Erm… Ok

Not answering your comment directly, and I don’t even use Linux, BUT…

One reason a lot of us don’t use Linux even if we really want to us because it’s biggest strength is also one of its biggest weaknesses, that being it’s modularity.

There isn’t a single packaging system, window manager, file system, shell, etc etc.

This makes it hard for companies (and devs in general) to target Linux for releases. For example you want to release something for Windows, you build a single exe, apple is a dmg (I think) etc so you just build for one single platform with a consistent API.

When you want to build for Linux there can’t be just one build/package. This has actively been cited as reasons why some commercial software doesn’t support Linux, as it takes far more effort to support all major permutations of platform and package management.

So back to your question, why is Valve’s Steam OS going to help? Because it’s going to be a single platform with a single way of doing things. You can always go and replace the bits like any Linux distro but out the box it will be easy enough for vendors to support, it will hopefully also get more adoption because it has commercial support.

Look at Android as an example (I know it’s not entirely the same), but that is just a customised version of Linux, but as it’s consistent and has a single way to manage packages it’s widely adopted.

I am pretty sure Linus himself said how one of the reasons why Linux desktop doesn’t have mass adoption is because no one can agree on how things should be done, so we have hundreds of libs all doing the same thing in a different way. Valve will pick what they think is best (even if it isn’t technically the best) and through that we all have a singular point of effort and adoption to centralise on.

Recently, I would say Roadwarden, was such a great game with such a unique feel to it.

What a gem, my friend and I played through the first 2 lunar games in university.

I also discovered wild Arms which was pretty good and doesn’t get much attention compared to jrpgs like FF and Suikoden.

Really enjoying it so far.

I was initially saddened to hear it was going to follow in the steps of 15 and be an action based rpg, and I thought 15 was brain dead “warp strike simulator” with horrible story pacing and poor characters (until last 5% of the game).

This game though has simple but effective action combat with enough variety to be fun and the characters and pacing are a joy.

I still wish we could get some FF games like 7 or 9 where there is depth to equipment, magic and turn based combat, but jrpgs have been iterating away from complex battle systems and sell well so can’t see them going back.

I still think FF7 was the pinnacle as material mixing and matching with equipment was really simple and super fun.

Anyway rnat over, FF16 is good, recommend it.

I love SteamOS for gaming and I think going forward that may get more and more adoption, but a lot of day to day apps or dev tools I use either don’t have Linux releases (and can’t be run via wine/Proton). I would love to jump over on host rather than dabbling with it via vms/steamdeck but it’s just not productive enough.

One especially painful thing is when certain libs I’m developing with need different versions of glibc or gtk to the ones installed by default on OS, and then I die inside.

I just wish we could have less ways to do things in Linux.

I get that’s one of the main benefits of the eco system, but it adds too much of a burden on developers and users. A developer can release something for Windows easily, same for Mac, but for Linux is it a flatpak, a deb, snap etc?

Also given how many shells and pluggable infrastructure there is it’s not like troubleshooting on windows or mac, where you can Google something and others will have exact same problem. On Linux some may have same problem but most of the time it’s a slight variation and there are less users in the pool to begin with.

So a lot of stuff is stacked against you, I would love for it to become more mainstream but to do so I feel it needs to be a bit more like android where we just have a singular way to build/install packages, try and get more people onto a common shell/infrastructure so there are more people in same setup to help each other. Even if it’s not technically the best possible setup, if its consistent and easy to build for its going to speed up adoption.

I don’t think it’s realistically possible but it would greatly help adoption from consumers and developers imo.

Considering it’s technical limitations the game boy had some amazing games. Gargoyles Quest games were amazing

R Type was such a good game

I think it was some asteroid style game in arcade, but first really memorable game was Dizzy 1 on C64. Was a wild time when a couple of quid could get you a magazine, some sweets and a cassette full of indie games and demos.

We did something similar, it’s how we saved all people in Dead Rising. We used to do this for so many single player games, it was such always such a laugh, and we got to finish games I probably wouldn’t play by myself.

I was/am kinda hoping that with the slow adoption of VR/AR that we can kinda bring hanging out on the couch taking turns on games together.

There are apps like Big Screen that already let you share a screen together and hang out, but not easily play games and you can’t share controls. EmuVR let’s you share controls and hang out in a room with people but only retro games via retroarch.

If we could get a mix of the two where I could just put on my headset/glasses (in the future) join my friends room and we both kinda exist in each other’s real life room via AR sharing screens it would be pretty good.

This is probably like a decade away, but for those of us with IRL friends who have moved really far away so hanging out in person frequently isn’t an option, it could be a ray of hope.

Would still rather just meet up and crash over at one of our places with takeaway pizza taking turns on Resident Evil 1 until 3am.

Ironically in our group it’s the people with kids who have the most availability/flexibility to meet up, but the ones who are single or don’t have a family who are always busy.

Oddjob, knives only in aztec

This is a pretty complex topic, as a quick knee jerk I agree AI art isn’t art in the common sense, but one thing I disagree with is that all art has intent or even needs it.

I don’t think AI art is going to or even tries to replace art as a creative pursuit. If anything it’s more likely to replace certain photography related jobs.

Currently the main use cases are

• Generating stock photos
• Generating texture maps
• Generating concept art

None of these things really care about intent, you could argue concept art does, but a lot of the time it’s just there to set a vibe/direction/theme. All of the above will still replace jobs but not the typical everyday artists jobs, maybe stock or texture photographers though.

I’m not against early access as a whole, if devs want to get player feedback earlier on in the life cycle and players are happy to be pseudo testers then it’s fine.

I get some people would rather wait and buy when it’s finished, and some studiosd/devs would rather bypass EA and just release the game outright, but I feel both paradigms can exist as long as both parties (devs/consumers) continue to benefit.

I think part of the problem is down to how a lot of games come out as “Early Access” which implies it’s more bare bones and will get fleshed out over time.

If a game releases as EA then the expectation is you will get more content until release, if a game just comes out without EA then it’s assumed it has all content and anything new is dlc/mtx/expansions.

I’m not gonna bother addressing Live Service games, wish they would go in the bin with most other MTX.

This tool is great for people who play fullscreen games, but if you play windowed it currently won’t work properly for you (even in windowed mode).

I got it to try and bump my 1440p@60fps to 1440p@120fps without making the GPU want to take off via the frame generation, and unfortunately while it does have a windowed mode that either draws over your window (it’s wonky and slow) or a mode where it just does fullscreen but with black space to pad to your window size, which looks silly.

I like what it does but I have other stuff I want to see on my screen while playing so want to keep my games windowed.

I would also say if you are playing a game that supports dlss/FSR with frame generation, just use that instead as it will use frame buffer data to drive the upscaling/frame generation, which is pretty efficient and the data is already on the gpu. Lossless scaling is basically taking REALLY FAST screenshots of your game and upscaling/frame gen then drawing it over your screen quickly.

• Suikoden 2
• Final Fantasy 7 (original)
• Dark Souls
• Resident Evil 1
• Castlevania SOTN
• D&D Warriors of the Eternal Sun
• Resident Evil 1 Remake (GC)
• Gran Turismo 4
• Road Rash 2
• Oblivion

Big shout out to SFA2, FFT:A/2, BOF series, Roadwarden.

10 feels too little to condense 40 years of games.

I have a steamdeck and it’s a brilliant bit of kit and if the whole Linux eco system had this same sort of cohesion and “out the box” working experience then it would probably be far more adopted.

Your point on stability is great, but for most people I would say they rarely see BSODs, windows is pretty stable too, I think a lot of the reasons that corporate servers use Linux over windows is more to do with licensing and permissions, I have seen plenty of windows server setups which works fine 24/7 so I don’t think windows is any less stable, it’s just more faff to setup things which are based on Linux conventions/features (i.e docker).

If Windows went back to how it was in window ls 7 where it didn’t ram garbage down your throat every update I wouldn’t have any problems with it.