It’s built on FOSS software, Valve is a main contributer to a bunch of Linux-specific frameworks like Proton, AMD FOSS drivers, and others. This means that the FOSS world benifits from their contributions, regardless of Valve’s future contributions.

That’s the beauty and power of FOSS, it can’t be restricted or locked away, everybody gets to enjoy everybody else’s contributions, big and small.

Even if Valve totally enshitifies and tries to restrict their tech, the community will fork their projects, take the code and continue building cool stuff.

Look what happened with Terraform, the largest infrastructure as code platform in the world. They tried to close down their codebase by changing the license to a more restrictive one, and the community rebelled and forked Open Tofu, which not only has 100% backward compatibility with Terraform, but has newly developed features that terraform doesn’t have.

Same thing with Red Hat, a multi-billion dollar corpo owned and controlled by IBM, which tried to lock out devs from their codebase recently unless they were building code specifically for Red Hat Linux. Rocky and Alma Linux not only survived, but still thrive.

I could go on, but the point is that right now Valve is a fantastic force for Linux and FOSS development in the gaming space, and because they started with a largely open platform and ecosystem, that protects the community at large from future enshitification.

I will be so happy when the era of client-side anticheat is over. I think it will happen eventually, especially now that Valve is releasing the new Steam Machine and has been so successful with Proton-based gaming lately.

Plus, Windows getting so much worse and the zero days and exploits of these kernel-level anticheats will put pressure on the devs to move away from them imo.

Yeah, but think of the potential shareholder value!

…allowing paying customers to generate solar power, grow crops and replace urban lighting.

What a great idea! There aren’t any other ways to generate or store solar power, grow crops beyond daytime hours, or create good urban lighting…

Buying my copy soon!

Magic Earth has been great to use 🙂

I hate that this is me…

True, it still does vary even chipset to chipset. Some Nvidia and Intel cards do just work depending on the distro, others require more work.

It also depends on how “techie” the user is. My parents are 0% techie, so I have to do anything and everything for them if they have questions or issues.

But a Windows power user can handle some terminal use and other basic system modifications. And honestly now days, most of that stuff is super easy. Like Linux mint has a dedicated driver app that allows you to use a simple GUI to install Nvidia drivers, it’s super easy.

Hard to summarize, because it differs so much from person to person.

I installed Linux on my parent’s computer. They don’t need to know anything about Linux, because everything they use is identical to their old Windows PC. They click the icon for Chrome to open the browser. They Click the icon for LibreOffice to type up a “Word” doc and print it by clicking “file > print”

As far as they’re concerned, they are still using Windows.

For a gamer, they will need to know a little about Proton, possibly Lutris and the Hero launcher. They might need to know about installing nVidia drivers or tweaking a few things in the Steam launch options to get games to run better.

It’s tough to know exactly what a new Linux user will “need” to know in order to use Linux.

Aegis for time codes, Nitrokey for physical 2FA tokens.

In all seriousness, I’ve yet to encounter a situation where Systemd made any meaningful negative difference in my Linux experience.

I’ve never had problems with any init system, Systemd or otherwise.

The earth can easily sustain our current population at a 1st world standard of living, but only if we are orders of magnitude more efficient. That means things like no mass car usage, eco-urbanisn, no more single family homes with quarter acre empty lawns, widespread plant-based foods as the norm, and repairable technology that actually lasts decades instead of planned obsolescence and cheap plastic junk that fills up landfills.

You don’t need to be some anarcho-primitivist/Ted Kaczynski wannabe living in a wooden shack with one set of clothes.

Now is that viable in the current societal climate? No, people, especially Americans generally hate much of those eco-urbanist ideas. As long as Capitalism is the default economic system and neo-liberal politics is the default political approach to democracy, we will continue marching towards a consumerist doom.

Systemd is great! The best thing about it is how efficient and minimal it is!

You mean relying blindly on a statistical prediction engine to attempt to produce sophisticated software without any understanding of the underlying principles or concepts doesn’t magically replace years of actual study and real-world experience?

But trust me, bro, the singularity is imminent, LLMs are the future of human evolution, true AGI is nigh!

I can’t wait for this idiotic “AI” bubble to burst.

well, I work in IT. So I am required to use apps like Teams for mobile and DUO 2FA in order to authenticate my laptop sessions.

Now, could I use only SMS/email 2FA? Technically yes. And I could just have Teams on my work laptop and have that nearby all the time, but it would be extremely inconvenient. Navigation would also be a big problem. Due to the nature of my job, I frequently have to visit a large number of different sites around my area. Having to open my laptop each time I need to go somewhere, open up a map site like OSM or Google maps to get the directions, print them off or write them down, then follow them manually hoping that I don’t encounter random slowdowns or closures in an area I am not familiar with is basically a non-starter for me.

As for personal use, navigation rears its ugly head again. I often will be traveling with friends or family and we decide on a whim to change our destination for dinner or hangouts after based on times, appetites, budgets, closures, etc. Having a map app on my phone makes that easy to do. It would be impossible to do that without it, unless I had a near exhaustive knowledge of my whole city and surrounding suburbs.

Honestly navigation is the #1 thing. Random other stuff comes up, like my mobile password manager Bitwarden, or my various apps like my City’s bus/metro app, and my city’s parking app. Both of which again, I could make do without, but it would be extremely tough and inconvenient.

I’ve decided that the happy medium for me is to use as much FOSS phone tech as possible. That way at least the tracking and data harvesting is minimized and I am generally not supporting megacorps.

I use GrapheneOS, with mostly FOSS apps. The proprietary apps I do use are isolated with GOS’s special sauce. I use Magic Earth for my navigation, which while not open source, the data sets they use are, and they are not google, and based in the EU, so far better privacy than Google’s trash.

I wish I could switch to a flip phone, I’ve seriously considered it many times over the last several years. But for my lifestyle, it’s just not feasible. The best balance for me is to compute ethically on my mobile. I have thought about going for the weekend with just a dumb phone, that might be possible, but I’ll have to see.

Here’s my definition of cheating: The use of any 3rd party software, not allowed by the developer, that gives a material in-game advantage to the user against other players without their knowledge or consent.

So mods are not cheating. Purely single player hacks are not cheating. Optional 3rd party overlays or in-game aids like RuneLite for OSRS or the many external deck/stat trackers for games like Hearthstone or Genshin Impact also aren’t cheating.

Using Aimbots, wall hacks, infinite health/ammo/lives, and similar in online comp play is cheating.

Grey zone stuff would be things like unapproved in-game overlays.

I don’t care what people do in single player. Hack and mod as much as your heart desires, it doesn’t hurt any other players. The worst thing that can happen is you “cheat” yourself out of a personal challenge, but that’s your own call.

One day the crude biomass you call “the temple” will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.

But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal.

Play stupid games…

Lol at all the conservatives screeching about “socialism” and “communism” and how they will be the downfall of our country, then slurping up Trump nationalizing part of Intel 🤣

They don’t believe in anything, just brain dead simpleton cultists who would happily stick their tongue into a rat trap if Trump told them to do it.

Install the latest version and then use their upgrade utility when they announce it on their official blog. Upgrading versions is easy, takes a little while, especially on an old system like yours, but not hard at all.

Mint is my favorite “Just works” distro, enjoy!

Check this out, not sure how relevant, but a cool project that unlocks some of the proprietary functionality of a bunch of Scarlett devices on Linux: ALSA Scarlett Control Panel

Also if you haven’t checked it out already, r/linuxaudio has some posts I found on various Scarlett device questions, you’ll have to search for specifics.

And lastly, are you using Reaper as a Flatpak? If you are, download “Flatseal” it’s a Flatpak app that allows you low level control of all your flatpak application permissions on your system. You can set all kinds of low level system access to the Flatpak you’re using, that can help fix various issues that come up because of how Flatpaks are sandboxed on Linux.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. I’m not an audio expert, so my abilities on this issue are limited sadly.