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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)

    If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs





  • I think people who view Wine/Proton as a crutch is missing the point. Even disregarding the fact that it’s introducing more people to Linux (me included), I think the bigger point to make is that the future of software (or rather, the emerging meta of software) is cross-platform. Think about all the web apps and Electron apps. The solution to the Linux compatibility issue is not to make a Linux version of the software, it’s to set up a system such that one version works for every OS. Wine/Proton is just an unusual extension of that software philosophy.



  • To give more detail: Proton uses a hacky workaround called fsync. Fsync was developed by the Wine developers but was explicitly not merged into Wine because, by their own admission, this is a really hacky workaround and it’s definitely not the right way of doing things.

    For games, using fsync is far better than not using anything, and so Proton uses fsync. Apparently there’s recently been concern that the fsync workaround is going to become a bottleneck in modern games (not entirely sure the reasoning why), and so the Wine developers pushed for the development of NTsync, which is basically fsync if it weren’t a hacky workaround. NTsync alleviates the bottleneck that fsync creates, making it more robust, less hacky, and more futureproof.

    In short, don’t expect any noticeable performance increases, but Proton might work more consistently and it might improve performance for future games



  • Like it or hate it, SteamOS is what the people want. I mentioned in another comment about it. You can argue over what is a better distro all day, but in the end, what’s going to cause people to jump ship isn’t Bazzite - it’s SteamOS. Bazzite makes sense only to the people who already know what each distro is, and attempting to blame Linus (and, by proxy, the portion of his audience wanting to jump ship) for choosing SteamOS over Bazzite is exactly the sort of unwelcoming behavior that I’m concerned will drive away people. There are better and more productive ways of pushing for more established distros, but more importantly than that, we need to accept that SteamOS is a fundamental criterion for this set of audience to make a leap towards Linux, and we should be encouraging them to try out SteamOS instead of bikeshedding over which distro is best for people who have already made up their mind about SteamOS


  • Whether or not I like him is irrelevant to the point at hand, but since the topic is now brought up, I should point out that I don’t watch LTT.

    The bigger point here is that a major tech channel with a huge audience seems to be pushing for Linux adoption to a novel audience (having Linux content geared towards Linux enthusiasts does not bring in new users), and a direct consequence of that is that we should 1. expect to welcome an influx of new users to the Linux ecosystem, along with all of the consequences that that entails and 2. acknowledge this video as a symbol of increasing Linux acceptance among mainstream users. The particular channel is itself irrelevant, compared to the bigger fact that such a video was even made at all.

    To use your example, it would be like if we were a community of used bathwater enthusiasts and we decided to bury any news about that influencer selling her bathwater.


  • On the contrary, if someone is able to shoot themselves in the foot and there is a sizeable portion of people who don’t immediately think that that person is a bumbling idiot, then things can and should improve from a technological standpoint.

    The kind-of-techy gaming crowd is exactly the audience that needs to be targetted for continued improvement of the Linux ecosystem, both because they are the most adjacent to the current target audience and because a not-insignificant portion of them actively dislike Windows and wants an alternative. And if they see that Linus runs into an error and thinks that they might come across a similar error, then that is, in fact, a disservice to the Linux ecosystem that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t matter if Linus did it intentionally or not - the fact that many of his viewers think it to be genuine is proof enough that there needs to be more polish.

    On a more personal level, I can tell you that that your sort of outlook directly hindered my adoption of Linux. I was part of that exact kind-of-techy gaming crowd at one point, and it took me multiple attempts across almost a decade to really take a substantial leap towards Linux. And throughout all of my previous attempts, the one reason that kept me from adopting Linux earlier was the unshakeable feeling that Linux was made for people who already knew what they were doing, and everyone else gets tossed to the wayside.

    That’s what Valve understood when they made their Steam deck, and as a direct consequence of that understanding, many of the kind-of-techy gaming crowd want a public release of SteamOS over a much more established Linux distro. And for what it’s worth, Linus seems generally positive towards Linux in this particular video, and my interpretation is that his channel will begin to convince more of his audience to try out Linux in the coming months. If nothing else, then it seems worth celebrating that Linux is being talked about in a positive way on a more mainstream channel.







  • Would definitely not recommend KDE Neon. It’s more of a showcase of new KDE features than an actual usable OS. I currently use Kubuntu and it’s fine. I wish it updated more frequently but the update frequency isn’t slow enough to really be a deal breaker.

    I disabled snap Firefox, not really because I’m ideologically against snap, but because snap Firefox is annoying to use. Other than that, the OS generally just works out of the box.

    I’ve heard good things about OpenSUSE, but I’ve never tried it. My personal opinion is that I want to stick to the most common distros so that it’s easier to find troubleshooting advice


  • I think doing nothing is an overlooked business strategy. Companies always expect change and improvement. There must be a new version, a new redesign, a new functionality, a new hype. It looks good on paper and signals leadership to the investors, even when what the customer really wants is just stability and consistency. We saw it with Windows, where Microsoft’s endless hype-chasing led us to Windows 11. If stagnation is one extreme of business strategies, then whatever these tech companies are doing is the opposite extreme.

    Valve knows what to change and, more importantly, what not to change.