I think the original question could be about the protocol. Why not use Matrix as the protocol for the project? No one is doing the work to bring a Matrix-based Discord alternative because they’re a) on Discord b) creatin IRC face-lifts like Element c) refusing to quit IRC d) making projects with bespoke protocols like this one. It’s incredibly frustrating.

What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam. I’m going to guess Valve is going to continue being a private company and doing whatever the fuck they want, without investor pressure towards enshittification.

Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together. Other types of digital distribution services are so fucked up by exclusivity deals that any “competition” is always going to mean “megacorporation uses existing wealth to deny competition”.

Epic is trying really hard to bring the exclusivity nightmare over to PC gaming as well, but so far Valve still holds.

Qtox should work? It’s not a very good chat software and a bit cumbersome, but it allows direct file transfers.

I do wonder if it’s going to be HC viable as well.

Sad to see 'cause it feels like we need Pirate Parties more than ever.

I really only wanted mods to fix the horrible 2011 Xbox 360 UI and to remove the dynamic enemy level scaling, but for the latter no manual install guides were provided and it seems you must use one of these mod organizing softwares for whatever fucking reason.

For mod organizer no install instructions were provided for a Linux/GOG combination so I just gave up trying to mod Skyrim. I just wanted two goddamn mods and I failed.

Arrows and emojis have just been so painfully prevalent in thumbnails desperate for attention. I don’t actually hold it against GN (or any channel), can’t really help that it’s what people click. It just seems so “not GN” lol.

Can’t watch the video yet but damn, GN does meme arrow thumbnails these days?

167h of Stardew on the Deck here so far and probably wouldn’t even play it if Deck didn’t make playing games so comfy.

Aside from the bigger battery, the APU got a die shrink (7nm to 6nm). With the same performance target it directly translates to better efficiency.

Apparently “highly limited quantities” is about the Limited Edition model and not all of the OLED models.

I don’t think it’ll ever happen, but I’d love to see the right side trackpad and thumbstick swap places. I use the trackpad 95% of the time and I keep wishing it was in the better spot.

Steam Deck does feel like a superset of Switch. It offers almost all of what Switch offers in a bit heavier and a lot more comfortable package. You get absolute freedom to do what you want with the device (I buy almost all my games from GOG), the trackpads become pretty much mandatory once you get used to them. You have the option of playing AAA titles with shorter battery life, but don’t actually compare that badly agaist a Switch if you play games that Switch can run. You gain access to a lot more games, a lot cheaper games.

People convince eachother that the two devices somehow serve different functions and audiences, but that just feels like unwarranted courtesy towards Switch. I don’t have a Switch, to be clear, but it does seem like an obvious upgrade from what I can tell.

I specifically phrased it “could be” as people tend to believe there are 3 preferences, Mac, Linux and Windows. Linux is not one user experience, it could work exactly like your favorite OS. In the face of SteamOS already being a viable option for the average gamer as Valve is basically strong arming it to be, on Steam Deck you’re not exactly doing PC gaming any good deliberately installing Windows on it. SteamOS just works.

I also think you’re very misguided in thinking it won’t have any return to Valve. Microsoft has to be looking at Google Play Store and whatever the Apple Store is called with a lot of envy with how they’ve managed to lock the entire ecosystem under their stores. This is the end result for Windows as well and its likely anti-competetive clauses are a very bad sign for a company like Valve. Looking back I’m actually impressed just how far back Valve saw this happening. Decoupling PC gaming in its entirety from Microsoft’s vendor lock-ins is in the best interest of all of the companies in the gaming industry, but it takes a rich private company like Valve to start doing the hard work for long term benefits instead of always chasing the short term profits.

Even if tomorrow Microsoft launched something that pulled ahead of SteamOS, it would still be in the gamers’ best interest to stick with the open platform. With a consistent, large userbase on an open platform it will eventually eclipse anything Microsoft could ever muster.

For the future of PC gaming I sure as hell hope so. People stick to and defend Windows as their go-to 'till the bitter end, likely not realizing Linux could be everything their Windows machine is and there is a real industry player with a lot of money making this reality right now. If we just let it.

If we would just give Linux the critical mass, we could free the last locked aspect of PC gaming, the OS itself. That way we would no longer be at the whims of Microsoft’s decisions because let’s face it, even Windows users hate the shit they do.

Good work!

This thread stopped federating for some reason so I’ll reply to myself:

How different is neo vim from regular vim?

Functionally it’s pretty much identical. For the user the difference is in the added features and development model. Neovim’s development model is not centralized to one person and makes real progress. Vim on the other hand is much more a pet project of its creator and seems to get new features only if it starts losing users over to Neovim. Using Vim you’re always going to be behind the curve and under the whims of Bram’s decisions. Neovim integrated Lua as a first-class language for configuration and it was then that Bram had to do something about vimscript, but opted instead to create a new, backwards incompatible version of vimscript, another bespoke language. I very much advocate making Neovim the norm instead.

I think anyone who does programming should at least give Neovim a good shot. Like, dedicate a few months to get a feel for the basic controls, use relative line numbers to jump to lines, f and F to jump to spots in lines, ciw ci" etc. to change stuff. If it’s not your thing then fine, but learning Neovim is like switching from clicking file -> save to ctrl+s, but with everything.

You really don’t need a mouse at all and in the end you’ll get to make changes as fast as you can think. It’s a language you speak through your keyboard to your editor and things just happen once you get fluent. E: checking if editing helps this thread federate better.

Can’t play lying on your back with a laptop. It’s glorious. Deck’s so wide too that it feels natural to play like that, holding all the device weight on your albows.

I’m really glad I finally get to play this. Just want to play a story driven game as good as Bioshock/Bioshock Infinite and maybe this can get close at least.