are valid, as are gripes with its DRM for first party games. But, overall, they’ve brought a lot of convenience to PC gaming that is hard to find elsewhere in the gaming world.

It could be credibly called an homage if it had a new punchline, but methinks the creator didn’t know what “sanitize” meant in this context.

Use my desktop for gaming, use my laptop for development and travel. It’s nice to be able to sit in the living room while someone is playing a game, or sit out on the patio while I work on something.

Indeed, I’d say an algorithm split among different objects is usually an indication of tightly coupled code. Every code pattern has its pitfalls for inexperienced devs, and I think tight coupling is OOP’s biggest.

The problem is that a lot of users aren’t building a new machine for Linux, but converting an existing Windows laptop or desktop. In my case, I’d already bought an Nvidia card about a year before I decided to switch to Linux for gaming. Not ideal, of course, but it work a good 95% of the time and I can’t really afford to get a different card right now. I’ll definitely keep it in mind for my next pc upgrade, though.

I know this is just adding to your problem, but I wanna add to the majority and say go with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian, so most anything you can do on Debian, you can do on Mint. This is handy to know whenever you see a “.deb” file.

One of the things that makes it an easier transition from windows is that it’s a lot less strict about including proprietary drivers and codecs (though apparently Debian now includes a few by default). It also includes a few more GUI tools by default, like the package update manager.

I also have found Mint’s Cinnamon desktop environment to be the easiest transition from a Windows environment. KDE is also a good choice in that regard and it’s what I use now, but its plethora of options can be overwhelming for new users.

The distro wars can be pretty overwhelming, but I’d say pick whatever appeals most and go with it. If you get to a point where you can’t do something that you want to do, you can always come back and ask for advice and maybe switch up a different OS.

Honestly I still struggle a lot with this. I can click around a UI and feel what might confuse a user, but building a UI from scratch feels like such a shot in the dark.

I mean, there’s something to be said about adhering to an industry standard. Of course no project has to do so if they don’t want to, but people trying to get on with their work don’t want to spend a bunch of time relearning everything. I think Blender really thrived when they loosened up a little on their ideas of what a workflow should be and gave people industry standard options out of the gate.

Whether we like it or not, GIMP isn’t going to be most people’s first experience with image manipulation. Whether they had a free PS license through school/work, had a subscription at some point, or once got it through ahem alternative means, people will be coming into GIMP with certain expectation of what the workflow should look like and will get frustrated pretty quickly.

Everyone has a limited time on this earth. Some of us don’t mind or actively enjoy spending that time learning about the technology we use. Others, not so much. I think this comic is really spot on because it’s hard to understand as a tech literate person just how little other people may know. “What browser are you using?” “What’s a browser?”

The foundational knowledge is not that tough, but when you’re just interested in getting the damn thing to work so you can get on with your life, it’s easy to get frustrated by having to take a crash course on what the hell a BIOS is before you can try to fix it. And when you learn all that just for it to still be broken, patience quickly runs out.

As long as people have the general understanding that power cycling will solve a good 75% of issues, I’m happy. I hope people give me the same grace when I pay a someone to fix my car or replace my phone screen (I love building computers, but god I hate working on phones).

I also recommend trying out FreeCAD and seeing which clicks with you. I found FreeCAD’s sketch system more intuitive, though you have to be pretty careful about your order of operations while building your hierarchy.

It’s wild to me that there are wild macaws in northern South America. Granted I haven’t seen them in person, but even videos of them look so weird, like a hundred people let their pets out on accident.

I want to say that stick-built homes are really not so fragile as people seem to think. There’s tradeoffs, of course, and ways to build them that make them uncomfortable at best and blatantly unsafe at worst. That being said, they’re pretty sturdy, fairly easy to repair and modify, and relatively quick and cheap to build.

Thank God freedom units give us the liberty of doing away with that commie nonsense.

I agree to a point, but users also do some weird stuff that you just can’t predict sometimes.

The truth is that most people don’t really care. A lot of them don’t even know what an OS is, they just need a machine that lets them browse the internet, write documents, and maybe play some games. An ad is maybe an annoyance to them, but not one that’s going to make them install a new OS. It’s not because they’re dumb or ignorant, it just doesn’t rank that high on their list of priorities (even if we think it should). I think being in these communities kind of makes us forget that a lot of people don’t think that much about tech.

I do think that easy to install/use Linux distros could one day start changing some minds, but that distro won’t be one that’s popular with current Linux users. You’d basically need something that very rarely requires you to touch a terminal, even for troubleshooting, because that’s where people will nope right out.

On the other hand, this is why stuff like that “look at all the data Google has on you” video are important. For us it’s a yeah duh moment, but the average Chromebook user probably has no idea and is rightly surprised about it. Reach people in terms they can understand.

If you ever think “an actual human couldn’t possibly click that fast”, you are wrong. Debounce your critical actions.