KubeRoot

2025 will truly be the year of the Linux desktop! I am so happy about this information!

Oh, just ask an Arch user about Manjaro.

It’s not like Bethesda called their games “Fantasy” - “Civilization” is such a generic name that I respect putting the author’s name before it to avoid any confusion.

Except you might want a client, both to keep your games in one place, and for extra features it can provide (like cloud saves and updates) - and if you’re on Linux, you’re excluded from that kind of stuff on GOG.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining! I saw “makes space” as what’s happening right now, since Android does let you install alternatives for all those, including third party app stores, but it does go farther than that.

I don’t think anything you said makes it not free, as long as you can fork it. The same can be said about most FOSS, since somebody, usually the creator, is in control of the repository.

That’s the point of FOSS - your repository isn’t becoming a democracy by virtue of using a permissive license, but it means somebody could outcompete you with a fork and effectively take over as the dominant project.

But… Aren’t all of those things still very much dominant?

The 8 dependencies must be an optional dependency for some other package you already have installed. That said, that kind of stuff is the main reason I want to try NixOS - any time I install something, configure something, etc. I’m risking forgetting about it and getting tripped up over it down the line, with no good way to check.

Man, and here I put too much effort writing a reply to a troll 😔

Does windows come preinstalled and preconfigured with more potentially vulnerable software on open ports?

I personally don’t value an antivirus that much, since it can only protect you from known threats, and even then, it only matters when you’re already getting compromised - but fair point for Windows, I suspect most distros come without antivirus preinstalled and preconfigured.

A firewall, on the other hand, only has value if you already have insecure services listening on your system - and I’m pretty sure on Windows those services aren’t gonna be blocked by the default settings. All that said though… Most Linux distros come with a firewall, something like iptables or firewalld, though not sure which ones would have it preconfigured for blocking connections by default.

So while I would dispute both of those points as not being that notable, I feel like other arguments in favor of Linux still stand, like reduced surface area, simpler kernel code, open and auditable source.

One big issue with Linux security for consumers (which I have to assume is what you’re talking about, since on the server side a sysadmin will want to configure any antivirus and firewall anyways) could be that different distributions will have different configurations - both for security and for preference-based things like desktop environments. This does unfortunately mean that users could find themselves installing less secure distros without realizing it, choosing them for their looks/usage patterns.

Question, how is Linux more insecure out of the box?

I think you’re actually agreeing with me here. I was disputing the claim that software should be made available in “a native package format”, and my counterpoint is that devs shouldn’t be packaging things for distros, and instead providing source code with build instructions, alongside whatever builds they can comfortably provide - primarily flatpak and appimage, in my example.

I don’t use flatpak, and I prefer to use packages with my distro’s package manager, but I definitely can’t expect every package to be available in that format. Flatpak and appimage, to my knowledge, are designed to be distro-agnostic and easily distributed by the software developer, so they’re probably the best options - flatpak better for long-term use, appimage usable for quickly trying out software or one-off utilities.

As for tar.gz, these days software tends to be made available on GitHub and similar platforms, where you can fetch the source from git by commit, and releases also have autogenerated source downloads. Makefiles/automake isn’t a reasonable expectation these days, with a plethora of languages and build toolchains, but good, clear instructions are definitely something to include.

The responsibility to figure out the dependencies and packaging for distros, and then maintain those going forwards, should not be placed on the developer. If a developer wants to do that, then that’s fine - but if a developer just wants to provide source with solid build instructions, and then provide a flatpak, maybe an appimage, then that’s also perfectly fine.

In a sense, developers shouldn’t even be trusted to manage packaging for distributions - it’s usually not their area of expertise, maintainers of specific distributions will usually know better.

Those are fair points, I actually bought the switch pretty early on after seeing praise for Odyssey and BotW. I play on PC otherwise, but I enjoyed the experience, playing docked with joycons with motion controls.

I’m not personally frustrated, while the games definitely seem overpriced, I always felt like Nintendo is just sitting in their niche doing their thing, not trying to one-up others and instead providing various gimmicks with their devices. They’re selling consoles and games for a certain price, and it feels like if you think the deal is bad or unfair, you can just pass on it.

I don’t think I really have a point here, just saying my thoughts. I have my issues with Nintendo, but I do feel like their consoles and games provide value that is hard to get elsewhere.

I do get the impression that Nintendo has consistently had worse hardware for a long time… And I appreciate it. Instead of cranking up the hardware, they make games that are fun and run on weaker hardware, often with neat stylization.

This is from before my times, but… Deploying an app by uploading a pre built bundle? If it’s a fully self-contained package, that seems good to me, perhaps better than many websites today…

And reinstalling the packages, moving over all the configs, setting up the partitions and moving the data over? (Not in this order, of course)

Cloning a drive would just require you to plug both the old and new to the same machine, boot up (probably from a live image to avoid issues), running a command and waiting until it finishes. Then maybe fixing up the fstab and reinstalling the bootloader, but those are things you need to do to install the system anyways.

I think the reason you’d want to reinstall is to save time, or get a clean slate without any past config mistakes you’ve already forgotten about, which I’ve done for that very reason, especially since it was still my first, and less experienced, install.

Well, some games that come to mind are Stellaris, RimWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and I think the upcoming Factorio expansion. And from those, I think it might be possible to buy RimWorld DLC off-steam and install it in a steam copy.

Fun fact, you can check - on steamdb, you can check depots for a game, and see if it has one for a DLC. If it does, then it is downloading extra files for it.

All that said, I wouldn’t say it’s 100% a developer issue. The way I see the accusation, Valve is very comfortable providing convenient libraries for various things, including working with DLC, that only work on their platform, making it hard to release the game elsewhere in the future.

I’m generally fine with that for a simple reason - Steam really does have great features that just work. However, if somebody forced Valve to make features like Steam Input available independent of Steam, it could be a great boon for gaming.

I think the DLC point is the one valid argument, although nontrivial to implement.

How do you think DLC works on DRM-free games works, like GOG? The game is just gonna check if you have the DLC installed, without any real DRM.

The main issue is, this is entirely possible right now for games to do, but it won’t be integrated with steam, and needs to be done by developers themselves. I don’t know how feasible it would be for Steam to realistically do something about it, but it’d definitely be nice if you could buy a game on steam, and later decide you want to buy DLC on another platform and install it onto your steam game.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t… But we have definitive proof ARM is, in the form of actual consumer systems on the market.