Comment by embedding-shape

Comment by embedding-shape 2 days ago

24 replies

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> Most gamers don't give a shit about openness

I don't think this is a given. I think most gamers so far haven't cared about openness because pragmatically, it didn't matter for them.

Now they're seeing the long-term effect of not caring about that though, which is why we're suddenly seeing a movement of gamers moving to Linux, and trying to get others to move with them, because they realize the importance now, as their desktops are slowly collapsing over Microsoft's decision to let AI do all the programming, and having zero QA before releasing stuff to the public.

wlesieutre 2 days ago

They don't care about it as an abstract idea, but they do notice that Windows 11 is worse than Windows 10 was worse than Windows 8 was worse than Windows 7.

I'm not saying there have been zero useful improvements in later Windows releases, but 7 looked good and did what you told it to. "Openness" is a very abstract idea but "Only does what you tell it to" is a selling point for Linux.

You know it's not going to upload all your documents to OneDrive and then erase them from the computer.

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  • dralley a day ago

    I don't think most people would argue that Windows 10 was worse than Windows 8

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    • wlesieutre 14 hours ago

      My opinion on that may be colored by the fact that I had a Surface Pro 3, the one place where Windows 8.1 was actually great to use, and taking away some of the focus on tablet use was a regression. Overall you're right though, outside of tablets W10 was an improvement, because 8 tried to stick the tablet UI into desktops.

      I was recently connecting to some server with the Windows 8 derived version of Windows Server and gosh that full screen start menu is stupid with a mouse.

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  • pjmlp 2 days ago

    Yes, but when they go out creating that aquarium PC tower with rainbow lights, they will install W11 Pro as usual.

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    • BoxOfRain 2 days ago

      Ironically I built a Linux box for mainly local models with some RGBs because I wanted tasteful accent lights to match the room, but my motherboard isn't supported by OpenRGB so they're stuck on either nothing or 'unicorn vomit' mode until some indefinite point in the future. This is the first time I've run into a stereotypically Linux issue in nearly a decade (on sane hardware) I think!

      Not a fan of those aquarium PC cases though, they sacrifice airflow for aesthetics which isn't a great shout. I have a 5090 and a 9950X in a more traditional case and my temperatures are fine with air cooling alone. Not sure you'd get away with that in an aquarium case with poorer airflow, at least without it sounding like a hairdryer all day.

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      • wlesieutre 2 days ago

        Anyone know of a living successor to Silent PC Review? Was a great site back in the day but it shut down and got replaced with a marketing slop page.

        Great reviews back you could get cases with multi-layered sound deadening side panels instead of windows.

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    • pluralmonad 2 days ago

      I feel like that makes sense. Linux users are messing with all the control given to them in software by a free OS, while windows user get only what they're allowed in software and Microsoft has not figured out how to keep them from modifying their hardware... yet. So the flashy LED folks are making their modifications where still allowed.

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    • tombert 2 days ago

      Maybe the people who go hardcore like that, with the obnoxious PC cases, but there are lots of casual-to-less-casual gamers out there who will be happy enough with Bazzite.

      There’s a whole spectrum of PC gamers, and I think Linux+Proton can appeal to most of them. Let the people spending $10,000 on a glowing case make their own bad decisions.

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      • hedora 2 days ago

        FWIW: I have a pile of old Intel / NVIDIA machines that no longer boot Windows. They're all > 2GHz, > 8GB DRAM, and have more than enough horsepower to run modern casual titles. Next to that pile, I have a pile of games that no longer run under Windows.

        I also have a glowing case PC. Out of the box, it's possible to change the fan light color patterns from Linux.

        I had one problem putting Devuan on it:

        If you plug the gaming keyboard 2.4GHz dongle into the monitor, the bios doesn't enumerate far enough down the USB tree to find it. So, you can't enter the bios and tell it to boot from USB. Then, the windows setup screen pops up.

        After a few force reboots (M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser), Windows goes into deep diagnostics mode on each boot trying to figure out why it keeps crashing out during the install flow. So, each debug step of "why can't I get into the bios?" takes a few minutes.

        The solution was to plug the keyboard dongle directly into the box. The only time the fan has come on after boot (I think it likes to knock the dust off itself when it turns on) was when I told it to download my steam library all at once.

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        • efreak 2 days ago

          > M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser

          Not sure what language chooser you're talking about here, but if you're trying to shutdown Windows without hybrid shutdown to access the uefi, there's two switches you can use with shutdown.exe: `shutdown /s /t 0` will perform a full shutdown without hibernating the system session (not hybrid shutdown, that can be done with another parameter). If you want to reboot into your UEFI menu, use `shutdown /r /fw /t 0`

          I may be confusing the time parameter, it might be `/t now` and not `/t 0`; I usually use a dedicated command to reboot to UEFI via slickrun.

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ekianjo 2 days ago

> I don't think this is a given

This is a given. They love Discord and shit like that.

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  • tombert 2 days ago

    They don’t care about FOSS, but they care about “computer lets me do what I want”.

    Discord is obviously proprietary but it’s actually a very modular platform that gives a lot of nice controls. It’s easy to make your own “server”, it’s easy to add whatever bots you want, it’s easy to moderate. From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”.

    Also, I know that this wasn’t your point, but I do feel compelled to point out that Discord works fine on Linux.

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    • ekianjo 6 hours ago

      > From a consumer perspective, it’s “open”.

      As open as windows that tracks everything that you do

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  • embedding-shape 2 days ago

    Right, but that proves nothing, is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people? Otherwise I'd say my argument applies in exactly the same way. Pragmatism wins, so why change unless there is a need?

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    • ekianjo 6 hours ago

      > is there something that is more open and better than Discord, for this group of people?

      Matrix, xmpp, and probably more. The options are not lacking

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  • drnick1 2 days ago

    Yes if gamers truly cared about openness and absence of corporate control, they would move to self-hosted Matrix channels.

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    • darthcircuit 2 days ago

      I actually did selfhost my own matrix server to communicate with my friends while gaming. Works great on my steamdeck and I’ve got bazzite on my laptop. Most games I’m interested in work great on Linux and anything that doesn’t I just don’t play. There are so many games that do work great, but I can see people skipping Linux because of fomo.

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