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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 23rd, 2024

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  • Sorry for the late reply. Also @Cricket’s response is great and actually references a source!

    Anecdotally though, as a user, I’ve noticed that some things require extra permissions. Usually there’s a prompt from the operating system that’ll ask for permission capture the desktop, which lets me specify which window or monitor to share. It uses the “XDG Desktop Portal”, which was already what allowed Flatpaks to securely access OS resources, and it has a whole bunch of different requests for resources and permissions. It’s similar to a web browser, where it’ll prompt you for privileges when an app wants them.

    The hardest pain point for me has been that an app cannot detect keyboard input if it isn’t focused. This could prevent key loggers, but it also makes global shortcuts not work. There is a protocol that allows an app to request a key be forwarded to it, but it’s not widely implemented in apps (discord, for example) and I’ve had to rely on workarounds.



  • I haven’t heard of any such cases, but it is a smaller pool of users. Also, many desktop Linux users know more about using a computer than other operating system users, since it’s less common for Linux to come preinstalled. So that may affect it, too.

    I imagine vulnerabilities with the Linux kernel or common utilities do apply to desktop users as well, which is a good reminder why staying up-to-date is important. But to my understanding, exploiting remotely would need a way of sending data to the target. And most desktop computers won’t have ports open to the internet for anyone like servers will.

    I know that Wayland’s design does make it more difficult for a user-mode program to act maliciously, like as key-loggers or reading the clipboard.


  • Yeah… Apex Legends dropped Linux support a while ago and that’s one of the reasons they cited; and tbf, there were publicly available Linux cheats that ran under proton.

    But there’s also loads of publicly available “external” cheats that run the way you described. Some run through a virtual machine even. It’s just not a robust solution for preventing cheating, and mostly hurts the legit Linux players.





  • My old keyboard was a cheap $30 membrane one, and it was a painted metal plate with a plastic shell on the back for the internals. The edge of it was rounded, but it was still just a single edge, maybe 5mm thick, so I used to give myself bruises trying to flick in FPS games. They were literally just a vertical line on my thumb.


  • I’m surprised by the love here for the number pad! I saw mainly benefits for getting a 60 or 65% when I was considering a keyboard kit:

    • More space for moving my mouse to the left. I play FPS games with a pretty low sensitivity, and I used to flick my thumb into my keyboard.
    • More portable. My keyboard can connect with Bluetooth or usb-c so it’s nice to be able to use with a tablet
    • Less switches to lube and install when I assembled it
    • No redundant keys, though I had to learn traditionally typing numbers. But now I don’t have to move my hand position to type them.

    I do prefer vim for text editing, so I have less use for some of the special keys. But they’re still nice to have for shortcuts or keybinds.








  • Right up front two major issues with Linux:

    1. No standard UI - it’s different on every system

    2. No standard tools - you can’t rely on the same tools being on every machine

    These seem like pretty fundamental traits, since Linux is only the kernel. I think a better way to compare other OSs to Linux would be comparing them to specific Linux distros, since those often do have standardized installs.

    But there’s not really a great answer for which distro or distros should be used to represent the whole linux ecosystem… and that fragmentation has both pros and cons.

    Like, I really love my Arch desktop, but it took lots of time to learn and configure. And it often breaks with updates— it’s not something most users would want. However, I get cutting-edge updates and features, and I have specialized my entire OS to best work for my workflows.