I understand that with wine/proton prefixes they should be installed to a “fake c:/ windows hierarchy” can I just compress that and copy to a different Linux machine?
Yup, your save games are in your wine prefix so feel free to back them up and just use them again. Note that the game itself isn’t necessarily in the prefix, you could have installed it elsewhere.
Does it save which proton version was used?
I don’t think so, but it shouldn’t matter. You can change versions any time and it’ll just update your prefix.
If I use something like Lutris or bottles can I import into them?
Yes, you can set the prefix path to that folder you copied and it should pick up where you left things.
Cool, thank you! A lot of games on ProtonDB list specific versions of proton that work best for different games. That’s why I asked. But, I could just add a file in the root of the prefix with the version that worked (for troubleshooting purposes).
Do you have any preference for Lutris, bottles, vanilla proton?
Jorge, Kyle and the others over at ublue is doing a great job with their Fedora spins.
I run Bazzite on all my computers and if you got a full AMD system you can even get full gamemode running by installing the deck image. This in turn give you the best controller experience for games, as Desktop Steam got several issues with Steam Input valve have not fixed yet.
But not all credit should go to them for this but also ChimeraOS team, Nobara and others that are constantly working on an improved gaming experience on Linux.
When developing RetroDECK Steam Input profiles I mainly use the Steam Deck with SteamOS and Bazzite on my desktop to test them.
If they are all installed in the same wine prefix you could back up everything in one go by archiving the “.wine” folder in your home. that will include all applications installed in wine and all settings for those applications.
if you want to separate them into one archive per app you should look into wine prefixes, otherwise you would need to identify every folder a given app created during installation and archive those together manually, which can be very tedious.
Makes sense. I wouldn’t want to have all of my games in one wine prefix. I would like to keep them separate like steam/proton does. From looking it up, it seems the issue is that there is a lot of duplicate data that would need to be deduplicated. Steam supposedly does symlinks to solve this. But, if the symlinks points to /home/user/ as the base then that would break on /home/deck.
If you have any experience with Lutris/bottles. Do they do separate wine prefixes? If so, how do they handle it?
Just to clear some misunderstandings, TLE did a performance test on this distro and it was pretty much the same in terms of FPS as other distros. Gaming distros like Bazzite are made for a faster and easier setup process because gaming tools and stores and preinstalled.
But that’s a legitimate reason for it to exist. A lot of people have reservations towards Linux because they’re concerned about the gaming experience. Making it smooth and easy is a good thing. Having said that, I just installed Steam on Mint and everything ran just fine. I only play Steam games on that machine, though.
I can’t fully agree with you about the smooth user experience on this particular distro because it’s immutable but yea we should promote Linux for gaming. It’s pretty good now.
I can’t fully agree with you about the smooth user experience on this particular distro because it’s immutable
Could you elaborate on why you think this is the case? FYI, I’ve been using Fedora Atomic for over two years. So, please don’t feel the need to explain me how it works*.
I assume this is based on an experience with Kinoite? Am I right?
anything that involves changes to the system
I’d argue “anything” is too harsh. But yes, there are definitely edge cases that are either very/too cumbersome or outright impossible to achieve on Fedora Atomic.
However, I’d argue that while the associated paradigm shift and learning curve do require some commitment to adjust to, it is a more sane way of running a system for most people.
No. I know that installing a GTK theme requires putting the files in /usr/share/themes that is not in /home. That’s why I said it. As an advanced user I love customization and freedom so immutable distros are a no go for me (and for many people imo). I didn’t even bother trying.
However, I totally understand why you’d not feel compelled to do as such 😅. Especially if your current distro/system works splendidly.
This.
Sometimes, placing it to ~/.local/share/themes works as well*.
Ehh I prefer system-wide installation. I think it’s a habit from times when installing an Android app with root (so the OS treats it as a system app) increased its performance.
Thank you for sharing those links, I have been struggling with making rpm-ostree compose go from a yaml to an ISO, these look like they might reduce the level of effort!
FWIW, last year, through what became BlueBuild eventually, I had my own image with all kinds of modifications within a weekend. And, perhaps most curiously, I was a total noob when it comes to containerfiles, github, git etcetera. So, if I somehow managed, then you should definitely be fine.
Why would I use a system that isn’t supposed to change if I want to change it? It’s just not for me and I don’t want to waste my time reinstalling everything. And my opinion isn’t completely proven without trying but I have theoretical knowledge.
Why would I use a system that isn’t supposed to change if I want to change it?
There’s a bunch of benefits, atomic updates, intrinsic rollback, security of immutability, safe automatic updating and it goes on. Some things are not quite ready yet, e.g. things like sddm which should probably install themes to /etc (which they’re working on), so as often happens in linux, workarounds ensue. Making one directory mutable does not destroy all the benefits.
Once you realize you do package management in distroboxes rather than the main OS (rpm-ostree etc), no problem, plus you have the AUR at your disposal.
So Ima go not fair, although there is something of an education gap atm.
I’m a big fan of Fedora Atomic. However, even I have to admit that knowing how to install packages through dnf is simply more convenient than knowing and understanding the nuances between rpm-ostree, Toolbx/Distrobox and flatpak. And I haven’t even delved into ujust and brew that are found on uBlue images.
Furthermore, even if we would limit ourselves with what Fedora Atomic prescribes, we see the following inconveniences:
rpm-ostree ; I know –apply-live exists and I know systemctl soft-reboot exists. But still, if you have to resort to rpm-ostree, then both the speed of update/installation as well as the need to reboot (or live on the edge with –apply-live) are inconvenient compared to dnf.
flatpak ; It’s inconvenient that I have to alias the installed package if I prefer sane naming conventions when accessing it through the terminal. Furthermore, stuff like the NativeMessaging portal not being available yet for sandboxed browsers and how that prevents any local password manager to interact with them (without hacking your way through; which, once again, is an inconvenience) is inconvenient.
Toolbx/Distrobox ; the fact that you’d have to setup quadlets (or simply rely on uBlue images to do it for you) to keep them up to date, up and running is an inconvenience. The fact that distrobox-export has to be resorted to for accessing these directly from your ‘App Drawer’ is an inconvenience.
The fact that there’s no centralized place for upgrading all of the above (unless you rely on an uBlue image) is an inconvenience.
I could go on and on, but these should satisfy in revealing some of the more obnoxious inconveniences.
Fair cop on the inconveniences, although I’ve found it fine after an adaption phase, coming from fedora it was lesser than hopping to a new distro. Hard agree on knowing the nuances being problematic, clarity and accessible education is sorely missing, certainly the steepest part of the learning curve.
I just run ‘distrobox upgrade -all’ in my Daily.service, didn’t need quadlets (although after adaption I quite like them for containers now).
Though credit where credit is due. At this point, so well-beyond the adaption phase, I simply don’t see myself use anything else. This is my home. Though I have to admit my serious interest in QubesOS (and the upcoming Spectrum OS).
Hard agree on knowing the nuances being problematic, clarity and accessible education is sorely missing, certainly the steepest part of the learning curve.
Agree. I’m at least thankful that it’s a lot better than it used to be. Like two years ago, when as a total noob to Linux, I decided to cold turkey quit Windows and installed Fedora Silverblue on my machine. Well…, those first two weeks were pretty traumatic 😂. And, back then, there was not a lot out there. Luckily, I found this article that helped me to grasp the basics. And it has been smooth sailing ever since.
I just run ‘distrobox upgrade -all’ in my Daily.service
That’s pretty cool (and straightforward). Why didn’t I think of that 😂? But yeah, quadlets FTW.
Hehe. I agree that the community on Lemmy gives off more mature vibes. I suppose one should at least credit them for being idealistic enough to be on Lemmy rather than Reddit.
GNOME Software but it only has Flatpaks which my machine can’t quite run smoothly. It’s weird that I use the GNOME ecosystem without Flatpaks though. Anyways I just use the AUR on my system that’s based on Arch btw.
I set up a bazzite HTPC specifically because of its immutability and smoother user experience. The steam deck also locks down the package manager because this yields a more predictable environment.
I still don’t think there will be a difference. I tried distros with various schedulers and didn’t notice a major positive difference except for the DE smoothness that was unbeatable on CachyOS.
I didn’t measure 1% lows but I noticed that regular distros (specifically Fedora and Arch based ones) performed noticeably better in terms of overall FPS.
Fedora did have an older kernel but other distros were Arch based so always new kernels. Also I have to mention that CachyOS focuses on x86_64-v3 that my machine doesn’t support so results can be very different on newer hardware.
On one hand, I think some data is better than no data, so I think its fair to say that there is a lack of evidence for it being better in terms of in-game performance after setup based on it and that should just be the null assumption anyways.
On the other hand, its been over a decade since its been pretty well known that average FPS is not necessarily reflective of overall performance and throwing the frametime data into a spreadsheet and doing =percentile([range],.99) and =percentile([range],.999) and then dragging it to neighboring cells seems like a pretty minimal extra work for a commercialized channel. For niche testing like this, I’m less bothered by it because having some results seems better than nothing, but its still nice to see it pointed out.
I installed Bazzite on a sibling’s thinkpad and it was amazing. Chose KDE, out of the box, it was amazing. Fingerprint fprint was pre installed, just had to scan them in settings. Battery management and power level settings (power save or performance) were also already installed. Everything has been flawless. Even full disk encryption works amazingly well without hiccups. I remember trying it on Ubuntu and it bricked itself or something and gave up on it.
Dual booting it and installation was a walk in the park.
Anybody that already has had a computer for 2 years and is coming from Windows will have almost no problems with Mint. Stability is top priority for first time Linux users and you need some visual guide with screenshots. Mint also has a great default look and setup for people coming from Windows. Mint is probably the best distro to put on your mom’s old laptop that is “getting slow” because of viruses.
I’d recommend KDE Neon or Ubuntu also depending on the situation but if I don’t know anything about the person and computer I’d say Mint.
It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.
They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.
There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.
Exactly. I know plenty of people who have driven a car for over 3 decades, and do not know what a timing belt or a spark plug does. I don’t look down on those people, but it certainly makes sense as to why they don’t know. They don’t really need to!
Windows users have a variety of different skills and experience. I guess the most likely ones to try Linux first are not going to be the PC-fearing ultra-causal users, who probably follow what their friends do. But the more adventurous and curious ones, or IT workers.
Yeah, exactly. If a person asks for a recommendation they don’t trust their own skills enough to make their own decision or distrohop.
I feel like a website is needed to recommend a distro to people based on a very varied set of criteria that doesn’t just ask “Do you like stability over all? Debian”
Definitely a help website that focuses on user level questions and not IT pro solutions is desperately needed. Today new users are immediately given misinformation by hard core Linux techies with no clue about usability or user level solutions.
Linux veteran here. I use Bazzite on my gaming PC and ROG Ally. Once I figured out the quirks of an immutable distro and started using distroboxes it became an amazing experience. No complaints here.
I don’t know if this is really a “so broken” instance. /bin and /usr/bin (or sbin) have never been well separated, to the point where many distributions just symlink to /usr anyway. If you don’t want an initramfs to provide binaries you need them somewhere accessible.
They were defined sure, but without distribution adherence they weren’t actually, this has been the case for a long time. Out of all the distributions, Gentoo is probably one of the most sensitive to this issue since most others have used initramfs or initrd for decades and Gentoo has always made it optional.
If the post was about FHS adherence I’d agree more.
of course not, any program that has it own install script install it on /bin because it’s easier, and why need that in a early boot, what’s the difference, was always a workaround, wasn’t needed to complement anything before, and don’t need anything now
I’ve been using bazzite for over 6 months now, I have it on three of my devices at the current moment in time, and I would never look back to Windows at this point, shit just works.
I have three questions if you have the time. Can you make it go to desktop mode by default, not big picture mode? What DE does it come with, Plasma? Does it come with Lutris or whatever? If I have an .exe installer for an old game, does it come pre-installed with tools to help create the proton wine-prefixes and everything? I imagine the last one would allow Flatpak to be used.
I apologize for the late reply, the other commenter is correct as well, Bazzite comes out of the box in desktop mode, if you’ve ever used plasma before, it’s a lot like that. For .exe programs I use wine, and haven’t had that let me down yet for the most part. Im fairly certain Bazzite does use flatpaks, but it does also have also Discover baked in.
Honestly, I compare it strongly to using the steam deck desktop mode.
It’s not. Series X and series S use native Bluetooth and work with xpadneo. Older controllers use their own proprietary receiver that needs to be plugged into the machine and work with regular xpad.
In post on the Gradience Discord, the tool’s primary developer David Lapshin (daudix) explains: –
“Archiving the project […] will make it clear that Gradience is, well, unmaintained, and will prevent the issue tracker from being filled with duplicates asking when new release will be out/why nautilus sidebar is white.”
“And, if someone will want to maintain it one day, it can always be unarchived with a press of a button.”
I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.
To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.
But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.
I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.
Well what I meant is that if Gnome was taking so much inspiration from MacOs, being a Gnome user, I wouldn’t have felt lost on MacOS.
I also don’t mind Gnome taking what’s great from every other OS, as it’d clearly be stupid not to if an idea is great.
I also think that people should be more open minded about what others are enjoying. I prefer Linux, but I can also understand that some people just want to have the most compatible OS with everything, aka Windows. Or the best ecosystem, aka Apple.
It is not my choice, and I’m trying to convince people to switch to something else, but just badmouthing their choice when it has objectively some advantages isn’t gonna help.
I have been using the hell out of bazzite for the last few weeks and I’ve really enjoyed it. There have been a couple of minor bugs but otherwise everything just generally works.
I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve also installed bluefin on my work laptop.
Enable fractional scaling and install Display scale switcher gnome extension - makes it easier to increase scaling when in tablet mode for easier touch input.
logging in on a touchscreen can be a pain, in particular entering the password with on-screen keyboard. Special characters and numbers are not shown by default. On windows you have the option to use pin instead with a numeric keyboard. If you have a fingerprint reader compatible with linux that might work for login (mine doesn’t).
Linux is very terminal-oriented, but Gnome terminal is unusable on a tochscreen. never mind typing commands - try scrolling long outputs - you can’t scroll with touchscreen, it will just start selecting text (i dont remember how this works in Windows)
Google chrome supports gestures, so you can swipe left/right on the page to navigate back/forward. This does not with Firefox. Chrome also has a more touchscreen-friendly UI you can enable in chrome://flags/#top-chrome-touch-ui (Touch UI layout) although I haven’t noticed a significant difference.
while you’re messing with google flags you may want to change Preferred Ozone platform to Wayland - this fixed blurry scaling for me
Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.
And gnome has those dialogs in a different colour to achieve easily noticable differentiation between the two options
That same logic could be applied for the save and discard button. Should there be a bigger gap between them lest somebody misclick and discard things instead of saving them¿? Atleast in the case where they accidentally click cancel instead of discard, they are not losing any data.
Hell if this really about data safety, discard/don’t save should be the isolated button because it is the only destructive option
According to the UX experts you don’t need the space between the save and discard buttons as long as the “save” is the first one. Missclick are more prone to happen from top to bottom than the other way around, so if the user wanted to hit “save” it’s more likely he will click above the button than it is to click “discard”. Same logic applied down there, when the using is looking to cancel it’s easier to missclick and hit the “discard” button than anything else.
This is an application of Fitts’s law. I saw some paper referencing it to back that kind of margins on destructive actions but I don’t remember the title.
Well fitts law doesnt mention anything about asymmetrical spacing anywhere. Infact going by fitts law, the new gnome design is great because the hitboxes are pretty large
That’s what the paper was about, the law also applies the in reverse, adding the space protects the user because it makes it harder to click on the hitbox.
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